Etheria

Separated from the TARDIS, the Doctor and Vicki are in the company of a hunter on a distant planet on a quest to reunite with Steven and save him from kidnapping pirates. The area of the planet they must traverse is saturated with a thick fog which causes anyone who breathes it in to hallucinate and sleepwalk. But there's more to this situation, the Doctor believes. Neither he nor Vicki can actually remember arriving here, which makes them wonder who their guide actually is, and where they are actually going.

This is another short trip adventure narrated by Peter Purves without actually stepping into his role as Steven Taylor. Etheria is not even an hour long but certainly feels like it is given the complexity of the script. The short trips range doesn't have much to it beyond straight narration, a very bare bones approach to storytelling although there is incidental music and sound effects to go with it. Purves tells the story well, he's not a struggle to listen to as he goes through the material. And the story itself fits into the format very well; I was wondering as I listened to it and saw the time time creeping towards the 35 minute mark if there was going to be some rushed botched ending, but hurrah there was not! The beginning of the story is only referenced as we join the action somewhere in the middle of the tale - works best for working with a shorter format of story. There are no really big references to series continuity in the story so it's a comfortable enough place to drop it and stretch out that gap between Mission to the Unknown and The Myth Makers to make it feel like more time is passing before the Doctor himself lands on Kembel as the unfortunate Marc Cory did. Another success from Big Finish.

And speaking of success from Big Finish, I listened to this one on my phone in the kitchen while I did dishes today. I'm one of the 30 beta testers for their new app and I have not encountered any major issues with it. Well done to them, I say; so much handier to just download the adventures from their cloud to my phone rather than mess around with file transfers between the computer and the MP3 player, These guys are so good at their job.

NEXT EPISODE: THE BOUNTY OF CERES