Every now and again, a Doctor Who story takes a different path.  The results of this can be mixed.  I have been listening to a lot of 19th Century-set Doctor Who stories of late and it is fair to say that I’m becoming a little tired of the trappings.  A high percentage of the stories I’ve watched, listened to and read, have been London-centric; all foggy, cobbled streets, lurking menace and stiff upper lip.  The fact that I’ve had 3 seasons of Jago and Litefoot, and a bunch of Sherlock Holmes stores, probably hasn’t helped this monotony.  That isn’t to say the stories aren’t entertaining, but one of the reasons I love Doctor Who is the variety and doing my marathon in the way I am has lead to that variety being stymied slightly.

A few 19th Century/Victorian stories have broken the mould a little.  Mark Gatiss’s The Crimson Horror set the story in the industrial North of England and gave us a different atmosphere to stories like The Snowmen and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.  Many other stories centre around European countries such as France and Germany which don’t usually feel all that different from the London-centric ones (particularly as little effort is made to make the guest casts sound any different than if they were featuring in an England-set story).  Of course, we have also visited the USA during this period but these have only provided a brief respite from the usual Victoriana.

The Ghosts of Gralstead is a little bit of both: it treads some very familiar routes of previous 19th Century stories in this marathon but also has a middle section which branches out and takes us somewhere very different.


When Big Finish finally got Tom Baker, it was a big deal.  They had courted him since day one but it had taken many years for him to finally come round to the idea of playing the Doctor again.  Many fans were terribly excited.  Me, not so much.  The 4th Doctor/Tom Baker is one of my least favourite incarnations.  I was pleased that there would be a different Doctor in the mix, but I hadn’t been desperate for his arrival.  

Ironically, when the first range of 4th Doctor stories were released, the reception was lukewarm at best.  Many people didn’t like the fact that they were single CD releases and the first story, Destination: Nerva came in for a lot of criticism.  There were a few gems; The Wrath of the Iceni, for example, but generally people were underwhelmed.  A much more positive response was received by the two 4th Doctor stories released as part of their Lost Stories range: Foe from the Future (a distant relative of The Talons of Weng-Chiang) and The Valley of Death (based on a story idea by Philip Hinchcliffe).  People cited the longer running time of each story (Foe is 6 episodes long and Valley is 4) as allowing the stories to be a better reflection of their era and to tell a better story.

Sometime later, Big Finish announced the release of a box set of 4th Doctor adventures entitled Philip Hinchcliffe Presents… which brought together two stories based on ideas that had been ‘kicking around’ the production team back in 1977.  With a controversially high price tag, the box set was released to fairly high acclaim.  Certainly people seemed more inclined to like it than they had the more regular Fourth Doctor Adventures.  Having enjoyed the Lost Stories box set, I came to this release with some degree of anticipation even though I have seemed to enjoy the Fourth Doctor Adventures more than others.

Unfortunately, at least for this story, I’ve come away rather disappointed.

The main problem I had with The Ghosts of Gralstead is that it felt like a retread of many of the other 19th Century-set stories already experienced in my marathon.  It touched base with the bodysnatchers of Medicinal Purposes; the life-sapping villain and their human servant of The Talons of Weng-Chiang; the freak show of Other Lives; and the spooky old house of Ghost Light.  Add to this a fairly generic story of monstrous aliens tracking an artefact with powers indistinguishable from magic and it all feels like I’ve seen and heard it all before.  

I honestly cannot see why this story is so highly regarded.  The only aspect I found engaging was the relationship between Leela and Abasi, an African manservant.  The character of Abasi allows the story to shift location halfway through to Africa and a much more interesting section – if only for the unusual location (for Doctor Who – I can’t think of a huge number of stories set here).  Unfortunately, this part almost seems like a wild goose chase merely there to stretch the story out to six episodes.  A revelation than Abasi is the rightful king of his homeland lacks development, as does a minor side story involving the family that reside at Gralstead.  Bizarrely, even with the use of the TARDIS, many months pass in the journey from England to Africa and back again allowing the plans of the villain to reach fruition.  It makes the three sections of the story seem rather disjointed and the idea that the villain of the piece Mordrega has been happily munching away on victims in the intervening months leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

The plot also contains far too much ‘indistinguishable from magic’ stuff.  When a character is killed, the story’s ‘magic’ alien artefact brings them back to life.  It’s bad enough with guest cast, but when it happens to Leela it stretches credulity a little.  When it then also happens to the Doctor I actually rolled my eyes.  By this point the listener knows he won’t stay dead (even without knowing that, as the Doctor, he can’t die) because of the magic and consequently there is absolutely no drama or tension.  In fact, I think this is precisely what this story is lacking – any drama or tension.

Mordrega is a waste of Carolyn Seymour.  She is very one-note and nothing very interesting is done with her.  She wanders around being evil, killing people and turns into some giant alien thing (I had completely lost interest by the climax and was only half paying attention).   The rest of the guest cast are fine but as I didn’t feel anything interesting was being done, they failed to make much impact.  

Tom Baker and Louise Jameson don’t seem as comfortable with the material either.  I have liked Louise Jameson’s performance as Leela in the 4th Doctor Adventures and how it contrasts with her performances in the Gallifrey and Jago & Litefoot ranges.  Here, her relationship with Abasi is touching (and his marriage proposal is a darn sight more believable than her sudden hand-holding with Andred in The Invasion of Time), but there isn’t a lot else going on.  Tom strays dangerously into Nest Cottage territory throughout the story and sounded to me far more like ‘Tom Baker’ than the ‘4th Doctor’ which was an issue I had with the Nest Cottage audios.

I’ll admit that the Hinchcliffe era isn’t one of my favourites but this seemed like a half-hearted retread of 19th century tropes lacking in any danger because of a magic crown which would bring anyone dead back to life.  I’ll be listening to the second story in this box set (The Devil’s Armada) sometime soon but on the basis of this, I’m not holding out much hope.