There have been a few sequels to The Mind Robber: the New Adventure Conundrum, the 4th Doctor audio The Crooked Man and a series of four Big Finish adventures featuring the 6th Doctor and Jamie: City of Spires; the Companion Chronicle – Night’s Black Agents; The Wreck of the Titan and Legend of the Cybermen.
In my main marathon, I briefly reviewed both City of Spires and Night’s Black Agents as they are both set, in part, in a fictional version of 1780. 


At the beginning of this story, the 6th Doctor finds himself in what he believes to be Scotland in the late 18th century.  He eventually meets Black Donald, a local rebel leader, who is actually Jamie McCrimmon.  But Jamie doesn’t recognise the Doctor at all, not even from their initial encounter in the aftermath of Culloden which, as the Doctor points out, was the one memory the Time Lords left him with when returning him to his own time at the end of The War Games.


The Doctor becomes embroiled in Jamie’s fight against Red Cap, a mythical monster who is terrorising the highlands and is in the employ the Overlord who has transformed Edinburgh into a massive factory, drilling for ‘black water’.  The sections in Edinburgh are, intriguingly set in 1884 and the mystery of the time contradictions is what drives the rest of the trilogy (as I understand it). In 1780, though, the Doctor finds the Highland Clearances are happening around 40 years too late and is also stumped by the presence of Rob Roy, again, 40 years out of his time.City of Spires is a fun audio adventure and the chemistry between ‘old Sixie’ and Jamie is great fun.  The guest cast includes Georgia Moffett who fulfils the role of ‘female companion’ in the absence of Jamie’s usual friends, Polly, Victoria or Zoe.  It seem to be a characteristic of Jamie which modern writers have picked up on – his protective nature towards pretty young girls (it’s returned to again in Night’s Black Agents).  Georgia is great fun as Mrs Alice Cyprian although Richard Earl (Watson to Nick Briggs’ Holmes) is a bit over the top French accent-wise as her husband, Victor (he seems to have been taking lessons from John Sessions).The idea of the Red Caps is a fun one – transformed humans (it seems) with boiler suits and red builder’s helmets stomping around the highlands.  It gives us a great cliffhanger when helmets are descending towards Jamie and Alice.  The Overlord himself is a bit of a let down as we find slimey leech/slug-like aliens controlling a human body.  I’m sure it hasn’t but it just seems like that’s something that’s already been done. 
The mystery of the ‘black water’ is a good one and, one which will be significant across the subsequent stories.


The Companion Chronicles are usually stand alone stories featuring Doctors that, initially, were out of use for BF.  Ocasionally, though, the range would venture into stories that slotted into other ranges – The Prisoner’s Dilemma fits into the Key2Time trilogy and Project Nirvana fits into the Black TARDIS/White TARDIS story arc involving the 7th Doctor.  Night’s Black Agents is an example of one of these types of Chronicle.


The story finds Jamie and the 6th Doctor on their journey back to the TARDIS after the events of City of Spires.  They find it has vanished but tracks reveal it has been dragged to Ravenswood Castle.  However, Ravenswood Castle and the boggy mire nearby have, according to Jamie, moved much closer to the TARDIS’ landing place than they should have been.


The Doctor and Jamie are attacked by a kelpie and then, sinking into the bog, are rescued by the soldiers of Reverend Merodach, the mysterious and incredibly creepy owner of Ravenswood Castle.  He plans to use the TARDIS to enable him to escape the ‘world’ he lives in and there is much more to him than meets the eye. As I mentioned above, Jamie becomes protective (and indeed a little lovelorn) for the beautiful wife of Merodach, Lucy.  One of the problems I had with this play is that although Hines performs it very well, and Hugh Ross is brilliant as the nefarious Merodach, the other characters lose impact as Hines doesn’t really do any other voices.  Admittedly, the script includes a lot of reported speech rather than direct, probably to cut down on Hines having to do too many voices (which on single voice audio can sometimes be difficult to differentiate between) but it does mean that, bearing in mind how important Lucy is to the conclusion of the story, there isn’t much to hang her character on aside from the fact she is beautiful and probably mesmerised in some way by Merodach.  Talking of voices, Hines is famed now for his channelling of Patrick Troughton.  So impressed has fandom been by his performances in the 2nd Doctor Companion Chronicles and Lost Stories, that the unthinkable has happened and Big Finish are effectively recasting the 2nd Doctor with Hines for their upcoming Early Years range.  Hines is less successful at replicating the performance of Colin Baker which is a shame, but the script wisely pushes the Doctor to the sidelines to minimise this issue.  I do wonder if the writer or production team anticipated this problem early in the scriptwriting stage as most of the Chronicles have a fair amount of Doctor dialogue but usually performed by a person who spent a lot of time with the original actor in the series: William Russell, Peter Purves and even, to some extent, Katy Manning.  Hines, though having worked with Baker occasionally, obviously doesn’t have the same length of experience he had working with Troughton and unfortunately this shows as his ‘Doctor’ is quite flat and uninspiring.The ending of the story, much like the ending of City of Spires, is left to be explained later in the trilogy of Main Range stories – involving as it does, demons and witches and the apparent reality of magic.  This was an interesting story and the passages where either Hines is just being Jamie or Hugh Ross is monologuing as Merodach are good listening but overall it felt like a story which didn’t need the Doctor which, bearing in mind what will be revealed about the true nature of Jamie, seems a bit odd as I would like to have had more from the Doctor on what exactly he thought was going on at Ravenswood rather than this version of Jamie.


