Salt of the Earth

The Third Doctor is perhaps my favourite Doctor thus far and whilst he and companion Jo Grant are characterised fairly well here this doesn't feel much like a Third Doctor story, with no UNIT, no Master yet still set on (virtually)contemporary Earth. The TARDIS lands on a salt lake in Australia in 2028 where they discover strange statues made of salt which look worryingly like people.

I really liked the setting and the idea of the Third Doctor 'blokarting'- being a man of action I could picture Jon Pertwee doing that- but this lacks in some of the key elements a really good Doctor Who story needs. The first of these is a villain, or at least a strong sci-fi element, which this story doesn't really have. Another is a strong guest cast- here we only really have one woman and a dog and oddly quite a high proportion of the story is told from the dog's point of view.

I could see that Trudi Canavan had chosen a place that she knows and loves because the setting is really strong here but it feels a bit like he had a setting and then tried to build a Doctor Whos story around it, and didn't do a terribly good job. In fact the solution is almost identical to one of the Ninth Doctor stories.

Not a complete failure but my least favorite of the Time Trips stories so far