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Valhalla starts with the Seventh Doctor in one of his moods again. You know the type. Existential, slightly theatrical, wandering through space with a big metaphor stapled to his chest. “Depressed” for him means marching into a space colony holding a sign that says Doctor For Sale, as if his cosmic ennui is a pop-up shop. It’s classic McCoy energy — turning self-loathing into performance art — and honestly, I love that for him. Unfortunately, the citizens of Valhalla don’t have time for his spiral. They’ve got blackouts, barcode tattoos, cancelled social services, and pre-booked riots to attend.
The setup is great: a colony teetering on collapse, run by a government so bureaucratically cynical it literally schedules civil unrest. Marc Platt’s writing is tight and clever, the dialogue snapping like broken neon, with a wit that actually lands. There’s something deliciously bleak about the idea of austerity as entertainment, and even though this story came out in 2007, it feels prophetic. If this had dropped five years later, it’d play like a direct satire of Cameron-era Britain — power cuts, privatized everything, and a population too broke to rebel properly. Instead, it sort of stumbles into a monster story halfway through, like a university debate that suddenly decides to have a kaiju finale.
And that’s where things start to wobble. The termites — yes, giant termite monsters, stay with me — have apparently been living beneath Valhalla all along, manipulating the government from the shadows. You can practically hear the “duh duh DUH!” cue as the Doctor pieces it together. It’s classic sci-fi conspiracy, done capably enough, but it’s not exactly shocking. The reveal works, but it also feels like a cop-out from something sharper. The political commentary had bite. The termites just have mandibles.
Still, the world-building is rich enough to make up for it. The city feels lived-in, grimy, crumbling under the weight of its own paperwork. The supporting characters — bureaucrats, rebels, everyday citizens — are all written with just enough eccentricity to feel human. There’s even this weirdly charming throughline about rebellion as performance art, as the citizens realize that if they want to overthrow their termite overlords, they’ll have to riot for real instead of buying a ticket. It’s absurd and perfect.
Final thoughts:
Valhalla is like a particularly cynical stage play that accidentally wandered into a monster movie. It wants to dissect capitalism but settles for squishing bugs. Still, it’s witty, well-paced, and surprisingly relevant for a story about space termites.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 prepaid riot tickets.