The 2022 “companionless” run of Fourth Doctor stories comes to a close with this bonus two-part story that was stuck on the end of “The Nine” boxset for reasons to do with the price change or boxet format change… something like that. Anyway, what’s it like? Well, that will depend on how familiar you are with Mervyn Peake and his works. I, for one, wasn’t familiar with him at all. Oh well! Thankfully the story is still a fun way to spend an hour, I just felt like there were probably a lot of references that went over my head…

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Shellshock is a bit of a mixed bag as it does a good job of showing how horrible and pointless World War I was on BOTH sides of the trenches but its also full of cliché German accents and a pretty plain alien plotline. Well, let’s delve deeper… which is funny because a key part of the plot is soldiers being pulled underground, you see… *ahem* Anyway…

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The Dreams of Avarice is a fun story that puts The Nine in the spotlight as the central villain, rather than the usual Eleven. As a campy kleptomaniac he certainly brings a different energy to the proceedings, and The Doctor teaming up with a bumbling Detective for the adventure gave it a different vibe as well. Let’s take a closer look!

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The second story in “Classic Doctors, New Monsters: The Stuff of Nightmares” is once again not anything of nightmares, instead it’s the Tivolians, the race from the Eleventh Doctor era that is infamous for have no backbone to the point where they’re happy to be conquered by invading races. A funny concept and they fit well into a Fourth Doctor story (though maybe a bit later in his run?) but that’s two in the row that doesn’t live up the subtitle, meaning it’s literally referring to the creatures in the last two tales… Anyway, let’s have a look at this one!

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Still trying to play catch-up with all the Big Finish releases since I took my break, and with a LOT coming out in June, I thought I’d double up some reviews in their paired boxsets just to “get them out of the way” without going too long without some variety of reviews going up.

While I really enjoyed Blood of the Time Lords sadly The Ravencliff Witch was quite the opposite, it was rather dull and predictable and the debut of future new companion Margaret was not well done (it’s very clear she wasn’t planned to be a recurring character at this point!) Throw in a really hard-on-the-eyes cover and it’s not a great outing for the Fourth Doctor, but let’s take a closer look anyway!

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The Fourth Doctor Adventures for this year are set while The Doctor is travelling alone, which is a rare setting for this particular incarnation, and the first story is a really strong outing set entirely in a library on a moon of Gallifrey, which is also a unique and very fun setting but sadly it also features the cancelled-due-to-being-a-twat James Dreyfus incarnation of the Master… Oh well, let’s take a look!

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The “Phillip Hinchcliffe Presents” range has been hit or miss with me. Some are classic moody sci-fi horror that the man is known for, others have been plain and not very interesting. Sadly “The God of Phantoms” falls into the latter category for me, which was especially bad given the story was over three hours long! Let’s take a closer look…

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Advertised as “Dalek Universe: The Dalek Protocol”, this story was quite clearly just a regular FDA brought forward and given a special tag because it ends up getting referenced in the Dalek Universe 10^th Doctor strand, so I’m just keeping it as its original name. That being said, is it any good? Well… It’s … okay, I guess? It suffers from several of the negative sticking points that a lot of Nicholas Briggs scripts do, made worse by the man voicing so many characters in the play when his voice is already far too recognisable (apart from the Daleks, obviously!) but it’s not all bad… Let’s have a look!

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