OK but not spectacular, with the giant insects returning to torment Eight and Lucie, and also a rather colonial relationship between two human cultures. Actually I thought BF missed a trick here: most of the guest cast (Colin Salmon, Daniel Anthony, Liz Sutherland) are PoC, and we could have had a more thoughtful exploration of colonialism than we got. ( )

This story is a little too much like Briggs’s previous deep-space stories. The Doctor and his companion find themselves aboard a spaceship of hard-bitten, suspicious Earth people, filled with characters recognizable from previous Briggs efforts: the authoritarian female commanding officer, the grizzled and trigger-happy veteran, and the put-upon junior officer. (At least we're spared the usual collection of regional English accents in this one.) Though good actors can usually breathe some convincing life into these kind of roles, there's no such success here.

The story gets off to a pretty exciting start; thankfully, Briggs realizes that he only has an hour to tell a story, unlike some NEDA writers, and plunges the Doctor and Lucie straight into the action, with them walking out of the TARDIS and into a battle. In short order, they are captured, the ship they are on is destroyed, and they flee into space in space suits. Oddly, this last bit was one of my most favorite and least favorite parts of the play. I loved the visual imagery of the Doctor and Lucie drifting in space, watching the battle from afar, seemingly utterly powerless to do anything about it or even find the TARDIS and leave. And then, sighting the TARDIS falling towards a nearby planet, they blast off with their rockets towards it, clinging on to one another and screaming. On the other hand, it contributes nothing to the story; before they can get to the TARDIS, they are captured by the exactly same three people who had them in custody ten minutes ago. So what was the point of that? Also, was the scene where Lucie can’t figure out where the blue button to turn on her comm is supposed to be funny? If so, Briggs really needs to stay away from humor.

On the other hand, characterization of the regulars was not the story’s strong point. The Doctor was not as clever as he ought to be-- how he took half the play to figure out the meaning of "indig" when I had it upon first use is beyond me. Ditto his surprise at the fate of General Farroll. And Briggs’s Lucie is oddly flat, given his success at writing her in the second season’s fantastic Sisters of the Flame. She does get her moments here and there, though, and Sheridan Smith turns in a fantastic performance as always. Paul McGann seems a little better here than he has been of late, as well. The amnesia plotline from Orbis and the uncertainty in the Doctor and Lucie's relationship seems to have been totally forgotten here, though. Was Hothouse supposed to have resolved it? Because then that was all a bit pointless.

If I give the story kudos for one thing, it's that it actually does something new and interesting with the Wirrn. I’m always wary of bringing back old monsters that aren't intelligent species like the Daleks, Sontarans, Ood, or Bandrils; with straight-up unintelligent monsters, you really can’t have them developing a new complicated and interesting plan that stops their return appearance from being a retread of their original one. (Indeed, the Cybermen never manage that with intelligence.) So, you end up with stories like Hothouse. But Briggs actually does do something interesting with the idea of the Wirrn without actually changing anything about their premise; he emphasizes something that was present in The Ark in Space but not particularly capitalized on. So while Wirrn Dawn might be a promising adventure that falls apart in a number of areas, it’s surprisingly not because of its status as a gratuitous returning monster story.

You can read a longer version of this review at Unreality SF.