Adric is still adjusting to life travelling with the Doctor when that journey comes to a sudden stop. Marooned in a vast sargasso sea of time ships, Adric is kidnapped and the Doctor faces down murderous cyborgs. Whilst as the Dalek Invasion of Earth begins, a young man in Paris finds himself aided by a very surprising ally…

This second entry in Big Finish’s audio novels series is a textbook demonstration of why this range works. The story is long, deliberate and at first seems to be throwing elements in at random. But as the novel progresses, two things become clear: Waterhouse is a very strong writer and this isn’t just a good audiobook, it’s a roadmap to one of the best ways to produce Doctor Who tie-in fiction of any sort.

That roadmap is concluded by surprises I don’t want to spoil here but the journey is definitely something I can talk about. Waterhouse cleverly combines Adric’s youth with the Doctor’s exuberance and the cold hard scale of the universe to create a story which knocks on the door of horror more than once and fizzes with invention.

Adric is pressganged into working as a slave on a galley that is trying to row to the edge of the time distortion they’re marooned in. There’s a cult that worships a temporally distant god who keeps regular appointments. Time and again, the story circles back around to the ideas of faith in both ideals and others, and explores what happens when that faith is taken both too far and not far enough.

It also uses this to address the exact nature of the existential trauma of travelling with the Doctor. Adric is a boy, a brilliant, courageous one but a boy none the less. The moment where he finally lets himself see what he’s been through and breaks down is a highlight of the character’s arc across show and prose alike and the book is peppered with moments like that. These moments respect canon as a topography to move across, then chart their own path in surprising ways that resonate in manners you don’t see coming. Like I say, this is how it’s done.

It’s also a good audiobook because it feels both pacy and expansive. The deceptively slow pace of the first two episodes does nothing but payoff in the back four. Likewise the addition of Time Lady Milady and Marcel, her Dalek victim/companion gives you a sense of a wider universe but not a contradictory one. The harmonies of the era the story is set in – corridor chases, fast paced quick thinking, compassion, scope and horror – are very much here. They just aren’t the only things being played.

It’s not quite a flawless victory. Waterhouse has a fondness for using a repeated word to show how and what a character is thinking and that gets old after a while. Likewise the core villains flirt with being stereotypical before they take a variety of interesting turns. But all of this is small compared to the vast scope and success Waterhouse achieves here.

Verdict: Absolutely not the Adric story you expect. Absolutely the Adric story he and we deserve, combining trauma response and courage with epic scale science fiction, surprising continuity beats and the Fourth Doctor at his peak. Excellent stuff. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

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