The House on the Edge of Chaos written by Eddie Robson and directed by Nicholas Briggs

What’s it about: The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Lucie to a vast house on the planet known as Horton’s Orb. The only house on Horton’s Orb, in fact. Outside its outsized windows there’s nothing. No land. No sea. No sky. No life. Just an endless expanse of static. Inside the house, there’s an upstairs and a downstairs – servants below, gentlefolk from the finest of the house’s families above. Alas, there are altogether too few eligible ladies on the upper floors these days. Meaning there’s a vacancy for Miss Lucie Miller, single and unattached… Outside the house, the static howls on. Except now, the static wants to get in.

Breathless Romantic: He’s been travelling the universe for ages now and he has never been stuck anywhere for too long. Certainly not longer than a few hundred years. I can hear all the book fans of Doctor Who sighing with relief. It’s nice to have them referenced again. Lurking in a young lady’s – what will people say? The Doctor is vicious with the TARDIS at the climax when the Ship tries to wrestle control from him. I don't think I have ever heard him sound so at odds with the TARDIS, it's a bizarre tonal shift.

Lucie Bleedin’ Miller: A more subdued, investigative side to Lucie with a difficult mystery to unravel, Eddie Robson always did know how to bring the best out in this character. Once she is trussed up in finery Lucie cannot get used to everybody telling her how beautiful she is. Of all the Doctor Who companions Lucie wasn’t really one to have her head turned by good looking men and so to have that sort of attention from women is a complete surprise to her. I liked her reaction to her class difference to those in the house, surprised at the luxury they live in but not patronised or patronising about it. She knows what terraforming is and snaps at the Doctor when he seems to suggest she might not.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘What do we do?’ ‘Maintain order!’ I guess that would be the British way in space.

Great Ideas: That’s one of the best blurbs to any Big Finish release I have ever read. What an enticing prospect, a two up, two down in a void of static going about its daily chores. Eddie Robson always did have a good eye for a fun and freaky premise and this one is easily imagined, full of mystery and built in suspense. Imagine an episode of Downton Abbey where they pull back to reveal that the house that all this hustle and bustle has been taking place in is trapped in a featureless void. Endless static that drowns sensors and drives people mad. 300 live above stairs and 8000 below. Class divides still occur, all this way-out space. A creature that hunts blind in the static. Grace and Mr Horton were the first settlers on this planet with an idea to terraform it and make it habitable for everyone who followed. Nothing went wrong at first and so they sent message that the planet was suitable for colonisation but then the planet reacted to their presence and became hostile. By the time the second wave of colonists arrived the house was swamped with static. The terraformer is still running here, responding to Horton’s needs. It is producing the static because it is covering the awful truth and a manifestation of his guilt. It’s guarding his secret and maintaining his world of order. He killed the first Mrs Horton because their ideas of a perfect world were different. The conflict infected the landscape and ultimately killed Grace.

Isn’t it Odd: The Doctor delivers the truth about the house remorselessly and with much conviction. Perhaps it is because he is so appalled at Horton’s actions that he cannot find it in himself to sympathise with the situation that has been created but having him deliver the news so snappily robs the scene of any emotional worth. It’s more a summation of a plot than a revelation. With so much coming out this month, The Legacy of Time included, it feels like this box set, which deserves some celebration, will be brushed aside in favour of bigger and better things. And that's a shame.

Standout Scene: The twist that the entire house is made out of Horton is a grisly one that is well explained by the Doctor and gets more disturbing the more you think about it.

Result: A colony ship which is acting like a Victorian mansion? Eddie Robson throws you straight into this story without any warning or help, expecting you to keep up with the situation that is playing out and offering explanations later. He’s not interested in waving a flag for the eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller but instead thrusts them straight into danger and celebrates them by showing them at their reactive best. Sapphire and Steel seems to have the monopoly on bizarre juxtapositions like this story but with a premise like this (‘Hierarchical house inside, deadly static outside’) you cannot help but make comparisons. Listening to the usual classist dialogue in a science fiction setting meant I was constantly being pulled in two directions which had a pleasing, disorienting effect. Mind you skipping between a wedding proposal and a static monster is exactly the sort of hybrid of domesticity and the monstrous that Russell T Davies promoted so I shouldn’t be too surprised. My one complaint is that this is told at such a pace that it feels as though it needs more time to explore its characters and ideas in more depth. Robson has to introduce his ideas, explore his characters, throw in some twists and tidy everything up at the end all in the space of 50 minutes. If anything the story is too tight and could have done with some breathing space. If the downside is that this story is too short then that suggests that what we have is really rather fine: 8/10