The Doctor has just one chance to save the universe…

It’s so tempting to list the logline for this one as “The Doctor engages in a food fight with Billy Bunter and the other denizens of the Land of Fiction” but the title is considerably more clever than that – but you need to listen carefully to get the reference.

This entire set has required concentration from the listener: it’s a more complicated temporal-spatial plot than this era of Doctor Who had on screen (although not reaching the Series 6 levels of looping its own loop), but Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor sounds absolutely at home amongst it all. You wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that he recorded these after the forthcoming standalone adventures (he didn’t, as far as I know); it feels as if he’s not been away from the role for sixteen months, let alone sixteen years. You may well want to go back and listen to the first episode again after the finale, with things falling into place.

Nicholas Briggs provides some nice continuity nods within – notably the way in which the Doctor talks about his own people – and, for those who wanted the PTSD Doctor, some quiet recognition that maybe the Doctor’s presenting a certain façade to the universe.

Verdict: A carefully and cleverly plotted conclusion to a story that brings the Ninth Doctor fully into the Big Finish universe. 9/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order the box set from Big Finish