Fever Island

Fourth Doctor Adventures #8.6

Released: 13 February 2019

Listened: 5/2/22

This story appears to be a standalone, the only one in this boxed set. And boy, is it trippy. The Doctor and Ann investigate a temporal anomaly taking place on an isolated Scottish island in 1978. There’s also a secret agent there, by the name of Jason Vane, who’s basically a parody of every spy novel ever. He even does narration in deeply purple prose, until Ann reveals that she can hear him doing it. Turns out there’s something here that’s changing the nature of people and things, and for a while, the Doctor behaves like a cliche spy villain. Which is silly on the face of it, but Tom Baker leans in to the sinister element of the role, and his lines drip with menace. The actual plot isn’t really any great shakes; it’s mostly an excuse to let people run around and play secret agent. But at that goal, it succeeds handily.