The Time Meddler: My Fifth Doctor Wish-list

If I was an unscrupulous Time Lord with the ability to travel through the fourth dimension and to try to affect changes that I thought would make things better, there’s probably a bunch of stuff I’d do with my favorite TV series, Doctor Who.  Like many-a-fan (I assume), I’ve thought of these things from time to time, and I now I’m going to list them over a series of posts. 

(Daily Doctor Who #140)

Doctor Who: Aimed at the Body–Shadow of the Daleks [A Big Finish sampler]

In the wake of the whole COVID-19 pandemic, Big Finish–most famous for their original licensed Doctor Who audios–began to release a variety of projects for free on a weekly basis.  Some of these are “proper” Doctor Who adventures, some are licensed from other sources, and others are completely original.  I have been taking advantage of these, as I’ve written about here and elsewhere. This time around we’re looking at the first episode of a set of linked adventures called Shadow of the Daleks, featuring the Fifth Doctor as played by Peter Davison.

(Daily Doctor Who #132)

Doctor Who: Ghost Station [A Big Finish sampler]

In the wake of the whole COVID-19 pandemic, Big Finish–most famous for their original licensed Doctor Who audios–began to release a variety of projects for free on a weekly basis.  Some of these are “proper” Doctor Who adventures, some are licensed from other sources, and others are completely original.  I have been taking advantage of these, as I’ve written about here and elsewhere. This time around we’re looking at a one-part story that was part of a collection of Fifth Doctor stories called Time Apart.

(Daily Doctor Who #121)

Doctor Who: No Place Like Home [Big Finish]

Back in 2003, Big Finish released No Place Like Home as a special gift for readers of Doctor Who Magazine. Since then, the story has been made into a free download on their website, which I became aware of as I was scanning for the free stuff they have on offer. There’s quite a bit of to be found there if one is interested. A lot of them are samples of longer stories, but No Place Like Home is a complete, albeit short (a bit more than half an hour), adventure featuring the Fifth Doctor played by Peter Davison and audio-only companion Erimem, an Egyptian princess played by Caroline Morris.

Castrovalva [Classic Doctor Who]

Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but in recent years rewatchings of old episodes have been few and far between.  But recently I decided to spend some of my 50th birthday spending money on some of these adventures, and enjoy them with one or two of my nerdier daughters.

(Daily Doctor Who #3)

Doctor Who: The Secret History [Big Finish]

The Secret History is the 200th entry in the “main range” of Big Finish’s Doctor Who audio dramas. It stars Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, and companions Steven Taylor (Peter Purves) and Vici (Maureen O’Brien).

Spoilers Ahead!

The Visitation [Classic Doctor Who]

With my 50th birthday recently past, I’ve been investing a little bit of money and a little bit of time on classic Doctor Who‘s, mostly with my nerdier daughters.  For them, this has been seeing things for the first time, while for me it usually amounts to a rewatch.

Doctor Who: Primeval [Big Finish]

It’s been a long time but I’ve finally gotten around to starting my second “subscription” of Big Finish Doctor Who audios – starting with Release #26 of their main range, Primeval. This story stars Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor and Sarah Sutton as his companion Nyssa, and connects itself to the broader Doctor Who mythology by taking place on Traken, Nyssa’s home world that was only seen on TV in her debut story, Keeper of Traken, and was destroyed in an off-the-cuff manner in the follow up tale, Logopolis.

The idea here is that Nyssa is sick, and the Doctor has taken her to Traken for help, but thousands of years before Nyssa’s time. Nyssa’s illness is implied to be connected to the closing moment in the TV serial Four to Doomsday where Nyssa faints. At the time, it had apparently happened just to limit the number of regulars appearing in the following story (Kinda). But Primeval suggests that her sickness is the result of telepathic influence from a powerful psychic enemy with a deep hatred for Traken as part of his plot for vengeance.

Doctor Who: The Eye of the Scorpion [Big Finish]

I am coming to the end of my initial subscription of Big Finish’s Doctor Who (main range) audios.  As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Big Finish made their first 50 stories available very cheaply, so I went ahead and bought 12 so that I could get one of their free bonus stories (in this case, The Five Companions, featuring, amongst others, William Russell as Ian Chesterton).  The results of been a mixture of hits and misses, with a fair number falling in the broad area in between.  The biggest misses have been the first Peter Davison story I listened to (The Mutant Phase featuring the Daleks at their most irritating) and the most recent Colin Baker story I’ve heard (Project: Twilight).

I am happy to say that amongst the biggest hits I have heard is this little gem – The Eye of the Scorpion, featuring Peter Davison and Nicola Bryant as Peri, and introducing new companion Erinem, an Egyptian princess, played by Caroline Morris.

Doctor Who: The Five Companions [Big Finish]

OK, back to The Five Companions.

As I noted previously, this is “special episode” of Big Finish’s Doctor Who audio line, made available when one subscribes to 12 titles from one of their lines of stories. It’s a bit shorter than a regular Doctor Who audio – about half the length, but treated as one long episode, sans cliff hangers.