The Haunting of Malkin Place

Fourth Doctor Adventures #6.5

Released: 17 May 2017

Listened: 7/8/22

We’re back into the Adventures season proper, this time with a good old-fashioned ghost story. It’s slightly past the end of World War I, and Malkin Place is inhabited by a pair of twins, Maurice and Beatrice, who lost their father not long ago. Maurice is haunted by events that happened to him during the war, and the house seems to be just plain haunted on top of that. So they invite in a spiritualist to help, who bumps into the Doctor and Romana on the train. The Doctor is once again rather angry with the spiritualist, and dismissive of his “arts.” Romana just flatly disbelieves and doesn’t bother getting upset. Of course, ghosts in Doctor Who always have another explanation, but the story takes its time getting there, leaving the listener plenty of time to guess about it. It holds together rather nicely as a story, mixing the period and time travel together.