Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Billie Piper, Camille Coduri, Mark Benton, Nicola Blackman, Robert Cavanah, Luke R. Francis, Indigo Griffiths, Victoria Jeffrey, Malcolm Jeffries, Hywel Morgan, Sarah Priddy, John Rayment.

Tread softly in the worlds of others, for your presence has not been anticipated enough for it not to leave a groove in the sands of their time.

Rose Tyler has had to learn this the hard way, initially with her travels with the Doctor, then as she is stranded in another version of Earth, a parallel world where the fabric of time has altered certain aspects of what she, and the listener, would take for granted.

The second series of Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon, deals with this in perhaps what could be argued as with a sense of greater perception, and as the three dark tales, Alison Winter’s Saltwater, AK Benedict’s Now Is The New Dark, and Emily Cook’s The Rogue Planet, combine to make the Other Worlds connection, so the listener is shown that our world, what we perceive to be unique and matchless, is rarely a one-off, that with a tweak here and there, the Renaissance is but a dream unfulfilled, that humanity’s days are numbered from external forces such as a rogue planet heading into our solar system and upsetting the delicate forces which bind us to the soil and water drenched sphere.

What is so fascinating about the series, even with it being so Doctor-lite, is the adherence to the parallel world theory, that one slight change in human history can alter a small detail which then snowballs, and whilst this was explored in the David Tennant era story Rise Of The Cybermen/The Age Of Steel, no Doctor Who tale has grasped it with more elegance and frightening possibility than that which arguably defined Jon Pertwee’s time as the mad man from Gallifrey than Inferno.

It is to Inferno that parallel world stories are judged, not only by Doctor Who standards but also those that encompass the likes of Star Trek, Fringe, and His Dark Materials; and as the three stories that encompass the Other Worlds trilogy play out, the honesty of the production shines through…there but one decision not taken go our lives, and it is often not for the better; especially when you meet the one who could have been you.

With Camille Coduri and Mark Benton portraying their respective roles as Jackie Tyler and Clive Finch, Rose Tyler, (Billie Piper) takes in new Earths that are on the edge of their own extinction and fate before the reveal of Davros’ master plan at the end of Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, and by doing so brings the strands of the programme’s time together with ease and subtly.

A terrific second series boxset, Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon: Other Worlds is a proficient use of skill that comes from thinking, as it were, outside of the box, outside of the space occupied by the Doctor; a fascinating return for one of the legends of the series.

Ian D. Hall