A
WRITTEN BY NEV FOUNTAIN
DIRECTED BY GARY RUSSELL
RELEASED IN APRIL 2006

The Kingmaker is the second story that came from Nev Fountain. Many fans of this range will remember that he wrote the 2003 story ‘Omega’. This story also features Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor except this time he’s with his two ‘regular’ companions of Peri and Erimem. This is the fifth time that this combination has been used (not including The Eye of the Scorpion where Erimem wasn’t a companion). This story is quite a bizarre story that has several interesting elements but also has several flaws.

The first thing that I liked about this story is that the setting. Set in the fifteen century I like it when a story goes back into that time era. Stories like The Marian Conspiracy and The Time of the Daleks have used their settings to push a story along and with the Kingmaker the setting is not really the pushing force of this story because the basic traits of it could be used in any time zone really. Another thing that I liked in this story is the relationship between Peri and Erimem. With this being their fifth story together their relationship is taking on that of sisters. They look out for each other in this story and it was nice at time when Erimem got annoyed with Peri and vice versa. The scene where the robot appears in the TARDIS and is talking to the Doctor was a nice comedy moment which wasn’t too annoying and didn’t detract from the scene. Other things I liked was the addition of Jon Culshaw who is known in this country as the best impressionist of Tom Baker. Arthur Smith was also a good addition to the story as his character was well written and wasn’t too serious but at the same time not too comedic.

There were negative things about this story. For one I thought that the plot was a bit difficult to understand at times. At times I thought I understood this story but then all of a sudden it just shifted gear. Also I thought that the cliffhangers were not very good. They just didn’t feel like cliffhangers. To me, cliffhangers should make you stop and think ‘wow, whats gonna happen next’ but instead with this story you were left thinking ‘oh ok’. Also Peter Davison seemed to put in a background performance, not totally in the background of all the action but didn’t really take charge like he should have done and the way it was written. I cant figure out whether it was the setting of the story or the situation but Davison just didn’t seem on form in this story.

Overall this isn’t a really bad story but just a mediocre one and one that could have been better had it perhaps been set in another time.