Doctor Who - Winter For The Adept

STORY PLACEMENT

THIS STORY TAKES

PLACE BETWEEN THE

BIG FINISH AUDIO

DRAMAS "THE LAND OF

THE DEAD" AND "THE
MUTANT PHASE."

PRODUCTION CODE

6C/B

WRITTEN BY

ANDREW CARTMEL

DIRECTED BY

GARY RUSSELL

RECOMMENDED

PURCHASE

BIG FINISH CD#10

(ISBN 1-903654-17-3)

RELEASED IN JULY 2000.

BLURB

WHEN A TELEPORTATION

experiment goes

badly wrong, Nyssa

finds herself

stranded on the

freezing slopes of the

Swiss Alps in 1963.

But is it mere

coincidence that she

finds shelter in a

snowbound school

haunted by a

malevolent

poltergeist...?

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Winter For

The Adept

july 2000

(4 EPISODES)

A staggering improvement upon the fifth Doctor and Nyssa’s first adventure together on audio, “Winter For The Adept” is a rare example of an Andrew Cartmel story that does not feature the seventh Doctor. In fact, after reading all Cartmel’s Doctor Who novels I was surprised at just how different this play feels when contrasted with his previous work. Free of the social comment inherent to his New Adventures trilogy, and free of the dark and manipulative side of the Doctor’s persona, here Cartmel does something that he never

really managed to do even during his reign as the series’ script editor – tell a good old fashioned Doctor Who story, as he pitched it: “St. Trinian’s with witches.”

Like “The Land of the Dead” before it, this story is set in a snowy and isolated locale – the Swiss Alps – but it differs from its predecessor in that “Winter For The Adept” has at least the semblance of an interesting plot. It may have all stemmed from an idea for a title rather than an idea for a story, but you can certainly tell that it was not written in a week!

The play is bookended by two of one of the character’s diary entries, looking back at a time her life when she met the Doctor, which really helps to set the scene in style. All of Cartmel’s characters work well within the plot - Sally Faulkner is an immediate presence as Miss Tremeyne, and the deceptively sweet tones of Hannah Dickinson’s Mademoiselle Maupassant really evoke the atmosphere of the Swiss setting and the all-girls school.

This spooky poltergeist story, full of twists and turns throughout, is also notable for marking India Fisher’s first Doctor Who appearance as the cheeky ‘adept’ Peril. Fisher would of course go on to play the eighth Doctor’s popular companion Charley Pollard shortly after recording this story.

All told, “Winter For The Adept” is a massive improvement upon “The Land of the Dead”, but still shows that the fifth Doctor audios still have a long way to go if they are to get to the same high standard as the Colin Baker / Maggie Stables plays. Having aliens named something other than ‘Spillagers’ might have been a good place to start… for the first couple of episodes I was under the (perhaps deliberate) impression that the Doctor was tracking spillages of something!

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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