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The best bit of the whole Dr. Who package is the title sequence. First the BBC owl pops up and blinks its eyes at us as the main program sequence loads. The first game is called The Labyrinth of Death and is the first of four component episodes which make up the complete Dr. Who adventure. Now comes the title: a fair representation of the Tardis and a shockingly accurate version of the Dr. Who theme tune. It does end rather abruptly but it is well worth stopping the program and returning for another listen.

The aim of the Dr. Who Adventure is to retrieve the Key to Time and take it to the centre of the universe. Time itself is running out and you have one galactic hour to perform the task and renew Time. Not a small responsibility for the humble games player.

In the labyrinth - a crude yellow maze - are located the three segments of the Key to Time. You must run around in your old mining buggy, avoiding the poisonous worms and collecting the segments. When all three have been recovered you must make your way up the shaft to the waiting Tardis and you are on your way to the next episode, The Prison.

A problem in transition may be the fact that the "Loading" prompt appears to have been disabled for some reason. In its place You get "Materialisation Procedures Activated" which isn't much help if things go wrong with loading. There is also a special reason why the loading information would be most useful with this and the following programs. The number of re-generations (R%) and time (T%) units can be set by the user for each game played. This is done in the first file of the programs and since the re-generations and time are set impossibly low (one) then changes need to be made. Without loading prompts this sort of thing becomes almost unbearably awkward. Whether it is advisable to leave such important parts of the program to be filled in by possible novices is questionable. My family wanted to play the games but found it an impossible task, unversed as they are in BASIC. This is a strange fault and I am sure that some form of correction will be made before the package is available in the shops.

When you finally make it to The Prison with enough re-generations and enough time to at least give you a chance, it turns out to be a Frogger type clone. The graphics are a bit thin and the player is represented by a stick man who often disappears amongst the darker coloured moving objects. The idea is to negotiate a highway full of traffic, a moat (via various creatures' backs) and a forecourt which has faster moving vehicles. The stick man must place a charge in each of the alcoves at the foot of the prison before he can break down the wall and proceed successfully to the third episode, entitled The Terrordactyls.

Apart from the regeneration and time problems already mentioned Terrordactyls is a very addictive galaxians type game. After destroying each flock of the deadly flyers your spaceship moves up towards the city, on the edge of which is perched the Tardis. When all six flocks have been destroyed you are on the same level as the city and must land your spaceship to complete the episode. Terrordactyls proved to be the most successful of the Dr. Who games and is worth playing individually.

The final episode is the most original. Called The Box of Tantalus, it involves detecting alien patrols which lurk within a three by three by three grid. You have 25 detector rays which you position and fire in order to find the four enemy groups. Only six torpedoes are available to destroy them so you have to be fairly sure of yourself before firing.

Although bedevilled by some careless programming, the essential idea behind the adventure is a good one. The quality of sounds and graphics varies from game to game but is fairly good. Documentation involves a 15-page booklet with some amusing narrative.