It's the last seventh Doctor Lost Story! "No more Andrew Cartmel ever," I whisper to myself as I rip the CD onto my iPod. I mean, even if Big Finish does invite him back to write Season 28, I'm not going to be so stupid as to purchase the stories. Or even obtain them for free. Not even the presence of Beth Chalmers or Angela Bruce could convince me that this was possibly a good idea.

Earth Aid is the third release in a row written by Andrew Cartmel, which seems somewhat anachronistic given that Cartmel never wrote a single story during his actual tenure as script editor of Doctor Who. He's joined by Ben Aaronovitch here, but one questions what Aaronovitch actually had to do with anything, as Earth Aid has the deficiencies of Crime of the Century and Animal all over again. I quite like Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield, but while those are big, colorful stories unafraid to upend Doctor Who and turn it back on itself, Earth Aid is nothing of the sort. It's not even Paradise Towers or Time and the Rani. To be fair to Earth Aid, it's better than Animal. Or at least it's less terrible.

The best thing to come out of these Lost Stories has been Beth Chalmers as Raine, but like all the characters, she's been handicapped by being written by Andrew Cartmel. Thank Briggs that when she's returning in Dominion, she's apparently being written by a good writer. In the extras, Andrew Cartmel admits that he just makes up stories as he goes along. It shows, buddy, it shows. If he does come back to Big Finish, I hope he brings an outline with him, though no matter what, I won’t be there to hear it.

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

Earth Aid had some serious internal improbabilities (one character turns out to have been shut in a box for a long period of time; how they got there and how they survived was not explained to my satisfaction) and my unsuspended disbelief overwhelmed my interest in the story; poor Paterson Joseph seemed wasted in his role. ( )