Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Past Forward from Big Finish Review

We’ve not had many adventures for the Seventh Doctor, Harry Sullivan and Naomi Cross for a while, instead we’ve heard the Seventh Doctor’s last days and his adventures with ghost hunter Thomas Carnaki, so it’s nice to finally get back to these series of adventures which have a definite air of the Virgin New Adventures about them!

Sadly, though, this set sees the end of the road for Harry and Naomi as they encounter the Weeping Angels and the Doctor at his most manipulative.

The set opens and closes with John Dorney’s, With the Angels, which sees the TARDIS team arrive in 90s London and quickly team up with UNIT, who have discovered a Weeping Angel in a rather unusual predicament. It’s a plot which feels like it’s been taken from a later entry into the New Adventures series of books with traitors, manipulations and a terrifying threat and the most fun I’ve had with a Seventh Doctor audio since Operation Dusk, released back in 2023.

Anyone who thinks that the Weeping Angels couldn’t work on audio will be proved wrong here. Normally, they are a very visual monster, but they work brilliantly on audio too, and Dorney does manage to do something completely different with them and creates a terrifying new breed of Angel. An Angel had previously been captured and carved up into stone chess pieces.

Now, one Angel has become thirty little ones, and once it reconstitutes in the final episode, the image of an Angel that is black and white and won’t just send you back in time but forwards too, pulling you apart is terrifying. Surprisingly, though the Angels aren’t the main villain of this story and the corrupt son of a businessman proves a perfect foil for the Seventh Doctor. The finale of this story builds so perfectly between the pair, playing one final game of chess, that I had thought that Fenric might appear!

It’s clear how much fun Sylvester McCoy is having here, playing many different versions from the past and future of his Seventh incarnation and he’s really at his best playing the more mercurial version of the Time Lord who knows what is going to happen to his companions and making sure all the pieces are in play, juggling with everything. He’s brilliant here, as are Christopher Naylor and Eleanor Crooks as Harry and Naomi.

The devastating effect of the Angels in this story involves their departure,s and while those departures are a little understated, they work perfectly for their characters and cap off their rather complicated time with the Doctor while certainly leaving room for further adventures of their own.

Fit in between the two episodes of With the Angels is Lizzie Hopley’s Catastrophix, a fun little episode which works as a coda to Harry and Naomi’s story while also introducing the Doctor’s new companion and old friend, Ray from Delta and the Bannermen. While it’s certainly a shame we aren’t getting more time with Harry and Naomi, Ray, once again played by Sara Griffiths, is a brilliant addition to the TARDIS. She’s had a legacy amongst fandom about her being a brilliant companion since it was up for grabs whether she or Ace would travel with the Doctor onscreen. And while Catastrophix isn’t as strong as With the Angels and can feel a bit jumbled at times, it’s still a brilliant story and a great way of spending an hour with these characters.

Ray really works in the concluding hour to With the Angels and proves to be a great companion, the way she humorously and seriously deals with problems and the Angels are brilliant and she makes for a great companion with the Seventh Doctor, we’ve got to wait now to hear more from the pair but if this set is anything to go off, we’re in for a great time!

Past Forward proves to be one of the best Seventh Doctor box sets we’ve had in a while and is packed with new and exciting ideas. It takes the themes of the Seventh Doctor’s era and blends them perfectly with the themes and characters from the modern series, and once again delves into why the Seventh Doctor is possibly the most dangerous of all the Doctor’s incarnations.

You can pick up The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Past Forward on CD and digital download from Big Finish now.