This set seems to have a
problem with billing people who have nothing to do with a story on the front
cover of the CD. For The Pyramid of Sutekh it was Sophie
Aldred, while for The Vault of Osiris it
is Sylvester McCoy. The Doctor, in true
New Adventures style, is only heard in one flashback, explaining how Ace got
hold of the TARDIS and how he is being the mastermind behind this part of the
set, but other than that he doesn’t appear.
His presence is felt however which keeps the story on track, but it gets
along without him really. Justin
Richards pens this story and to be honest it is one of his best works for the
series. Richards is a writer who has
always suffered from writing generic Doctor Who stories, but for The Vault of Osiris he is writing not
for Doctor Who, but for Bernice Summerfield and it shows. Benny and Ace are the ones leading the
story’s development which makes it feel like something that could have been
published in the 1990s for the Virgin New Adventures line.
Richards has Benny and
Ace spend the story bickering, but unlike a lot of the New Adventures, the
bickering is done to be very friendly.
It’s more of a back and forth as they make their way through an
espionage tale involving recovering the Eye of Horus from Egypt on Earth in
2015 after it was stolen by the Nazi’s during World War II. Lisa Bowerman and Sophie Aldred really steal
the show as they have some great cracks at each other which makes them feel
like they are sisters that haven’t seen each other in a very long time and are
trying to catch up over old times. The
scenes that stick out are the ones involving Ace Symmetrical the security guard
and has Benny in the role of an actual professor for once in her career. The story like the one before it is still a
runaround with characters leading up to the big twist, this time that the
Osirian Isis is behind all this and working for Horus to get Sutekh captured
again in his tomb. She is the one
controlling the mummies in the story and leading Benny and Ace into the
Vault. It’s really a very fun story in
the run of things with the villains being almost pastiches of cultists. They are all worshippers of Sutekh which is
something that really has a lot of potential as in today’s world we have people
that worship ancient gods that couldn’t possibly exist in the real world. Benny actually gets to play the one to seduce
the villain and get some of the glory of the story. The other characters in the story are
actually portrayed by Nicholas Briggs and Guy Adams which helps save on paying
out different actors. Briggs we all know
is a good actor and his Vasha is a good character who gets a very sticky end by
the mummies who want them dead. Guy
Adams is actually a pretty good actor giving us a good villain for the story
which at least allows us to have some fun with the acting for a lot of death in
the story. The body count really does
help a lot of things work in the story as you get comedy, but you really feel
the dread even if Gabriel Woolf is absent for this installment.
To summarize, The Vault of Osiris is a good little
runaround story with very few flaws in it to be seen. It allows us a really good look at a lot of
the danger and the people who worship Sutekh which is a really good idea. It is light hearted but manages to keep the
tensions running high for the story to really work around some of the shot run
time problems. 90/100
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