The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 7 - Part Two

The first half of Tom Baker’s Series 7 back in January was a roaring success. Does the second half, featuring Sutekh the Destroyer, the late Keith Barron and a London made from cardboard houses, come close to matching it? The answer, despite the absence of K9, is a resounding affirmative.

The first story, Justin Richards’s The Shadow of London, begins in a slightly unremarkable way. The very title gives away the fact that we are somewhere else entirely and the revelation that this is not London at all comes almost at the precise mid-point of the narrative. This gives the first episode a languorous tone and the listener begins to feel they are being given clues to a mystery they have already solved. However, the revelation of the story’s precise location and the genesis of the monstrous creature hunting the TARDIS team are huge surprises and make up entirely for the first episode’s seeming lack of purpose. Richards was playing a much more elaborate game and the clues in the first half begin to pay off hugely. In fact, the revelations mean the story positively begs to be heard a second time. Quite often, I find Justin Richards’s scripts workmanlike affairs (The Darkness of Glass and The Beast of Kravenos were unsurprising and run-of-the-mill), after the great heights of Big Finish’s early days when he produced the astonishing Whispers of Terror and the criminally under-rated Red Dawn. Here, he shows the same deftness and cleverness prevalent in his early work and The Shadow of London, whilst not Richards’s masterpiece, feels satisfying and strong.

The Bad Penny from the pen of Dan Starkey is a curious affair. So unconnected with the rest of the Who world and so off-kilter its characters, the story begins to feel like it could be straight from a 70s annual. Its uniqueness makes the story memorable, as well as a final fruity turn from Keith Barron in multiple roles. The narrative structure is interesting – twisting off in various directions. Unlike The Shadow of London, however, the twists are fairly easy to predict. SPOILERS: The nature of Mr Tulip’s benefactor is obvious as soon as we enter timey-wimey territory. We see the Doctor in a mirror in Part One and know we have to revisit the moment again in Part Two. The inevitability of the second half means that it feels a little like marking time before reaching a preordained finish and in that respect the story falters.

Finally, we have Kill the Doctor! and The Age of Sutekh, two-disc season finale by Guy Adams and it’s a corker. Alongside January’s The Mind Runners and The Demon Rises, these tales represent 4-episode, future-world type stories common in the later years of Tom Baker’s television reign. They come from the same stable as The Sun Makers, The Armageddon Factor and The Pirate Planet, the sort of Blakes’ 7-y slate-metal-grey industrial zones of BBC sci-fi. In terms of pace, energy and structure they emulate the era extremely well. In fact, they cherry pick all the best bits, producing something that actually betters the TV stablemates. If the The Mind Runners and The Age of Sutekh were TV episodes, they’d be heralded as classics.

Kill the Doctor! starts with Tom Baker and Louise Jameson being brilliant on an unusual planet. It’s still quite wondrous that we repeatedly get to hear these two incredible leading performances bouncing off one another. We really are spoiled. I suspect we have years’ worth of Tom adventures backed up at Big Finish – a theory that excites me enormously. The story has a tiny cast but this serves to streamline the narrative, telling an epic story from more intimate viewpoints. Leela is given the chance to rebel and be wonderful. Tom flies around on a space bike as the city residents chant “Kill the Doctor!” If the story has any failing, it’s that the chanting almost, almost becomes wearying. This is as classic era Tom Baker as it gets.

The Age of Sutekh changes emphases. Problems are now planet-wide but wisely Guy Adams again chooses to follow his three guest characters in their insurgency on Sutekh’s new world. The mid-way cliff-hanger is a punch-the-air valedictory moment and enables us to race into an excellent final episode which wraps things up in clever ways which, like the best endings, prove unpredictable yet inevitable: Leela’s promise to the locals is played out, Sutekh – again blissfully voiced by Gabriel Woolf – is hoist by his own petard and the otherwise compromised Rania Chuma is allowed her moment of vengeance. This epic of an adventure ends the series on an incredibly high bar and leaves the listener in eager anticipation of Series 8 and a new companion.

Overall, with only The Bad Penny letting the side down: 8/10

Addendum

For the first time this year, The Fourth Doctor Adventures have been released in two batches. This is wonderful news for my wallet and one I’m extremely grateful for. (Last year, 9 adventures cost £75. This year, 8 adventures cost £45.) However, both have contained 2 one-part stories and a two-parter. This gives the sets a feeling of being bottom-heavy and unbalanced, the two one-parters in danger of looking like precursors to the main event later on. Ravenous last month felt similar, as if the two opening instalments were a bit of fluff before the real deal stuff at the end. Thankfully, next year’s Tom stories are being released a month apart and this should definitely alleviate the problem.

It has to be said though, that despite the Big Finish team going with the “1977 all over again” tagline, 2-episode stories actually feel nothing like 1977. The real gold of The Fourth Doctor Adventures have been the 4-parters: above I mentioned January’s The Mind Runners and The Demon Rises, as well as the superlative Kill the Doctor! and The Age of Sutekh. Elsewhere in the range, The Dalek Contract/The Final Phase, The Paradox Planet/Legacy of Death, Trail of the White Worm/The Oseidon Adventure and The Skin of the Sleek/The Thief who Stole Time feel like serious competition with the television series. The 4-episode novel adaptations and Philip Hinchcliffe offerings also feel like sprawling, heavyweight tales. The 2-parters have seemed a little slight, a little perfunctory on occasion and by comparison. (Which is not to say there haven’t been terrific 2-parters – I’m thinking The King of Sontar, White Ghosts, The Crooked Man and Last of the Colophon in particular!) David Richardson has promised that there is a definite movement towards 4-parters in the future though, and this sounds promising. For Tom Baker, the 4-part format just feels so right.

In the meantime, we can enjoy these incredibly strong Series 7 boxsets, which are the best Tom stories, in my view, since 2014. (A year that ironically didn’t have any 4-parters at all! - Am I talking jive?) For the record, if I were to order the season from top to bottom, it would be as such:

KILL THE DOCTOR!/THE AGE OF SUTEKH
THE CROWMARSH EXPERIMENT
THE MIND RUNNERS/THE DEMON RISES
THE SHADOW OF LONDON
THE BAD PENNY
THE SONS OF KALDOR

In January 2019, the Fourth Doctor meets Ann Kelso in The Syndicate Masterplan. And I cannot effing wait.

JH