The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Angels and Demons from Big Finish – Review

After just one boxset, and a standalone appearance, it seems it’s time to say goodbye to the Fourth Doctor’s newest companion, Nerys Hughes’ Margaret Hopwood, who really gets put through her paces in this boxset. Thanks to the cover art, there is no hiding who the main villains of the set are, though Big Finish rightly keep us from hearing from them until the third act. It’s nice to hear that not everyone who travels in the TARDIS can handle what the universe sometimes throws at them and Margaret brings a normality to the TARDIS something which her fellow travellers, the Fourth Doctor and Leela haven’t felt in a long time.

Roy Gill’s opening story, The Wizard of Time is a fun and whimsical little adventure, framed as the narrative of an author’s novel called The Wizard of Time. The story sees the elderly Jacob Harmer recollecting his previous meetings with the Doctor and his two companions Leela and Margaret while they were being chased and hunted by strange fairy-tale-like creatures intent on eating the time energy from the TARDIS.

The late, great Ronald Pickup does a great job as Jacob Harmer pulling the listener into his story and keeping things whimsical and absorbing as he tells his tale not only to us but to the listener in the story, who doesn’t notice that the past and present are catching up with one another. Now anyone who is really paying attention will get what’s going on, I’d guessed it from the beginning but that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the story, something I didn’t think I’d get much out of considering our main three cast members aren’t really in the story that much.

The Wizard of Time helps us to remember that the Doctor’s adventures are supposed by like something from a fairy tale, with a magical blue box and a wild lady in animal skins that aren’t supposed to be everyday sights. When the Doctor, Leela and Margaret first encounter Jacob he’s being bullied and decides to include him on their adventure on a whim, but as he meets them throughout the years, his own experiences influence how they deal with the threat, effortlessly crafted here by fantastic sound design. And despite this being Jacob’s story, Roy Gill makes sure to give the other three characters plenty to do, The Doctor is a little manipulative here, proving that this aspect in his character was there long before the Seventh Doctor came along, Margaret uses her artistic abilities to help defeat the monsters at various stages in the story, and Leela plays off well with the child character creating some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments.

Things get a little confused towards the end though as the plot has to rapidly wrap up, but that is a minor quibble for an otherwise great story, which keeps its revelations and twists until the very end when, as the past collides with the present, the truth is finally revealed. But the confused ending doesn’t stop this little adventure from being wholly charming and one to be enjoyed in the summer months and allows us to see the magic of Doctor Who as a product from an outsider’s perspective.

Chris Chapman takes us to the quaint village of Westbourne for The Friendly Invasion. It’s 1943 and with WW2 still raging on, the village of Westbourne finds itself looking after a group of American soldiers. The locals are either completely smitten or not happy at all. But they aren’t the only visitors to Westbourne, there are three strange new locals and something is hijacking the bodies of the villagers and using them to wage their own war.

Chapman’s script is littered with themes of sacrifice and the lasting impact that action has on those who are left behind and Chapman really delivers some heartfelt moments throughout this story, painting a thoughtful but exciting story about those who are fated to bear the burden of sacrifice. I appreciated that the American characters in this story, while obviously not played by Americans sounded a lot better than many American characters Big Finish has done before. I’m still not entirely sure if these characters were real people from history, but their mission and attitudes towards it certainly feel like they could have been real.

The group of soldiers are a likeable bunch and nowhere as insufferable as they could have been, making the final impact of their journey all the more heartbreaking. Margaret in particular gets a fantastic scene at the end, conjuring up images in the mind of smoke-filled stations with people saying goodbye to loved ones off to fight in a war they probably wouldn’t come back from. Except this time, she’s trying to convince the man to stay and be with the woman he loves. It’s a hard lesson but all companions have to learn it eventually that you can’t change history. Chapman gives Margaret some brilliant backstory too, having joined the Doctor from her own time in the 1970s, she talks to Leela about her own experiences during the war and a lost love of hers who never came back from the fields of Europe.

Where Chapman’s story struggled was in its handling of the monsters. While their motivations were pretty unique for a Doctor Who monster, they simply weren’t in it for long enough in the runtime to make any sort of impact. If Big Finish are going to explore these two-parter ways of storytelling then they are going to have to make allowances for things to be given more time to play out. Ultimately though The Friendly Invasion does pretty much everything right, Chapman has quickly proven himself as a talented writer, taking more thought-provoking themes and weaving them into an intelligent story as well as giving Margaret some much-needed development and backstory and laying the groundwork for her departure at the end of the set as she’s reminded of the harsh truths of travelling through time.

Roland Moore’s Stone Cold introduces the Weeping Angels in their first encounter with the Fourth Doctor, though he does know what they are so we’ll probably be getting more stories with them encountering past incarnations. As of this moment, this is the earliest meeting of a Doctor and the Weeping Angels so it’s a shame that this feels like a bit of a rehash of Steven Moffat’s Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. I always wonder how these creatures can be used on audio as they are visual creatures, but Big Finish always surprises me by using the audio aspects of the creatures, you’re never sure if the sound of stone moving is the environment or an Angel creeping up on you. A lot of the tension in this story comes from the fact that they are visual creatures and shouldn’t work on audio, so scenes towards the end where characters aren’t sure where they feel even more dangerous because they can’t see the Angels, allowing them to move about and kill at liberty.

As I previously said though it’s a shame that Moore can’t do more with the Angels as this does feel a lot like the Eleventh Doctor story, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. We’ve got a cavernous setting, a base under siege, characters getting killed left-right-and-centre and Angels coming out of computer screens. Of course, the Weeping Angels have been used so often on screen now that there isn’t really anything new that one can do with them and they’ve fallen a little into Dalek territory in that respect, but their fearsome appearance is still something the series can capitalise on in any medium, you know when the Weeping Angels turn up that things are going to pop off.

