I enjoyed Ann Bell and Robert Pugh as Lisa and Emmett Burrows, an older couple living out their retirement on a remote island, good people who take River in and try to do the best for their daughter - played ably by Kingston’s own daughter, Salome Haertel. The writing feels real and intimate, the acting is solid, and the production keeps things tense.

He mentions a couple inspirations in the extras, but it reminded me of Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach: you know death is coming, and you know when, but it’s not here yet, so how do you choose to die? Everyone shines in this story. It’s River, the Burrows family, and Steven Godbold against something with the power to destroy an entire planet, and Dorney once again demonstrates that he’s at his best as a writer when approaching a common story type (the end of the world) from a different angle. River comes to Earth to find out what destroys it, but instead discovers a family on a remote island - one she decides to save. John Dorney’s Five Twenty-Nine puts one in mind of James Goss’s story from the previous set: a low-key, character-driven, elegiac tale. Thankfully, the rest of the set maintains a strong quality. I was excited that Anna Maxwell Martin was in this, but she felt squandered as the Imperious Captain.

(Listening to this episode shortly after Guy Adams’s contribution to The New Counter-Measures Series One revealed some similarities of theme and concept.) This was probably the weakest of the set, a fairly generic runaround featuring fairly generic characters. I say “apparently” because memory loss is affecting everyone on board the Saturnius, leaving them uncertain as to each other’s identities - and their own. Guy Adams kicks it all off with The Unknown, where River is apparently part of the crew of an exploratory spaceship, and the Seventh Doctor is apparently a prisoner aboard. I wouldn’t have guessed that the Sixth would be the classic Doctor to fall the hardest for River, but it makes perfect sense once you hear it

The Diary of River Song by Guy Adams