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 | Reviews for The Third Doctor Adventures: Kaleidoscope |
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| Entertaining but Unstructured |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 18 July 2026 |
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| Rating: |   7 |
Scriptwriter Alan Barnes is used to writing long-form Doctor Who, so would be, on appearances, an ideal writer for an old-fashioned six-parter featuring Doctor 3. This time he delivers a reasonably entertaining story. My reservations with this one are based on a personal preference for tightly scripted stories. Barnes, instead, prefers the A.E. van Vogt approach of plot twist or sudden change at regularly scheduled points getting to a pre-determined, if not very inspiring, conclusion. The story starts with UNIT and Doctor 3 investigating a mysterious Star Man (I could hear Bowie playing in Barnes' music feed while he wrote) straight out of central casting for Jesus Christ Superstar. Fairly quickly, though, the story takes a complete turn into Doctor 3 trope #3 - the Doc and Brig confronting blustering, fat, self-important government official, RAF commander this time, over who has jurisdiction when it comes to UFOs. This bit of the story runs for a while, and then gets turned again as Doctor 3 and Sarah get kidnapped by evil Soviet baddies and replaced in UNIT by Kaleidoscope, all question of his origin set aside, and Sarah's journalistic rival. We get a pretty-much unrelated run-through of a Kaleidoscope and Natalie with UNIT solo adventure involving a rock star in league with demons, nothing to do with the main story, followed by a bit of spy thriller involving the Brigadier, all tied up in the end with the final, rushed, partial explanation of Kaleidoscope and a setup for a possible new series. The rambling plot left me a bit frustrated.
Another aspect of Barnes' writing that does not work well for me is how likes his villains to be Bond villains, all cool, icy, and ruthless with "I'm a villain" embossed into every line of dialogue. I prefer the Pertwee-era villains who don't think of themselves as villains, but rather as saviors. Finally, another problem I have is that several times in the script I felt there were many openings to do something especially clever that weren't taken, so that Barnes chose a more pedestrian route. In one instance, the baddies are monitoring UNIT, and The Brigadier is acting strangely enough for me to think that in this case the Brigadier knew he was being monitored, because he is not quite so obtuse as he is often written, and was talking in code to The Doctor. But no, he was just being odd for cheap laughs.
Still, much of the story was fun in the knock-about, bullets flying, racing from here to there manner of the Pertwee era. The team of Tim Treloar (Doctor 3), Sadie Miller (Sarah Jane), and John Culshaw (the Brigadier) work together well, convincingly recreating the original actors. I can see how there could be many more adventures with this trio.
