The Doctor, Ace and Hex land on two very unusual worlds…

For those who’ve missed Philip Oliver’s Hex, this is a strong return for the character, set some point quite early in his adventures aboard the TARDIS. Given that Big Finish spend a lot of time interpolating extra stories inbetween television episodes, you’d expect them to be good at finding gaps in their own characters’ chronologies, leaving the toys where they were, so to speak, but on this occasion, there are some intriguing shifts in the relationships between the characters.

The two stories are rather more intertwined than the previous ones in this “two x two-parters” series: both are at their heart character pieces, with A.K. Benedict’s Shadow Planet allowing the time travellers to hive off portions of their identity. Of course things go wrong, and there are great performances from the leads as well as the guest stars. Scott Handcock’s World Apart highlights the differences between Hex and Ace, with Oliver and Aldred delivering nuanced versions of the characters, and I’d be interested to hear a follow-up story that deals with the consequences of this tale.

Verdict: Two well-produced short tales providing a welcome return for Mr Hex. 8/10

Paul Simpson