Day 45: Crisis

It's surprising how dark this story is. For a start, the plot begins with people being murdered in cold blood, and halfway through the story, Barbara becomes infected with the insecticide. However, she neglects to tell anyone about this, not wishing to cause a fuss. And so we see her slowly succumb to the illness over the course of the serial, slowly dying and we know that there is not much likelihood of them succeeding. This is a threat that we haven't faced before in the series. Earlier serials have always been slightly detached from the real world, the threats have been ray guns, or guillotines. Not more common things such as poison, that can be found in the real world. It should also be noted that the Doctor and co are really helpless in this episode, they aren't an active part of the resolution, beyond just being there and attempting to help. I mean, they do destroy the insecticide, and in the process injure the bad guy, but the events would have essentially played out just the same without them. They just act as a nice little interlude while other people solve everything. That said, they are an interesting interlude, but the point remains that we have essentially been given two parallel plots that operate around each other, but never really meet. It makes for an interesting experiment though, as we get a nice action adventure, but also a small scientific crime drama as well.