The bad luck of Tegan's family continues unabated in this two part story where she decided to ask the Doctor if they can pay her Grandfather a visit in the quiet English village where he lives. Upon arriving the Doctor discovers the whole village is currently in the process of a reconstruction of a civil war battle headed by Sir George Hutchinson and worryingly Tegan's Grandfather is nowhere to be seen.
The events of being masterminded by Sir George in an attempt to create the real life events from the 17th century in order that the psychic energy created will be enough to awaken the Malus (pictured above) which originally came to village during the civil war. Tegan's Grandfather, having discovered Sir George's plot has been locked away where he can't cause trouble.
When I first saw this story I'm afraid to report that it was the single most boring fifth Doctor story that I had ever seen, and my opinion has only slightly improved. Thank God it's only two episodes long as I don't think I could make it through four episodes of this!
The Malus itself is sufficiently creepy but it doesn't really do much except stare out of the hole in a church wall. Plus the continuous mention of "the war games" made by various characters throughout the story just made be yearn to watch the second Doctor's final story which shares the same name of The War Games. The War Games is ten episodes long but I'd still much rather watch that than two episodes of this.
Another interesting thing to note is the way the DVD for this story was released. Some Doctor Who DVDs have been released in box sets, usually with some kind of link between them. For example, Kinda and Snakedance were released together as a box set as they both contained the Mara. The Awakening was released in a set with the first Doctor story The Gunfighters in a box set called "Earth Story" with the link apparently being that both stories take place on Earth!! What utter nonsense! There are hundred of stories set on Earth! Therefore it seems clear that they were aware that no one would buy this two part story on it's on so had to lump it in with another one. I'm assuming this was done solely because of the two part nature of this story and not because it's a load of crap!
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