The best thing about Crime of the Century is that it introduces new companion Raine Creevy, delightfully played by Beth Chalmers. Raine seems to have been designed as a deliberate counterpoint to Ace, much as Martha Jones was a counterpoint to Rose Tyler. Raine, despite being the daughter of a London gangster, has received the best education money can buy, and is cultured, charming, and classist all in one. The story opens with her narration as she carries out a safecracking operation, and the whole thing is just plain fun to listen to.

Though I found it more engaging than Thin Ice, what stops Crime of the Century from being successful is that it never seems to know what it’s actually about. Part One has the Doctor and Raine stealing back the Ice Warrior artifacts that Creevy ended up with at the end of Thin Ice, since Creevy sold them off to cover his debts. It was never really clear why the Doctor left the artifacts with Creevy to begin with, and it's even less clear why he returns them to the man, since he sold them fair and square. Meanwhile, Ace is in the Middle East investigating a series of mysterious attacks, and soon the Doctor and Raine have gone to join her, abandoning one plot for another. This carries us through the middle of Part Four, when the action returns to Britain for yet another plotline. Plus, the story has an obnoxious tendency to set up things that don’t pay off, such as when Raine is bunted out of the narrative in Part Three despite earlier events clearly setting her up for actions that Ace ultimately performs. The "crime of the century" indicated in the title ends up being yet another plotline unconnected to all the "main" ones.

Cartmel calls the story a "caper" in the extras, but that would require some actual capering to happen. Crime of the Century is a disjointed series of events that don't add up to a greater whole. I think the story wants to be one of those legendary seventh Doctor masterplans, but it's more like a series of microplans that aren't very interesting. The pacing is faster and the story more involving than in Thin Ice, but Season 27 is not shaping up to be a convincing followup to the brash, explosive Seasons 25 and 26.

You can read a longer version of this review at Unreality SF.

This story by Andrew Cartmel, part of the current Big Finish run of 'lost' Seventh Doctor scripts, is basically an introduction story for new companion Raine, whose origins were explained in last month's instalment in this series, Thin Ice. I'm afraid it didn't really grab me as firmly as its predecessor did - I think 'Kaffiristan' is a somewhat dubious name for a fictional country, even a former Soviet republic, and the alien Metatraxi sound like they have escaped from a lesser work of Douglas Adams; their means and motivation were not well explained. Also Ace has forgiven the Doctor awfully quickly for his attempt to manipulate her fate in the previous story. On its own merits it's solid enough (speaking as one who has just finished re-watching The Twin Dilemma, after which any other Who looks like a masterpiece) but I was disappointed. ( )