Dethras

Fourth Doctor Adventures #6.4

Released: 20 April 2017

Listened: 7/6/22

This story has a fairly high concept: creatures that can hyper-evolve to withstand any environment, and the people who want to weaponize them. So of course it starts on a WWII-era submarine. In space. And there’s also a monkey. All of which seems kind of wacky for a story, and in fact, there doesn’t seem to be as much story here as one would think. The hitch is that the villain is fairly irrational and gives up way too easily, but this is only a one-hour story. The Doctor also seems rather angrier than usual, and even says so outright. It’s also somewhat odd in that it leaves a potentially dangerous resource around for anyone to find, and the Doctor is OK with that. Writer Adrian Poynton has only done a few stories for Big Finish; this and a couple of “Jenny” stories, which is probably why it seems kind of different. Not necessarily good different or bad different, just different. And it leads directly into “The Leisure Hive,” which is the first instance we’ve seen of one of these series taking a break in the middle.