The Revenants

On his way to the Orkney Islands, Ian talks with a fellow traveller on a ferry boat, and remembers when he and Barbara came here before with the Doctor. Something went wrong upon landing and the TARDIS left them behind, taking the Doctor with it, leaving them stranded in the night. The ordeal that followed was a journey into fear, terror and the supernatural, and their only hope that night was a local witch and a mysterious medicine man...

This one was released as a special download exclusive off the Big Finish regular range, and even though it was effectively a freebie there was no sign of any corners being cut in script of production values. As continuity goes we are looking at the time following The Dalek Invasion of Earth after Susan's departure from the crew. Ian remarks how the Doctor deciding to force Susan to settle and stop travelling was the bravest thing he had ever seen him do, but when the TARDIS vanishes from the misty bog he wonders if that is just what he has now done to himself and Barbara. On the better side of things, it is 1958 so he and Barbara are not too far off from their own time and if they needed to they could sit out the next few years and resume their lives once that fateful night in 1963 has passed. But Barbara has seen too much and knows they could not just sit by and wait, knowing things about the future ahead and being unable to do anything about them.

So the word revenant is described in Wikipedia as visible ghost or animated corpse returning from the dead. So, zombies. But these ones are made of mud and rise from the bog with a flicker of incandescent light and even if they are "just mud" they're still not to be messed with. They are to be run from.

And what do you do when the medicine man you seek is actually the very person you thought had left you behind?

Atmosphere wise The Revenants is pretty creepy. There's something innately terrifying about the marsh at night with all the half-glimpsed things in the fog and the sounds of ... things you can't see. And the quicksand. Always the quicksand.

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