Out of Time: Wink

"All that don't blink nonsense."

Writer: Lisa McMullin

Format: Audio

Released: June 2022

Series: Out of Time 03

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Sixth Doctor

Synopsis

When the Sixth Doctor goes sight-seeing on Lucidus Silvara, he finds himself in a place where nothing is visible at all... only all-encompassing light! The Tenth Doctor is drawn in by a temporal anomaly, and the two Doctors meet a species with no sense of sight, living in a city surrounded by Weeping Angels.

To save a civilisation, the Doctors must keep their eyes on the Angels. Don't blink. Don't even wink...

Verdict

Wink was an outstanding adventure to continue the tremendous Out of Time miniseries of multi-Doctor stories! I do hope we haven't heard the last from this range but this was a quite brilliant meeting between the Tenth and Sixth Doctors! It's a pairing that not many would have wished for or anticipated but right from the off the dialogue between the Doctors is tantalising. I liked how there was no messing around in getting both incarnations together and the moments where they're speaking to each other through the light were fantastic as they inadvertently introduced themselves to each other, both as the Doctor. The Tenth Doctor's reaction to seeing which incarnation he was faced with this time was a lot of fun and the expected comments about the infamous coat were a delight. I liked how at the end it seems the blue coat of Real Time might have been at the suggestion of the Tenth Doctor. That's a nice touch. Of course, as the tremendous episode title might suggest, the Doctors are once again facing the Weeping Angels and I absolutely adored the pomposity of the Sixth Doctor when it came to ridiculing the whole not blinking thing when it came to the Lonely Assassins. Why not simply wink? Of course, that method wasn't quite as foolproof as the Sixth Doctor liked to think which was marvellous, but the brief moment where the Tenth Doctor was stuck for words was something I really enjoyed. The Sixth Doctor didn't take too kindly to the bubbly nature of the Tenth Doctor's effervescent personality, but that was part of the charm of these two incarnations meeting. They're almost polar opposites! I thought the setting of Lucidus Silvara worked tremendously and was the perfect place for a Weeping Angels adventure. What better place than a world where its inhabitants never had, or even needed, sight? The development of the planet and how they'd managed to trap Weeping Angels there with mirrored surfaces was glorious and it all came around full circle in such a clever way. Dax being killed and having his vocal cords animated for communication with the Angels was sublime and I really liked how creepy he sounded. It was the perfect way to incorporate the Angels into the audio format as well. Padila and Estra as the locals on the planet were really great characters and I liked how they reacted to the Doctors being reliant on their sense of sight. Trying to explain it was difficult, but imagining them in having intuit as a sense rather than sight was a little difficult to comprehend! The reveal of the 51 Angels and how that resulted in the difference in regenerations being squared, plus the current ones, was intriguing and the timey-wimey nature of the story came fully into play as it turned out that Padila and Estra would now go on to build their own society! They may even become their own ancestors which was quite something, but mirroring the Angels was the perfect way to see them defeated before the temporal loop came into effect. The goodbye between the Tenth and Sixth Doctors was tremendous and I was surprised to hear the former still refusing to meet his end as The End of Time loomed. Overall, a magnificent audio!

Rating: 10/10