Tom Baker returns as the Fourth Doctor in a new series of audio adventures

(AudioGo)

Written by Paul Magrs, starring Tom Baker

LAST year, legendary Time Lord Tom Baker returned to the role that made him famous, reprising his eccentric interpretation of the Doctor for a series of five interlinked audio adventures.

The success of these stories has prompted a further collection of stories, again from the pen of Paul Magrs, and once again reuniting the fourth Doctor with his former UNIT comrade Captain Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) and recently-acquired housekeeper Mrs Wibbsey (Susan Jameson).

In this first escapade, the Doctor returns to his former cottage in the Sussex countryside to question Mrs W about the disappearance of five vital segments of the TARDIS, only to discover they have been sold at a bring-and-buy sale.

But clues to their whereabouts are unearthed in a mysterious box of ancient documents, each revealing images of the Doctor in places he has yet to travel, including an image of a mosaic from Celtic Britain.

With the game afoot, the companions set off in search of answers to each of these riddles, the beginning of a quest through time in search of the missing components.

The concept behind the series thereby established, we can plunge headfirst into the first adventure, which features warring tribes, a wizard and an elephant in the midst of the second Roman invasion of Britain…

Baker once again takes to the role of the Doctor with gusto, clearly relishing Magrs’ thoroughly entertaining lines of dialogue, and succeeding in capturing the spirit, if not the exact interpretation, of his particular incarnation of the Time Lord.

An inspiring start to the new series, albeit lacking in the sort of resolution you would have expected from a single television episode, but hopefully building towards an epic climax over subsequent volumes.