7.5 The Shadow of London by Justin Richards
The TARDIS materialises in the backstreets of London in the 1940s. Whilst K9 entertains himself in the time ship’s library, the Doctor takes Leela for a walk in the streets.
But England’s capital is oddly quiet. There are no cars and very few pedestrians… whilst those people they do meet appear really quite English indeed. And all the while they are monitored by cameras feeding images into a secret control room.
Something strange is happening in the city. Traitors are running wild… and nothing and no-one are quite as they seem.
7.6 The Bad Penny by Dan Starkey
In the 1970s, hotelier Ron Tulip is having a difficult time. Many of his customers seem to be absconding without payment. The few who remain complain of strange noises and terrible sleep. And to top it all he’s just been summoned to the VIP suite… which is something of a problem as he didn’t even realise the hotel had one.
When turbulence in time takes the TARDIS off course, the Doctor and Leela find themselves visiting the same establishment and in the middle of a temporal paradox and a terrible plan.
Because that’s the thing about the Cross-Keys hotel.
You can check in… but you can never leave.
7.7 Kill the Doctor! by Guy Adams
The TARDIS crew arrive on the planet Drummond, an Earth colony in the far future where everybody uses handheld computers from morning to night. Rania Chuma is the mastermind behind Rene.net, the datastream network that tells you everything you need to know. Anyone who’s anyone uses Rene.net.
But ever since Rania was young she’s heard a voice in her head. That voice is the key to Rene.net’s success. And it’s a voice the Doctor might find familiar.
Whilst Leela chases a thief, the Doctor looks into the planet’s datastream and something evil looks back. A subliminal command flashes through Rene.net to Drummond’s entire population: ‘Kill the Doctor’. When the entire planet is against you, where can you possibly hide?
7.8 The Age of Sutekh by Guy Adams
The world has changed. And the evil Osiran Sutekh is returning.
As blood sacrifices and worship boost the strength of the God of War, servicer robots walk the streets, killing those who have not converted.
Leela is working with the homeless population of the city, while the Doctor co-operates with the police.
A brutal battle is ready to begin. And if the Doctor and his friends fail, everyone in the galaxy will perish.
THE SHADOW OF LONDON
We’re into the second half of the seventh season of Fourth Doctor Adventures, and things kick off with a Justin Richards script. You’d expect something traditional and straightforward, but “The Shadow of London” surprises in two ways: it’s not traditional and it heads in an unsettling, oddly questionable direction.
Unfortunately, the most traditional element of this story is its episodic structure, and yet again we have the problem of the middle of the story requiring a grand revelation. Richards has a fantastic hook for the story: a fake London, built by the Nazis in the final months of World War II in a desperate attempt to train soldiers to infiltrate the real thing and bring down the British government. This leads inevitably to the Doctor and Leela roaming the deserted streets, trying to figure out what’s going on – but the structure means that they have to do this for literally half the story so that the revelation can come at the cliffhanger. Thus, by the time we find out what’s going on, we’ve only got one episode left to resolve everything.
The story leans hard into its Nazi imagery. The village is menaced by a creature, which turns out to be a former soldier subjected to experiments themselves based on the experiments carried out on concentration camp prisoners. While this is a predictable result of Nazi thinking, it’s rather uncomfortable subject matter for a Doctor Who story, even one this serious. There’s a British intelligence agent working in the false town, and when, at one point, he’s forced to murder a German, he is met with only the slightest disapproval from the Doctor. Richards also encounters a problem in the first episode when he must introduce characters that we do not yet know are Nazis, and therefore must make them at least somewhat sympathetic. But when the revelation comes, we can’t find ourselves sympathizing with Nazis, so Richards quickly kills them all off. Indeed, the entire story feels as though it knows it shouldn’t be engaging with this subject matter. And then there’s the ending, in which the Doctor decides the best way to deal with the suffering creature is to trap it in a burning building until the building explodes! Admittedly, the fourth Doctor is one of the most ruthless incarnations of the Time Lord, but this felt unnecessary and unearned. The story brings up the moral concerns near the end but doesn’t actually engage with them – all we get is a lecture from the Doctor about maintaining one’s humanity.
Despite the problematic, uneven tone of the story, I admire its ambition. It’s trying to show moral shades of grey and not just go down the “evil megalomaniac trying to blow up the universe” road, and I applaud it for that. But the decision to set it in Nazi Germany was unwise and everything falls apart from there. Still, I’ll take this over yet another traditional romp.
5/10
THE BAD PENNY
You’d assume that Dan Starkey’s name on the cover would imply another Sontaran story, but you’d be wrong: “The Bad Penny” is a fun, surprisingly complex time travel tale that stands out as one of the strongest entries in this series and arguably in the range as a whole.
