The Doctor whisks Mrs Wibbsey back in time to Porto Ercole…

It’s always dangerous to release something as the “complete” set – because you’re bound to find that there’s a new story to be told that requires adding… and that’s what’s happened with the Nest Cottage Chronicles, the full set of Paul Magrs’ adventures for Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor that were produced by the BBC nearly a decade ago. Susan Jameson co-starred in those tales as the Doctor’s housekeeper at Nest Cottage, and, as Wibbsey admits in this story, she was the catalyst for a lot of the problems that the Time Lord faced when he was resident there. (That’s actually one of the few downsides of this audio – a lot of the underlying threat, and Wibbsey’s reaction to it, is based on what happened in those stories, and references to hornets and demons may go over the heads of those who haven’t heard them…)

One of my occasional problems with the Nest Cottage stories was that it felt as if we got Tom Baker playing “Tom Baker playing the Fourth Doctor”, but that’s obviously not the case here. We’ve got Susan Jameson playing Fenella Wibbsey portraying the Fourth Doctor, and while she doesn’t try to give an impersonation of Baker, she picks up his natural cadences and speeds – and in so doing, gives us the Season 18 version of the Time Lord that’s involved in this story (contrary to what’s on the cover!).

As you might expect from Paul Magrs, things are not quite what they seem, and there’s plenty of twists and turns as the Doctor apparently makes another famous enemy.

Mrs Wibbsey is one of the more underrated companions in the extended universe of the show, and it’s good to hear her once more at the Doctor’s side. Hopefully this period of retrospection in the spin-off media will allow us to return again…

Verdict: A pleasant blast from the past. 8/10

Paul Simpson