Suburban Hell

Fourth Doctor Adventures #4.5

Released: 21 May 2015

Listened: 4/8/22

At the halfway point of the season, this is a much lighter story, despite the title. The Doctor and Leela land in a suburban English town, and the TARDIS immediately leaves with K-9 aboard, writing him out of this story. They crash a dinner party, and assume they’re in 1977 again, but it turns out to be a 70s-themed party, and they’re actually in the 2010s. That doesn’t mean there’s no temporal shenanigans going on, though, as events in the present are linked to those in 1977, causing paradoxes, slippages, “long way rounds,” and the whole timey-wimey ball. It’s a well-paced story, with the first half entirely occupied with figuring out what’s going on, and the second taking a distinctly sci-fi turn as they try to use the temporal shenanigans to fix the problem at the root. Annette Badland makes yet another guest appearance, as Thelma-from-over-the-road. Alan Barnes gets special credit for creating a couple of characters in Belinda and Pete who are thoroughly unpleasant from the get-go, and stay that way even through mortal peril, which is a neat trick. It’s a small story, but it’s memorable.