The Doctor and Leela are back for another bunch of time-travelling exploits. Much like Vol. 1 of this series, the boxset is made up of two standalone stories alongside two connected episodes that form one epic finale. Together, they make for a thoroughly enjoyable collection which captures what makes its two stars such a great pairing.
First up, Justin Richards kicks the boxset off with The Shadow of London, in which the TARDIS team arrive in 1940s London – but find the city to be strangely quiet. This is an effective, atmospheric opener with a slow-burning mystery that ultimately gives way to a nifty inversion of usual Doctor Who tropes, offering up a surprising denouement that plays more like something out of The Avengers (the British one).
The Bad Penny comes from the mind of Dan Starkey, most known to Who fans as TV’s Strax the Sontaran. Starkey resists the urge to feature the potato-heads in his first go writing for the Fourth Doctor and instead delivers a highly creative tale that somehow manages to meld Steven Moffat-style timey-wimeyness with the feel of a 1970s sitcom. On the strength of this story, we hope Starkey has more writing opportunities in the pipeline.
The first half of the grand finale from Guy Adams is Kill the Doctor. As can be seen from his front-and-centre placement on the boxset cover, these last two stories feature the return of Sutekh, the apocalyptic Egyptian god from beloved TV story Pyramids of Mars. What Adams cleverly does, though, is avoid serving up a remake of that episode by taking Sutekh out of the Victorian gothic horror environment and inserting him into an almost Blade Runner-like cyberpunk world.
As suggested by the title, The Age of Sutekh sees the villain finally achieve his goal of worldwide domination, which means we get lots of the wonderful Gabriel Woolf pontificating about being all-powerful. This finale also finds a juicy role for Sophia Myles, Reinette in TV’s Girl in the Fireplace. Hopefully, she’ll be back for more Big Finish in time.
Despite the talented scripts and the strong guest cast, however, The Fourth Doctor Adventures Vol. 2 belongs to its two stars – Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. Sure, they might sound a little older than they did back in the day, but they are still able to summon the energy that made them one of the best Doctor-companion double acts of the classic series. Some sort of role for John Leeson’s K-9 wouldn’t have gone amiss though!
DOCTOR WHO: THE FOURTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES VOLUME 2 / DIRECTOR: NICHOLAS BRIGGS, KEN BENTLEY / WRITER: JUSTIN RICHARD, DAN STARKEY, GUY ADAMS / STARRING: TOM BAKER, LOUISE JAMESON, DARREN BOYD, TIMOTHY SPEYER, CATHERINE BAILEY, DAN STARKEY / GABRIEL WOOLF / LAURA REES / PUBLISHER: BIG FINISH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
