The Fourth Doctor arrives in the village of Stockbridge in 1979 to stock up on jelly babies, but a mighty legion of robotic Romanesque soldiers has rolled in to claim the planet and it’s not long before the Time Lord is fighting for his life in an intergalactic arena.

The Iron Legion is a big deal for a lot people. Appearing as the first ever comic strip in Doctor Who Weekly from October 1979, it was serialised across eight issues, and though only 34 pages long, it was epic in scale and was the big budget alternative to the likes of City of Death and The Creature from the Pit that were airing at the same time on TV. Dave Gibbons’ (Watchmen, Judge Dredd) illustrations of Tom Baker’s Doctor are for me still the best, aided by a witty script credited to John Wagner and Pat Mills, though apparently it’s just the latter who wrote it.

It was with great joy that I read the news that Big Finish were adapting the story for audio, and Alan Barnes has done a great job in expanding the 34-page comic to four 25-minute episodes, complete with authentic cliffhangers at the end of every two issues. The Doctor Who Weekly comic strip version of the Doctor was always more willing to throw in a quip than the version appearing on TV – it’s a more heightened version for the comic book panel – and Barnes manages to bring in that same level of self-aware humour and punnery that’s authentic to the original script.

Kudos to Tom (or maybe director Nicholas Briggs?) for not letting the lead performance go too broad – there’s enough craziness in the script without embellishing it. The addition of Doug and Viv as onlookers/commentators helps provide us with exposition by stealth to help fill in the gaps that regular speech alone wouldn’t allow, and I also enjoyed the sports commentary by pundits Cecilia and Max. Morris the cyborg galley slave is beautifully bright to life by Joseph Kloska, and creaky old robot Vesuvius sounds all jittery and glitchy, just as you’d expect. A big mention too for Alistair Lock’s music and sound design which gives the project a scale that befits a legion returning from the Eternal War.

Verdict: Originally submitted (and rejected) as an idea for a TV serial of Doctor Who, it never would have been able to match its ambitions on a BBC TV budget. By having Tom play the role against an epic soundscape of faraway arenas, and with monsters that couldn’t really have translated to practical realisation on screen, we’ll just fill in the gaps; It’s very easy to do when you have such a quality product. The Iron Legion is a treasure and has been well looked after here – Hail Big Finish! 10/10

Nick Joy