Big Finish’s latest boxset release takes us back to 1982, for a reunion of Peter Davison’s original TARDIS team of Nyssa, Tegan and Adric.

The participation of Matthew Waterhouse, who has stayed away from audio up until this point, allows access to an unexplored era of Doctor Who’s chronology.

Comprised of two four-parters, the stories effectively bookend the Season 19 line-up; ‘Pyschodrome’ comes directly after Davison’s debut ‘Castrovalva’ and ‘Iterations of I’ slots in before Adric’s dramatic exit in ‘Earthshock’.

Facing fears as they become manifest, dealing with change and learning to come together as a team, ‘Psychodrome’ is therapy for this newly formed crew. While that might sound like a ghastly corporate weekender, Jonathan Morris’ story actually addresses some of the big issues between the four, such as the impact of the Doctor’s regeneration; he is clearly no longer the same man Adric stowed away to travel the universe with.

It feels very much part of Tegan’s debut too, as she is still finding her place and coming to terms with the death of her Aunt Vanessa as the hands of the Master.

Landing in a cave system, the crew soon find themselves on the run from hostile natives. Split up and exploring further, they are soon enmeshed in the complicated world of a crashed spaceship, a monastery and a citadel, in each of which they encounter some strangely familiar characters.

Credit must be given to the hardworking guest cast, Robert Whitelock, Phil Mulryne, Camilla Power and Bethan Walker, all in multiple roles as the inhabitants of the Psychodrome.

The story cleverly prefigures the destiny of all these characters, the Doctor’s post-Time War loneliness, Adric’s fear of failure and Nyssa’s desire to help others, with some familiar lines of dialogue and situations deftly put into the mix.

At the other end of the season, John Dorney’s ‘Iterations of I’ brings us to Fleming’s Island for a mathematically related ghost story. Landing mistakenly, after Adric and Nyssa have a go at piloting, the time-travellers find themselves stranded as the TARDIS topples off a cliff.

As they explore in an attempt to recover the ship, they find an empty house with both a boat and a radio transmitter destroyed. It is not long before they encounter others on the island; Jerome Kahn is there searching for his missing mathematician girlfriend Imogen (played by Allison McKenzie, Line of Duty’s DCI Jane Akers).

Aiding him are a shifty local police constable and a volatile father and daughter Teddy and Aoife Dineen (Being Human’s Sinead Keenan, who was one of the Vinvocci in ‘The End of Time’)

Providing a genuinely scary ghost tale, with a unique slant that fits this TARDIS team’s particular skills, they soon find themselves hunted by a monster unlike any other. While some of the concepts are a little abstract, the maths chatter is delightfully undercut by Tegan’s bluntness ensuring we can all keep up. In the final moments, it even seems to sow the seeds of Adric’s mathematical plans which lead into his finale tale.

Thirty odd years on, the return of Adric to the mix makes for two highly enjoyable tales. All the characters are served well by the scripts, a feat that was rarely managed on television at the time. While it is clear that Matthew Waterhouse’s voice has matured, he manages to channel the essence of the character well and we hope he will be back for more.

Extras: The set comes with a disc full of interviews with the cast and writers, as well as supplying music suites for both tales which is utterly evocative of the era.

Released in August 2014 by Big Finish Productions Ltd.

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