Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 9 continues today!
By James Aggas
The Doctor and his friends continue to find a way out of E-Space in the second volume of Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 9 – out today!
Following yesterday’s release of The Psychic Circus, Big Finish gives us their next lot of Doctor Who audios this month with the second half of The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 9. The first half of the series was released just last month in the form of two four-part stories.
Set during Tom Baker’s final TV season as the Fourth Doctor, Series 9 also features Lalla Ward as Romana, John Leeson as K-9 and Matthew Waterhouse as Adric. It focuses on this particular TARDIS team travelling through the universe of E-Space, as they try to find a way back home to our universe. (Something they eventually achieve in the classic serial Warriors’ Gate.)
The first two stories of the series, Purgatory 12 and Chase the Night, suited the style of Season 18 really well. But what can we expect from the next two stories?
The third story of Series 9 features more of a horror influence than other stories this series.
Image Courtesy Big Finish Productions
The Planet of Witches
"Whilst attempting a detailed scan of E-Space, K9 detects the trail of a large spacecraft. Seeking a lead for their escape, the Doctor sets out on its trail towards a misty yellow planet.Arriving just in time to witness a crash-landing in the planet’s swamps, the Doctor and his crew discover a number of escaping prisoners fleeing from someone claiming to be a Witchfinder… whilst terrifying ‘familiars’ float around them.For this is the planet of the witches… and the witches may just know the way home."
It sounds like we’re getting two very different stories for Series 9’s latter half. The Planet of Witches by Alan Barnes may sound like a strange fit for a story set during a time when Doctor Who was aiming for more of a hard sci-fi approach. (At least, it did while Christopher H. Bidmead was script editor.)
But this was also the season that gave us State of Decay, a gloriously stylish vampire story that didn’t even try for that approach. It also gave us one of the biggest vampires ever (even if we didn’t really see it properly on-screen). So a planet of witches sounds like an appropriate fit for a story set in the middle of the E-Space trilogy.
Series 9 closes off with a key question: who is the Engineer?
Image Courtesy Big Finish Productions
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The Quest of the Engineer
"The TARDIS crew’s attempts to escape E-Space lead them to a strange planet with a surface that shifts and changes constantly.Losing their ship down a fissure, they venture into the depths of this world and encounter the man who rules this place – a man known only as ‘the Engineer’. He tells them that he’s on a quest for illumination, and to find a rumoured portal in space that may lead to another reality, with knowledge unknown in this universe.It seems he may be on the same quest as the Doctor and his friends. But can he be trusted? And who is he really?"
It’s only right that the final story set during the E-Space trilogy (which of course, has become much more than a trilogy by this point) is written by Andrew Smith. Not only has he written many stories for Big Finish over the past decade or so, but he even wrote Full Circle – the opening story to the E-Space trilogy. So it’s right for him to write this final serial for this year’s Fourth Doctor series.
While we know that the TARDIS crew won’t make it home in The Quest of the Engineer, it certainly sounds intriguing. Particularly the Engineer and his identity. It sounds like series 9 will end on a very promising note.
You can listen to The Planet of Witches or The Quest of the Engineer exclusively on download now from Big Finish’s website. Or you can get both as part of The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 9 – Volume 2, both on CD and on download.
Next. The Doctor and Graham – “Socially awkward” or just cowardly?. dark
Have you been listening to this year’s series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures? Are you a fan of the E-Space trilogy? Let us know in the comments below.