Sunset (Planet Krynoid: Nightfall)

Audio  If you'll excuse the blasphemy, Jesus, this is grim. Nick Briggs pops in at the start of each episode to repeat the content warning from the website, "This release contains adult material and may not be suitable for younger listeners"—which you would think wouldn't be required for something on audio where you can't actually see anything, but parts of this are absolutely horrible and would obviously give children nightmares. If the Hinchcliffe era worried Whitehouse, this would have put her in Cromer—sorry, a coma. At one point, I had to stop the tape and walk away for a bit. Congratulations, folks; this is horror Who at its most heinous.

The first episode, Jonathan Morris's Sunlight follows a similar path to parts of the Alien franchise, which it might well do given that they're both about eggs of sorts. One of the Krynoid seed pods is found during the maintenance of the satellites that keep the lamps on at the otherwise dark and cold colony planet of Sunlight. The local representative of this story's equivalent of Weyland-Yutani wants to keep the thing intact in case there's anything they can take advantage of, even though the Governor of the colony says (rightly!) it should be destroyed immediately, with Reece Shearsmith giving this otherwise cowardly individual his most officious voice acting.

Structured like a disaster film, we're introduced to citizens who are affected at all levels. Which means that when the Eighth Doctor arrives in the second instalment, Sunset by Jonathan S Powell, via unconventional means, it's into an already established group of characters. Although he absolutely fulfils the obligations that might usually be expected of him during a colony-under-siege story—explaining who the monsters are, suggesting how the people in charge have fucked things up, and outlining what could potentially be done to save the day—the various families at the heart of the story remain central. Although for most of them, things still don't end well.

During VHS clipshow The Tom Baker Years, the actor behind the teeth and curls infamously misnames The Seeds of Doom as Invasion of the Krynoids or The Krynoid Invasion, which always conjured in my mind seed pods bombarding a planet, with the sentient vegetable biomass overwhelming the population. That is exactly what the final episode, the fittingly titled Darkness by Chris Chapman, gives us, with scenes straight out of John Wyndham. It's during one particular scene here that I needed to take a break. There are Threads levels of hopelessness on display—or rather, on speaker—and although it does end on the potential for hope, a sequel boxset is incoming. Like I said, Jeeeesus.

Placement:  The Eighth Doctor was apparently travelling with Liv when his end of the story kicked off. Given that he's wearing his leathers on the cover, and assuming that Helen isn't chilling somewhere, this intriguingly puts it between Dark Eyes and Doom Coalition. They both appear in the next Planet of the Krynoids boxset, so I'll also see what we learn there and move it if necessary.