8.5 Time’s Assassin by Guy Adams
The true identity of the Director has been revealed and he wants vengeance upon the Doctor for past crimes…
But the Director is not the only danger to the crew of the TARDIS. Deadly experiments are coming to a head, and everyone’s life is at risk.
However, the greatest threat is yet to come. The Syndicate’s plans are in motion… and no one is safe from them.
8.6 Fever Island by Jonathan Barnes
Jason Vane is England’s suavest secret agent, and today he’s on his deadliest mission yet. Tracking down the evil Okulov… before he destroys the world.
The Doctor, Ann and K9 are, in contrast, finding their own mission a little hard to complete. A strange storm in the vortex has swept them back in time, back to Earth in 1978 and a strange place called ‘Fever Island’.
A place where their worst nightmares are about to come true…
8.7 The Perfect Prisoners Part 1 by John Dorney
The Doctor, Ann and K9 are hot on the trail of the Syndicate, and straight into trouble.
After contending with killer robots and dangerous aliens, the clues lead straight to a machine that can literally make your dreams come true. A device that in the wrong hands could lead to misery for billions.
But who’s the real villain here? And what exactly is their master plan?
8.8 The Perfect Prisoners Part 2 by John Dorney
Secrets have been revealed, and the Doctor and his friends at last know who they’re fighting.
An epic journey across space leads them to the true mastermind of the Syndicate conspiracy.
Alliances will shift. Friends will die. Can even the Doctor come out of this alive?
THE FOURTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES: TIME’S ASSASSIN
If you thought the first half of this story was ridiculous, you ain’t seen nothing yet. “Time’s Assassin,” by Guy Adams, turns the knob to 11 and keeps it there for the entire running time, cramming in so much incident, so much over-the-top villainy, and so much fan service that it’s impossible to keep track of everything. It’s an interesting story in that the characters are taking everything quite seriously but the author clearly isn’t – this is a nonsensical tribute to “The Daleks’ Master Plan” featuring the “return” of Zephon, a man who thinks he’s Mavic Chen, Varga plants, and a star turn from Blake Ritson as possibly the maddest mad scientist in Doctor Who history. I don’t even know how to review this, so I’ll just talk about the big revelation: Ann Kelso is actually a sleeper Time Agent on a mission against the mysterious Syndicate! This explains her occasional personality lapses as well as her acceptance of futuristic technology, and in committing two murders we see the lengths she is willing to go to complete her mission. Fortunately, there are only two stories left in this set – the final one in two parts – so there won’t be much time to return to the status quo. I’m still not at all confident that Big Finish will be able to satisfactorily complete an arc like this, since like always it appears they’re leaving everything until the final episodes, but at least we have one big revelation out of the way. Perhaps now we’ll see more from Ann besides “generic companion who likes asking questions.” Returning to “Time’s Assassin,” I really don’t know what to say. It’s impossible not to be entertained because of the frantic pace and endless barrage of information, but I’m not sure it actually holds together as a story. Ultimately, I enjoyed listening to it, and that’s the deciding factor.
7/10
THE FOURTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES: FEVER ISLAND
“Fever Island,” by Jonathan Barnes, is, from one point of view, a James Bond pastiche, but from another it’s a Doctor Who story. Scientific experiments have released energy from another dimension that brings imagination to life, focused primarily on Jason Vane (Gethin Anthony), a Bond-like member of “Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” He’s cool, he’s suave, he’s elegant, he has a dastardly Russian opponent, he has weapons and gadgets – you know the drill, and Anthony plays the part well. But of course none of it is real, to the point that when he narrates his own adventures the people around him can hear him doing it. And that’s why I don’t think the satire holds up very well: it’s viewed at a remove by the regular characters. Rather than gently mocking the spy genre from within, the script is essentially pointing and laughing at it. Admittedly, there’s room for some fun performances: Tom Baker as the evil Okulov is a particular delight. There’s also a bit of philosophy, as K9 suddenly wonders what it’s like to dream – and how do you explain that to an artificial life form? I wish the story would spend more time on questions like that, but it’s more interested in danger and melodrama. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but coming on the heels of a similarly over-the-top story it’s a bit much. Also, as predicted, the revelation that Ann is a sleeper Time Agent has absolutely nothing to do with the story – and while that was quite predictable it’s still disappointing. Still, “Fever Island” is an entertaining way to pass an hour, and for this range to be even consistently entertaining is quite an achievement.
6/10
THE FOURTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES: THE PERFECT PRISONERS
And so we come to “The Perfect Prisoners” by John Dorney, the “season finale” that also wraps up the Syndicate arc plot running through this series of Fourth Doctor Adventures. Perhaps the best thing about this series is that they’ve finally abandoned the obsessive drive for nostalgia that characterized the first seven series and aren’t merely trying to recapture the feeling of watching Doctor Who in 1977. I’m genuinely pleased about that, but to replace it instead with a story that basically requires a detailed knowledge of a long, complicated, largely-missing story from 1965 is an interesting decision. At least it’s not presented like a 1965 story, so thank heaven for small mercies.
The central concept turns around the Dream Machine, a device that alters your perception of reality. Implanted into the brains of everyone on Earth, it enables the creation of an unknowing slave caste: while they are actually being worked to death in a factory, they believe they are working a highly-paid, luxurious job. The story takes pains to indicate that the Dream Machine is not a mind control device but merely something that alters your perception – and thus it doesn’t really make any sense. The device doesn’t alter physical reality, so what exactly are the slaves perceiving when they are being worked to death in a factory? Their bodies must actually be doing the physical labor and making the movements to manipulate the real-life machinery, and they must be doing this consciously as they are not being mind-controlled, so what are they seeing that makes them think they’re on a beach? We also see characters start to break free when they notice inconsistencies. It’s a fascinating idea – the perfect prisoner is one who doesn’t know she’s a prisoner – but it doesn’t make much sense as executed.
We discover Ann’s real identity here: she’s a deep cover sleeper agent for the SSS whose real name is Anya Kingdom. Is she related to Sara Kingdom? We never find out! Yes, in a story that requires an encyclopedic knowledge of each delegate in “The Daleks’ Master Plan,” we leave this character’s heritage a mystery, apart from a couple of vague hints from the Doctor. Still, that’s not that important – but by the end of the story, when we realize that not only was Ann a false personality but Anya was also the victim of perception-altering brainwashing, it becomes clear that we know almost nothing about Anya Kingdom at all. It’s curiously unrewarding, and while the Doctor’s decision not to travel with her makes perfect sense – and is excellently performed by Tom Baker – it leaves an empty feeling.
That feeling pervades all four episodes, as the story proceeds at such a lightning pace and with such a heavy amount of exposition that it never has time to breathe or get to know its characters. And while, on balance, this has been the best series of Fourth Doctor Adventures, I still hesitate to call it “good” – it’s just more in line with the usual sort of thing Big Finish produces. Dorney is quite good at writing character pieces, or stories built around an expectation-subverting twist, but he’s not nearly as good at this sort of all-singing, all-dancing action spectacular. As I’ve said with a lot of stories in this series, “The Perfect Prisoners” is an entertaining listen, and it’s certainly not a bad story, but there isn’t much to it.
6/10