Vanguard written by Steve Jordan and directed by Scott Handcock

What’s it about: The planet Vanguard was once ravaged by a war between its peoples: the Dauntless and the Intrepid. Now, robotic titans stalk the desolation, searching for survivors. Their mission: to end the war for one side or the other. But which side will the Doctor take?

The Real McCoy: Does it ever seem odd to you that wherever in the universe that the Doctor seems to go that, almost without exception, he seems to know the history of every planet and race? He understands the conflict between the Dauntless and the Intrepid the second he steps from the TARDIS allowing us to slip straight into the story fully armed with information. Maybe that’s why, for brevity. You have to wonder if the Doctor is losing his touch when he has to ask ‘any potential escape routes?’ The experience of knowing he is going to die never gets easier.

Moody Copper: Listen how desperate Roz is to find Cwej when he is stolen away from them. Roz never behaved like that. The NA Roz would have appeared like she didn’t care and suggest that he can take care of himself, whilst simultaneously trying to work out how to help him.

Standout Performance: Connor Calland. Really giving his part some welly. I was so deeply uninvested in the situation that I didn’t care, but I appreciate the effort.

Great Ideas: This has to go down as one of the Doctor’s most unfortunate landings, the TARDIS materialising on a planet at war on a battlefield between two charging armies. When she says that she always takes him where he needs to be in The Doctor’s Wife, perhaps she could do so without, you know, shoving two armies in his face. What do you do when you are introduce to the sole survivor of a desolate war that ravaged a planet…and you were supposed to save everybody? A fully programmable bioweapon created by both the Dauntless and the Intrepid in their attempts to destroy the other side. This required hosts to incubate a strain of virus to carry to everybody else. It says something about the creation of super weapons during warfare that both sides never intended to create something this powerful but their meddling with science and unleashing of two sets of children loaded with virus created something more terrifying than either side could comprehend.

Result: We’ve gone from a story idea that nobody has tried to a story idea that everybody has tried. Think of any TV SF series and think of a time when they have done one of those ‘warring clans’ tales where everything comes good in the end. It’s a particular speciality of Star Trek and Stargate, but Doctor Who is hardly immune either. A few years ago this sort of tale was subverted brilliantly in the 4th Doctor story The Paradox Planet and Legacy of Death where the two opposing sides in the conflict are the same race at different points in their history. When I start comparing the current story unfavourably against the 4th Doctor Adventures, be scared. The performances are earnest but there’s no escaping the fact that there is little here that we haven’t seen before and there’s nothing to fill in gaps in interest like decent characterisation and skilful plotting. It feels like every box set has to have that one release that you could kind of do without, the one story that brings the batting average down. The one story that doesn’t aspire to be as strong as its fellows. Vanguard takes that trophy, even though it does give the Doctor, Chris and Roz equal share of the action. This is the kind of story that Russell T Davies was warning about in series one, set on planet Zog with the Zogs and the Zogettes at war and this time our only identification characters are a Time Lord and two space cops from the future. So nobody. It is trying to say something profound about war in the name of progress but it gets lost under a lot of waffle and misplaced angst. I’m really really pleased they didn’t open with this story. I may not have come back to the set: 3/10