Susan and Patrick are still on the run, and The Doctor and Daniel (with the pistol-packing Alley Dogs leader in tow) take to the streets to find them. Meanwhile, a minor train disaster prevents Rosalita's husband from escaping back to Queens...but the disaster puts a whole trainload of people in peril, leaving Ian and Barbara to persuade someone to help them for virtuous, rather than financial gain.
This is the first time in this serial that I felt I was listening to Ian and not Jamie Glover. In the sequence at the train station, Glover nicely channels the hotheadedness and humanity that the character had at times during the show's original run. Jemma Powell's Barbara sometimes comes off shriller than Jacqueline Hill was....but then, I might be operating from an idealized memory of what my favorite of the initial quartet sounded like.
But the thing I responded to in this segment is how Adams makes it clear that the Blizzard of '88 is an integral part of the story. The storm provides major complications to both human dramas, and those complications could only be caused by such a high-impact weather event. Hell, the cliffhanger to this episode is motivated by the situation with Patrick, but takes advantage of the fact the blizzard was so cold it caused the East River to partially freeze over.
I should point out that, now that we are deep into the Blizzard itself, the sound design by Howard Carter is exceptional. Since the bulk of this happens outside, the crunch of snow is ever present, and the winds howl without interfering with the dialogue. Carter makes this place come alive so I can vividly see how this would have played out on screen.
As I mentioned when I discussed the first part of this serial, Guy Adams is my favorite Big Finish writer....and with this segment, I remembered why.
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