The Cold Equations opens with a teaser, as Steven and Oliver run out of air, and Steven asks Oliver to reveal the secret he's been keeping from them. It's a fantastic, gripping moment-- two men on the edge of oblivion-- and it overshadows everything that follows in Part One, which has a tendency to get bogged down in details that are necessary to set up the cliffhanger at the end, but don't feel particularly interesting on their own. Average Companion Chronicle stuff, but nothing inspiring.

Part Two, though-- Part Two just nails it. It's mostly a two-hander between Steven and Oliver, trapped in a piece of space debris, where the air is slowly running out as it spins around the Earth. The Doctor is present, but only as a voice on a communication link, unable to do anything but watch them. Everything just comes together here: Peter Purves and Tom Allen’s performances, the claustrophic sound design of Richard Fox and Lauren Yason, not to mention their extraordinary music, and the insightful, evocative writing of Simon Guerrier.

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

Here we have First Doctor companions Steven Taylor, played by Peter Purves, and 1960s City trader Oliver Harper, played by Tom Allan, stuck in a piece of space junk as the air runs out. The point of the story is the two-hander between the two principal characters which takes up most of the second half, a very effective bit of character exploration; I got a bit impatient with the slowness of the first half moving the story to get there, but perhaps some of this will turn out to be a setup for the next (and I suppose last) of this sequence. ( )