Landing on Freefall, the second adventure in the Reunion boxset, sees the TARDIS trio caught in a web of lies and deceit. The radiation rainbow of Poison’s Reach hides the deadly truth behind the evil Stelta Corporation’s crimes. But just how far are they willing to go to uncover the truth…

Completely contrasting the previous story’s light, comedic atmosphere, the tale of Poison’s Reach is a bleak and depressing outing revolving around crime and corporate cover-ups. Atmospheric and heavily layered, the adventure explores the secrets and lies required to build an authoritarian corporation’s iron grip on power. Teaming up with Sandra, a local engineer and truth seeker, the TARDIS trio set about finding evidence of Stelta’s misdeeds and a way to bring the corporation to justice.

For the most part, however, this story is all about doing the background work. Over the course of two episodes, we get to learn a lot about Freefall, Poison’s Reach and Stelta through several large, and unavoidably heavy dialogue segments. While this information is certainly interesting and ultimately helps to flesh out Sutton’s vision of an intergalactic corporation world, it does inevitably act as a bit of a double-edged sword. As per any dialogue-heavy story, these moments completely batter any sense of pacing the narrative has. More importantly for this adventure, however, is that these info-heavy scenes need a justification by the climax. Put simply, the story needs a reveal that is worth investing our time into the world of Freefall. Unfortunately, these justifications never arrive. Where the main plot of this story falls short is in its inability to explore the magnitude of the corporation’s crime in depth. Within the confines of a sixty-minute outing filled to the brim with world-building, there just isn’t enough time to wander through the ruins of an endemic civilisation Stelta wiped out for the sake of mining profit. Something like this should be impactful; it should be heavy-hitting, and it should want to explore the aftereffects of this information becoming public knowledge. Instead, because it has no time left, it’s all glossed over, and the bleak corporation victory isn’t quite as deserved as it should be.

Although the main plot ultimately ends fangless, there is something that this episode gets perfectly – Turlough. Throughout the story, his time is spent alongside Sandra. A woman of action, willing to do anything, including sacrificing herself, for the truth, her actions and convictions bring a pang of unease for Turlough. He sees himself as the complete opposite to her, insecure and cowardly, unable or unwilling to make the hard decisions necessary for the sake of what is right. Working alongside and conversing with her, however, has finally shown him the way out of his current predicament and has given him the courage to finally face what he’s been running away from. It’s a nice peak in older Turlough’s arc that really helps the transition into the boxset finale.