The adventure ends in more of a comedy style, devolving almost into farce.  It was never wholly serious to start with, but it was more tongue-in-cheek than farce until now.  The aliens turn out to be the epitome of the “alien cockroach”, except that they speak in ridiculous Jago-esque voices complete with “what the deuce” and similar.

The climax comes when the Doctor arrives, having followed the signal of the gizmo he’d given Benton, and it continues to get worse.  Up to this point, we’ve had a Benton adventure in lieu of the Doctor – making up for the loss of Jon Pertwee – so we’re okay with that but now the climax relies on the Doctor’s presence and we’re left with John Levene and Sinead Keenan having to voice for the third Doctor.  It doesn’t work.  Would have been better to leave him out of it.

The resolution has Benton describing some Venusian Aikido style fighting between the Doctor and the chief cockroach – which turns out to be a delaying tactic until they all succumb to the reducing temperature caused by the Doctor (complete with a play on the old “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” gag).

In short, what was a nice and comfortable Benton story descends into a poorly-voiced 3rd Doctor farce.

Following the adventure is a short behind-the-scenes chat with the writers.  It turns out that there were two writers, one that came up with the general idea of Benton going undercover and writing the first half, and the second who wrote the second half.  The contrast in story consistency and the descent into farce by the end suggests that this “two writers” idea doesn’t work too well.

Over all, it’s nice to have Benton back and the story is good for that much.  I just hope he’s given better material next time.