The next story in the trilogy is The Wreck of the Titan.  A nice piece of synchronicity with my main marathon is that, ostensibly, this story opens in 1912.  The Doctor has intended on bringing Jamie for a trip aboard the Queen Mary.  Unfortunately, in true Doctor Who style, they’ve actually ended up aboard the Titanic.


However, by the end of the first episode, any thoughts that this is going to be a straightforward historical adventure have hit the proverbial iceberg.  The Titanic suddenly morphs into a different ship: the Titan.  The Titan, though, still hits an iceberg and sinks and suddenly the story becomes something else entirely as Jamie and then the Doctor are rescued by one Captain Nemo – and the truth behind this trilogy slowly becomes clear. 


Oddly, though, the Doctor tumbles through all sorts of possible explanations including an elaborate theme park and futuristic tourism before settling on the idea that he and Jamie are trapped inside a computer game.  It strikes me as a little odd that the Doctor wouldn’t even countenance the idea of events occurring in the Land of Fiction but this is probably to allow the cliffhanger at the end of this story where the familiar sound effect of the White Robots occurs as the Doctor and Jamie suddenly find themselves in a glaring white void.


Before that though, we get some more clues about the black water introduced in City of Spires, with Nemo harvesting it from giant squids making it clear that the black water is actually ink.


The guest cast of this story includes Alexander Siddig as Nemo and Miranda Raison as Tess who then becomes Myra when the ship changes.  Both are superb with Raison, in particular, channelling a bit of her TV character Tallulah in the character of Myra. 


What I hadn’t appreciated about this story is that The Wreck of the Titan is a real novel.  It was written in the late 19th century but eerily predicted the events of the Titanic and was republished in the wake of the disaster.  It reminded me of claims, although mostly debunked, that a Dean Koontz novel from the early 1980s makes mention of the Covid 19 virus.  What struck me more though is that I would have thought that the existence of The Wreck of the Titan would be more well-known and it was something I was completely unaware of.


The story also mentions some cheap novels based around famous ships: Mary of the Marie Celeste and Tess of the Titanic, for example.  What’s odd – and yet weirdly appropriate – is that there is a book, Fateful, which features a character called Tess – on the Titanic!  However, it was published after The Wreck of the Titan was released meaning it’s just a coincidence, although rather a neat one.


The arrival of the White Robots leads directly into the final part of this series of stories – Legend of the Cybermen.


Outside of Who, I’m a big fan of the subgenre of fantasy stories which bring disparate characters together for new adventures.  It started with the musical, Into the Woods, which sees various fairy tale characters – Cinderella, Jack, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood – weave in and out of each others stories as a Baker and his wife have to gather four items to dispel a curse on their family: a cow, golden hair, a slipper and a red cloak. A whole new story for each character begins in Act Two, with a Giant’s wife looking to avenge the death of her husband.  It is one of my all-time favourite musicals and the recent Disney version is actually a pretty good adaptation – although the stage version will always be superior. 


More recently the series Once Upon a Time takes the basic premise of Into the Woods and explodes it on to a much larger canvas.  Principally based around Disney properties it involves a curse placed by the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which has sent various characters through to modern day America with no memory of their former lives.  With initial characters such as Snow, Charming, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumplestiltskin and Pinocchio, the series has gone on to include, among others, Robin Hood, Elsa and Anna, the Wicked Witch of the West, Cruella De Vil and Doctor Frankenstein.  It’s a brilliant series and has interwoven the various characters in fascinating stories as the heroes battle the villains.


Which brings us back to Legend of the Cybermen, which sees heroes fighting villains in the Land of Fiction.  It’s a clever sequel to The Mind Robber which takes the basic premise of that story and extrapolates it in a new and interesting way.  The Doctor and Jamie meet Alice (of Wonderland), the Artful Dodger and Dracula and find themselves battling Cybermen that have invaded the land.  And they also reunite with Rob Roy, from City of Spires, Captain Nemo and, delightfully, Zoe – and two versions of her to boot!


The idea of fictional characters taking up arms against the Cybermen is great, but even better – and strangely chilling – is the fact the Cybermen are converting fairy tale creatures: fairies, trolls, giants.  It’s a really original take on the Cyber-modus operandi and even though it’s a very visual concept, the production does well to convey the imagery.


The Land of Fiction is also well-realised with an enchanted forest, a precarious mountain pass with rope bridge across a huge chasm and Frankenstein’s castle.  


Colin Baker, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury absolutely shine in this story.  Padbury, in particular, stands out with her two interpretations of Zoe.  Hines, too, gets some excellent work done when Jamie discovers that he is a fictional as Alice and Dracula.


As a climax to the trilogy, Legend of the Cybermen ties up everything neatly and manages to expand the mythology of the Land of Fiction in a clever and imaginative way.  By riffing on the ‘mashed-up fairy tale’ trope, it was always going to be on to a winner with me, but even beyond that, it is a pacey, ripping yarn with some great performances.


This whole ‘quadrilogy’ is highly recommended (although you can skip Night’s Black Agents and not miss anything major) and shows how well elements of Doctor Who’s mythology can be developed and expanded on in fun, creative, imaginative ways.