There’s a warm, pleasant sense to the story, though it never crosses the line into outright humor, preferring instead to take itself seriously. The hook is quite simple: a man uses a temporal anomaly to his advantage, coaching his younger self into making the business decisions that engineer his future success. It’s a bit more complex than that – it actually involves a parallel timeline as well as the “basic” time travel – but Starkey puts it all together in a coherent way. Some of the imagery is fantastic: a man from the 1970s suddenly presented with a gleaming 21st century skyline, the same man in the future possessed by an invisible alien, or even the idea of a coin from the future appearing in the 1800s. The performances are excellent across the board, especially Greg Haiste and Keith Barron as the two Tulips. Starkey also has a fantastic handle on the Doctor and Leela, leading Tom Baker and Louise Jameson to sound completely at ease with the material. I don’t have a great deal to say about the story because it’s not very significant: there’s not a lot of character development, the plot isn’t overly complicated, and there aren’t any dominant themes. But the duality of the central character, the quality of the performances, and the elegance of the script are enough to make this story well worth a listen. Great stuff. More like this, please.
8/10
KILL THE DOCTOR!
The seventh series of Fourth Doctor Adventures concludes, as usual, with a two-part story, this time by Guy Adams. The big selling point this time is the return of Sutekh to menace the Doctor and try to destroy the universe – and the first half of the story, “Kill the Doctor!” introduces the plot and setting in intriguing fashion.
I won’t dwell very much on Sutekh himself in this review, as he doesn’t really come into his own until the subsequent story. It’s nice that they didn’t save him up for the part 2 cliffhanger: they use the part 1 cliffhanger instead and then have him an active part of the plot in episode 2. But “Kill the Doctor!” is more about the society on the planet Drummond than anything else. It’s a rather unsubtle take on modern Earth society: the people are obsessed with their personal handheld electronic devices, so much so that they walk around staring at them and don’t appreciate the world around them. While the society appears gleaming and perfect on the outside, there’s a significant underclass of unemployed and/or homeless people barely managing to get by. And of course there’s a rot at the heart of the whole thing, one that threatens to tear the society down. But even if it’s unsubtle, it’s very well constructed: this is some of the most effective world-building in recent memory for a Big Finish story, on a par with last year’s Fourth Doctor Adventures finale.
Adams’ masterstroke is using Leela as a vessel for social commentary. When confronted with the homeless population, especially Kendra (Eleanor Crooks), Leela is mystified. How can a “tribe” with such obvious wealth neglect its own people in this way? Why are they forced to steal food when there is plenty to go around? The Sevateem would never allow this, and so Leela perceives this as an evil society, encouraging the Doctor to overthrow the ruling class and restore power to the people. But the Doctor knows it’s not as simple as she thinks – he doesn’t explain his position enough, unfortunately, but he obviously knows that toppling the government may leave the people in an even worse position. There’s actual conflict between the characters – conflict that is glossed over in the next story, of course, but conflict nonetheless, and that’s interesting.
As first parts go, this is fantastic. We have an interesting, detailed society, a returning villain with a dangerous plan, conflict between the central characters, and an excellent cliffhanger. I don’t think the second part lives up to this potential at all but taken on its own there’s nothing here to complain about.
Highly recommended.
9/10
THE AGE OF SUTEKH
This isn’t the first time that a promising Big Finish first half has crashed into wreckage in the second; given the quality of the first half, however, “The Age of Sutekh” by Guy Adams is among the most disappointing. Sutekh has returned, and the Doctor and Leela must stop him from destroying the universe. If that sounds generic and uninteresting to you, you’re right!
So, Sutekh: arguably the most memorable, most threatening one-off villain in the entire history of televised Doctor Who. Sure, the Egyptian trappings showed the classic horror influences behind “Pyramids of Mars,” but Sutekh was memorable even beyond that: an ancient god, confined to a chair yet able to affect reality itself with the power of his mind. From what little we learn of the Osirians, they were frighteningly powerful, and the Doctor’s terrified reaction to Sutekh’s presence tells us all we need to know about him. The fourth Doctor was the most superhuman of the classic series Doctors, yet in that story Sutekh poses a legitimate threat, one that may cost the Doctor his life. Here, in “The Age of Sutekh,” all of that is undone. Sutekh is now a disembodied consciousness – not sure when that happened, but I’ll roll with it – who still aims to destroy the universe. Yet he’s weak, so he has to act through a human agent – but unlike Scarman, Rania (Sophia Myles) is able to resist his conditioning from time to time. In fact, she’s the one who stands up to him during his final defeat – it’s a great moment for her but it makes Sutekh much less impressive. Gabriel Woolf’s performance is less menacing and chattier, which is distracting. Adams also crowbars in a fight scene between Sutekh and Leela, which provides amusement when she compares him to a horse but is otherwise utterly stupid. And then there’s Tom Baker, who gives arguably his most unhinged performance since he started working with Big Finish. He yells, makes strange noises, and generally sounds like he isn’t taking anything seriously – and while that would be fine for a comedy script, it completely undercuts the intended seriousness of this one. The Doctor isn’t taking Sutekh seriously, so why should we?
Honestly, that’s the best way to describe “The Age of Sutekh:” remarkably ill-judged all the way around. Nothing about it particularly works, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense, and it wastes the return of a classic Doctor Who villain. I genuinely enjoyed “Kill the Doctor!” but this is a massive disappointment. Still, the box set contains two genuinely good stories and a third that is at least interesting, so it’s worth it on the whole – just not for the final story.
4/10