Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Adventures Series 15: The Ministry of Death from Big Finish Review

It may be series 15 of the Fourth Doctor adventures, but Tom Baker returns for the first time with his classic companion pairing of Sarah Jane Smith, played by Sadie Miller, in The Ministry of Death. Recorded during COVID in 2020, I’m sure this is a pairing many fans have been impatiently waiting for.

Summoned back to Earth by the Brigadier using the Space-Time telegraph, the Doctor and Sarah Jane find themselves assisting their old friends at UNIT, not once but twice. But exactly how willing will a Time Lord be to be stuck in a single place once more?

15.1 The Ministry of Death by Robert Valentine (4 parts)

The 4th Doctor returns to Earth with Sarah Jane, initially sceptical at the Brigadier’s request to investigate a mystery, until he is drawn into the death of a man struck by lightning inside his office.

The first story takes place after The Android Invasion, and The Ministry of Death brings plenty of gothic horror in line with the television era of the time. We have a very clever scientist, Diana Stravius, played by Carolyn Seymour, trying to bring back her comatose husband Walter from a cryogenic sleep experiment gone wrong.

The project was top-secret and known as Ephesus. The title of the box set, The Ministry of Death, is taken from wording in the Old Testament of the Bible and refers to the Mosaic Law, inscribed on stone tablets, which revealed sin, brought awareness of death, but could not provide salvation.

From the start of this story, Robert Valentine creates an intriguing mystery reminiscent of themes of the early Tom Baker stories. There are hideous deaths by something monstrous involving a scientific team (Robot), underlined by a church organ manically playing as dastardly deeds occur (The Pyramids of Mars). The first story zips along very nicely, and I rather enjoyed the cat and mouse chase as the Doctor and the UNIT team race to save each member of the team that was involved in the original experiment.

I liked Mildred Harbin, a mean jam maker who is as sharp-witted (played by Carla Mendonça) and suspicious as they come, who tries to warn her colleague to no avail.

As the deaths mount up, the Brigadier, who knows more than he originally reveals to the Doctor about Ephesus, is forced to share the footage of the experiment. It’s clear that Diana and her husband Walter, who are in charge as the experiment starts, share deep affection for each other.

This makes the disastrous result bittersweet, and her grief and eventual madness quite pitiful and sad. My emotions swung later, though, as Diana Stravius becomes a villain, and as her experimentation and revenge become more unhinged, she loses any semblance of humanity, which then becomes less interesting for me.

15.2 The Inhuman Empire by Phil Mulryne (2 parts)

The second story follows on from the events in The Ministry of Death as Sarah is contacted by an old friend who knows her predilection for ‘rum goings on’, asking her to investigate unusual activities at the National Museum. Sarah agrees to look into it, with the Doctor tagging along, but they soon discover things are worse than they thought. Because the Museum is host to alien activity, and if they don’t stop the relic hunters quickly, then humanity itself might not survive.

The story is a museum mystery runaround as a precursor to an Earth invasion. Is it a spoiler to reveal the monsters hiding at the museum? If I say plastic as a clue, then you can guess. Hearing Tom Baker with Autons feels like an unusual mix. The Autons are such a classic 3rd Doctor Earth monster that playing alongside a rather more alien 4th Doctor who desires to be travelling the stars feels small fry.

It’s rather nice to see a friend Sarah Jane knows, caught up in events, to show the stark differences between them. Sarah Jane is so used to the adventures with the Doctor that alien invasion becomes routine, whereas Alison realises she isn’t.

As a whole, these two adventures’ main strength lies with the classic pairing of Sarah Jane and the 4th Doctor, who are reunited with Harry Sullivan, played by Christopher Naylor and Jon Culshaw as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The quartet all hark back to a golden age of Doctor Who. It’s comfort Doctor Who with all the simple trappings, monsters, scientists, classic phones, Harry and Sarah running around in cars, investigating.

Tom Baker is loving every minute of being the 4th Doctor again with an almost childlike glee. He commands every scene, chewing up his lines. A common theme I’ve noticed in modern Doctor Who and Big Finish is the tendency to refer back to classic Who characters and add unnecessary mawkish emotion. Robert Valentine adds this between the Doctor and the Brigadier, where they confess they have missed each other, and I’m not sure that I enjoy it. It feels out of place in context to the classic TV series of the time, which these stories are trying to slot into.

John Culshaw plays Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and I was conscious that he was trying his best Nicholas Courtney impression most of the time, which took me out of the story itself at times. Nicholas Courtney was a Who icon, and it is hard to imagine anyone else doing the Brigadier.

It’s the first time I’ve heard Sadie Miller play Sarah Jane, and she plays her own version of Sarah Jane Smith. Elisabeth Sladen was the original Sarah Jane and, of course, a different person. Sadie gives me alternate reality Sarah Jane: slightly quieter with a calmer, slightly different tone.

I do want more going forward for the character of Harry. Christopher Naylor plays Harry Sullivan, and the actor is perfectly fine, but the scripts don’t allow any development of his character beyond what we already were aware of, which is that Harry is a bit of a chauvinist, calling Sarah “old girl” and being slightly dim. I know Harry adds comic value where the script requires, but it feels like a missed opportunity.

Sarah has too many opportunities to say, “Oh, Harry”, annoyed at his supposed stupidity. An example is when Alison disappears, but one can hear Harry is perfectly confident when carrying out his role as a medical doctor.