The Doctor and Charley answer a summons from his old friend the Draconian Emperor, but their timing may be a bit off as the Emperor is dead and the battle for succession is taking place on board a floating space tomb. The Sixth Doctor has to put aside the mystery of Charley's identity because an army of Origami paper warriors are hacking their way in.
I like the Draconians, a race of reptilian space warriors whose culture is based on Japanese samurai, and the idea of a folded paper army was quite fun. It works well as an audio drama but might be a bit hard to pull off on television. After the disappointment of the first instalment of the Key 2 Time series I was hoping for a more straight forward romp and this was not too bad. It mixed a political intrigue with a classic base in peril scenario to good effect, although the rapid jumps from one aspect of the story to the other was a little jarring at times.
The other thing that jarred a bit was Colin Baker's performance. This story asks a lot of his Doctor and some of his outbursts and exclamations seemed unusually forced. Normally he is very good indeed, maybe he was having an off day. Or maybe it is that the other actors are all a little flat as well. There was nothing terrible but it just didn't stand out for me.
A solid middle of the road 3 out of 5 Origami warriors for Paper Cuts.
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