Doctor Who: Lost Stories: Deathworld from Big Finish Review

When Doctor Who celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1973, the Time Lords brought the first three incarnations of the Doctor together to help save the universe from a threat from an antimatter world and its occupant, the villainous Time Lord Omega.

Originally written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, The Three Doctors was the first story to set the trend of anniversaries being celebrated with multi-doctor adventures. But The Three Doctors wasn’t the original pitch from the pair, instead, there was Deathworld, a far stranger and much more abstract outing but a story that would have been far beyond the Strictly glitter of Omega’s world could provide.

Adapted by John Dorney, Deathworld sees the first three Doctors, played by their new actors, Stephen Noonan, Michael Troughton and Tim Trelor face off against the personification of Death. But things get stranger and darker as the three Doctors and their companions, Jamie McCrimmon, Jo Grant and The Brigadier face off against the various incarnations of death as well as horsemen of the apocalypse, the seven deadly sins and different creatures and monsters including zombies, a cyclops and a gorgon.

Dorney successfully blends many strange ideas into something very cohesive and action-packed but something that the budget in 1973 would never have been able to stretch to.

Deathworld also works as a brilliant alternative look at The Three Doctors and there are elements of the story scattered throughout, the quarry world that Omega lives on feels like the wastelands the Doctors find themselves in and the battle between the Gel Guards and UNIT feels like the opening battle here between UNIT and a zombie horde. But looking past its legacy, Deathworld also manages to stand on its own two feet and could easily fit into the tenth series of Doctor Who.

All the trappings of this era are here, the Doctor is working in a lab, a country estate is the home for UNIT and the Time Lords are still getting the Doctor to do little missions for them. And even though the Doctor (s) find themselves stuck in a chess match between the Time Lords and Death, it still feels completely like it was made in the 1970s and Dorney has captured the feel of the era perfectly and works perfectly as a love letter to the 1970s era of the show.

It’s clear that Tim Trelor, Michael Troughton and Stephen Noonan steal the show here, they are brilliant in their various roles, even though I’m still not one hundred per cent sold on Big Finish’s latest take on the First Doctor, he feels a lot more settled and works very well with Jon Culshaw’s brilliant take on the Brig a performance that is effortless and is very easy to imagine Nicholas Courtney delivering these lines.

Troughton and Hines are just as brilliant together as Patrick Troughton was with Frazer Hines, so pitch perfect is this pair that they feel like off-air recordings of a lost 60s serial. Equally as pitch-perfect are Tim Trelor and Katy Manning who have managed to recapture the magical feel that Manning had with Pertwee back in 1973. Culshaw, Hines and Manning work brilliantly well together in the final episode when the trio have to team up properly to help the Doctor and it helps make us see why the Doctor only takes the best people as their companions because all teams of companions always work so well together in any celebration story.

Deathworld brings the original tenth-anniversary tale to life brilliantly and Dorney has done his usual brilliant job of crafting a complicated story into something as exciting as it is easy to follow. Unleashed from budgetary constraints, one wonders what this story would have looked like, probably if Hammer Horror had been in charge of Doctor Who, and delivers a brilliant look at an alternative version of The Three Doctors.

While it’ll never replace that story and the great chemistry the original three actors shared, it stands successfully on its own two feet working as a prelude to its replacement and is an interesting experience that you should most definitely experience.

You can pick up Doctor Who: The Lost Stories: Deathworld from Big Finish now.