The Fourth Doctor is back in an expansion of the E-Space trilogy! There are two thrilling full-cast audio adventures for the Fourth Doctor, Romana, K-9 and Adric. Tom Baker returns to star alongside his former companions, played by Lalla Ward, John Leeson and Matthew Waterhouse respectively. They’re piloting the TARDIS through the pocket universe of Exo-space in an attempt to get home to Gallifrey. Set between two television adventures originally broadcast in the early 1980s, State of Decay and Warriors’ Gate, the Fourth Doctor Adventures series nine revisits a classic era of Doctor Who that is full of change and decay.
What happens in the new audio adventures
There are two brand new stories in volume one.
The Planet of Witches is written by Alan Barnes. While 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. Terrifying “familiars” float around them. This turns out to be the planet of the witches, and the witches may just know the way home.
The Quest of the Engineer is written by Andrew Smith. 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?
A word from the Producer
Producer David Richardson said,
“The idea of taking the Fourth Doctor back to E-Space was, of course, irresistible. Revisiting the TARDIS family who were together for basically three stories on screen. And now we’ve a whole new set of adventures in the spirit of that trilogy. I was really keen going in that we would be telling four-part stories only. The television season was all four-parters and so anything else would have felt wrong to me. It allowed us to take the E-Space trilogy and expand it to seven tales. What would we call that? A septrilogy, maybe? With our audio adventures sitting snugly between the TV episodes, we get to explore the relationships between the four leads in more detail – how they fit together and how they don’t. There was so much scope in terms of things for us to play with.”
Background on the Fourth Doctor television stories: State of Decay and Warrior’s Gate
State of Decay is the fourth story of the 18th season of Doctor Who. In this series of television episodes, the Doctor, Romana, K-9, and Adric find themselves on a medieval planet run by three Vampire lords. As it turns out, this society has technology far more advanced than their society lets on. This is the “state of decay” they seem to be in. The vampire lords intend on raising their “Great One” from the dead. Long story short, these vampires are actually mutated humans. The Doctor recalls that vampires are ancient Time Lord enemies. He figures out that the “Great One” must have escaped destruction at the hands of the Time Lords by somehow retreating into E-Space. It managed to gather enough power to pull the old Earth ship into this universe, corrupt the main crew, and use the colonists for its own ends. Next, Warrior’s Gate is the following set of television episodes. This time, the Doctor and his companions are stuck between the E-Space universe and their home universe. These two television series episodes were Tom Baker’s final episodes as the Doctor.
The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 09 Volume 1 is now available at www.bigfinish.com You can now pre-order The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 09 Volume 2 also from the Big Finish website.
For more Big Finish coverage:
New Seventh Doctor story, Doctor Who: “Dark Universe” from Big Finish
James Marsters returns as Captain John in new Big Finish: Torchwood
New Big Finish Audio Series Brings Back River Song and She Goes Sleuth
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