It's rather clever how all this comes about but the character moments are sadly dull. Five is petulant, Nyssa insists in people being reasonable and Thomas screwed things up when he stole the TARDIS. Yawn. But as I said, the set-up is clever enough to bump it up a star. ( )

Marc Platt is either brilliant or incomprehensible in my experience, and unfortunately Time Reef is more in the latter category. Thomas Brewster, who joined Five and Nyssa a couple of adventures ago, has temporarily borrowed the Tardis and flogged most of the interior fittings to a rather curious spaceship marooned on a Time Reef. The script was witty and weird, but I didn't get enough of a handle on the means and motivation of the various players, including particularly Brewster himself. Also it really annoys me that Five is/was so indiscriminating about his travelling companions - happily sharing the Tardis with those he didn't like (Adric), who didn't like him (Tegan), who were actively trying to kill him (Turlough and to an extent Kamelion) and now someone who actually steals his valuable property. There are a couple of Five/Brewster exchanges which are really unbelievable.

Jonny Morris, having written Brewster into the Big Finish sequence earlier this year, now writes him out with the short but satisfactory A Perfect World: life suddenly takes a shift for the better, but this perfection is not what it seems. Brewster leaves with some element of redemption, a decent end to his character arc. ( )