The penultimate release in the current season of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, ‘The Fate of Krelos’ is a great little story . Not only does it build up towards next month’s season finale quite nicely, but it also allows for a lot of great character driven drama, too.
The story begins deceptively light hearted, as the Doctor lands on the planet Krelos for a spot of fishing. One thing I rather enjoy about Tom Baker’s Doctor, especially in a number of his TV stories, is that he’s always looking for a nice little holiday before inevitably geting side-tracked into having another adventure and saving the day once more. However, while this story begins innocently enough, things take a much darker turn very quickly.
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What really surprised me about this story is how focused it remained on the Doctor, Leela and K9. Big Finish Productions usually have a number of additional characters that can range from a small but focused few to an epic-sized cast (UNIT: Dominion, I’m looking at you), but while there are one or two supporting characters, Nicholas Briggs is more keen to focus on our three heroes for this story. Even more surprising is that the story still manages to give a sense of doom on an apocalyptic scale.
The result of this allows for some wonderful exchanges of dialogue between the Doctor and Leela. Some of it is the classic bubbly and light hearted banter you’d get in their TV episodes, but there’s also great drama in there, too. One of my favourite moments involves the Doctor and Leela debating just how much of a hero the Doctor is, with Leela by this point clearly putting him on a pedestal because of all the good in the universe she’s seen him do. But the Doctor knows there’s only so much he can do, and sometimes, it really is too late for him to save anyone. It’s a beautiful exchange that almost feels like something you’d expect to see between Twelve and Clara, and it never fails to impress me how well Big Finish make classic Doctor stories feel surprisingly modern.
There’s also some great focus on K9, as the tin dog begins to act very out of character. It certainly ups the stakes in a story when the Doctor’s faithful tin dog can’t be trusted. John Leeson gives a great performance in this story, as he gives us a clear idea of K9 struggling to hold onto his identity and fight back against an unknown force. Even clearer is that it’s a fight he’s losing. I’m not sure where this will be heading in the next story, but I’m eager to find out.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. There’s a wonderful character called Geralk that the Doctor and Leela come across, a charming old man who still feels like having an adventure every now and again. One thing I absolutely love about Doctor Who is that, at its best, the writers have a real knack for creating truly brilliant and likeable characters who just seem to have so much depth and life to them, even the characters that only appear for one story, and Geralk, whose introduction brings along one or two cool little science fiction ideas, is a small but great example of that.
Dark, apocalyptic but surprisingly character focused, ‘The Fate of Krelos’ is definitely a great start to this season’s finale. I don’t know what to expect from the next part, ‘Return to Telos’, (other than the return of a certain classic monster, at least,) but I’m really looking forward to it.
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