Where Stone Cold truly falters though is in its supporting characters. It’s a shame because the spaceship is pretty unique, a holiday liner crashes onto a world of rock and magma and passengers have been spirited away by a ghostly grey woman leaving two passengers and a handful of crewmembers as the only survivors. We get a quick run-around of the Doctor, Leela and Margaret getting arrested and believed to be the killers before everyone discovers the Weeping Angels.

The real tragedy of the supporting cast is that the characters never stray very far from their stereotypes. You’ve got two winey passengers, a security officer ready to kill anyone and everyone, and a captain who is a little inept at their job. They all make increasingly frustrating decisions and their lack of awareness at what is going on doesn’t do much to improve their characters. When they find out that all the Angels do is send you back in time, this makes them more terrified, even though one of the characters who had a partner sent back through time, doesn’t realise that she’ll end up at the same point in time as her and they can continue to live their lives together.

Luckily though the main cast fair a lot better. Tom Baker is on fine form here as the Fourth Doctor and the fact that he is nearly ninety is anywhere apparent in his performance. Leela is excellent, though she doesn’t get to do much, it’s nice to hear her desperately trying to help Margaret who is growing more and more terrified of her adventures and there was one really sweet moment where she promises she won’t let anything bad happen to Margaret, cementing the idea that these two really have become friends, none of the jealousy nonsense that we had with Rose meeting Sarah Jane.

Talking of Margaret, this story works as her breaking point, her realistic attitude to her adventures can’t help her as the Angels close in and the idea that she might die on an unnamed planet with her friends and family never knowing what happened to her is almost too much for her to bare. Its a shame for her character that when the Fourth Doctor picked her up after their meeting in The Ravencliff Witch, she’d become a near alcoholic because she had turned down his offer to travel with him, and now she is leaving because she can’t cope with the adventures she’s going on. What was also a nice touch was how distant the Doctor seems to be here with Margaret and Leela, we really get the sense that he knows Margaret is struggling with these adventures but none of them knows how to confront that.

So while Stone Cold might have not reached the heights of some of the Weeping Angel’s previous outings, Moore really gives the three regulars a great story. And while the supporting cast feels little more than cannon fodder, there are some elements of a brilliant character-driven story desperately trying to come out. Had this been one of the rare six-part stories from Big Finish I think we could have had something that could be heralded as a stone-cold classic.

The final adventure for this series, Tim Foley’s The Ghost of Margaret is another dark and dreamy fairy tale adventure. Having had enough of the deadly encounters with aliens, Margaret decides it’s time to go home and while the Doctor agrees, Leela finds it harder to let Margaret go without a proper goodbye. When the TARDIS arrives at Margaret’s home of Ravencliff a ghostly figure of Margaret runs out in front of an oncoming car and sets a whole set of events in motion.

This story is solely focused on Margaret, we haven’t had one like this, not even her debut story which really split the focus between her and Leela. The Doctor quickly deduces that after leaving them, Margaret found herself the victim of an alien incursion which left her trapped in an odd half-way place and out of sync with the rest of the universe. Margaret is trapped in a self-made nightmare, chased by the Halfway Man a twisted, pixie-like creature, who is manipulative in the extreme but also his promises are oddly seductive, tempting his victims into living the lives they want while he devours their life energy. Luckily Margaret isn’t alone as a character from The Friendly Invasion, who she fancied comes to her aid and the pair spend many years together, trapped in this nightmare realm while the Doctor and Leela try to find a way to help their old friend.

Margaret and her friend Ray work well together. Ray doesn’t just barge in and try to solve all her problems for her, instead allowing her to deal with her fears, phobias, indecisions and foibles at her own pace. The Doctor gets some nice moments here too, having been pretty distant throughout this box set is nice that he is now front and centre in the action and Foley really goes into detail about how terrified he makes Margaret. The Doctor is forced to reflect on what he’s done to his friend’s life and whether she would be better off with or without him. Will she return to being an alcoholic or will she use all she learnt from her adventures, no matter how scary they were, to make herself a better person? It’s been an interesting relationship for a Doctor and companion to have and really looks at the Doctor as a character.

One wonders if that might have been the point of this series. Was this an experiment to see what the Doctor is like as a character? His adventures are dangerous but most of his companions take to these trips like a duck to water, so much so that the Doctor almost becomes blind to the dangers he’s trying to stop. It is what makes a companion’s death all the more shocking that the Doctor isn’t superhuman and oftentimes can’t save his friends. Margaret was designed to be one of the more realistic characters we’ve had in recent years, while Leela throws herself into things because she doesn’t know any different, Margaret has years of experience on her shoulders and can see the Doctor for the terrifying personality he can sometimes be. Some companions see him as a teacher, a parental figure, a friend or even a lover, but Margaret sees the Doctor for exactly the alien he is and doesn’t completely understand how dangerous and deadly his lifestyle is.

Angels and Demons is a very consistent set of Fourth Doctor adventures, four stories which take a much more modern approach to the series while honouring everything that made the Fourth Doctor’s time on the show so fantastic. There are some tremendous ideas on offer here and some great commentary on some very adult themes. It’s a shame then that sometimes, this new format for Big Finish’s stories doesn’t really allow for much exploration of those themes. Hopefully, that will change in the near future as Angels and Demons did highlight those issues but it was still a tremendous set with four incredibly intelligent stories for us to enjoy.

You can pick up Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Angels and Demons on CD (including digital) for £29.99 and on digital for £24.99 now from Big Finish.