The Hidden Realm

The unknown is always with Jo Grant these days but it hits close to home when her cousin's husband mysteriously vanishes in a small village in the English countryside. The Doctor agrees to take her and investigate, and he discovers the area is riddled with anomalies on the quantum level. A pair of police officers are making their own, somewhat less sophisticated investigation, but discover that there is something not quite right about the area. There are flocks of magpies gathering every time someone goes missing, and the missing tend to show up again after about five days. But the Doctor is not one to calmly accept this as anything normal and delves deeper into what is going on and discovers an atrocity hidden in plain sight.

This is the second adventure from Volume 2 of The Third Doctor Adventures, and as with The Transcendence of Ephros it's another four part adventure with Katy Manning back as Jo Grant alongside Tim Treloar's fantastically convincing third Doctor impression. It's been mentioned in other reviews that Manning seemed to be having a less than effective stint with the full cast episodes when they started out, but I don't really see (or hear) it myself. Fine she doesn't sound as young as she used to but that's the reality of ageing for everyone, especially in a series with this kind of longevity, but she does her best to bring her voice up a bit to sound a bit more like the Jo we knew from the screen.

Where this falls in continuity was a bit of a puzzle at first; the Doctor and Jo are clearly still working for UNIT and mention the organization here and there, but eventually Jo makes a reference to knowing the voice of the second Doctor, so this can go anywhere after The Three Doctors once the TARDIS is back in action, although they do say that the ship is not up and running at the moment.

Realm fits neatly into a four episode format, which made it easy for me to enjoy on a day trip for work. The structure of the story doesn't really do anything new and experimental, it is content to just be entertaining by splitting the Doctor and Jo up and re-pairing them with other cast members as they investigate what's going on. The protagonist of the piece is something new though; not exactly complicated, a very straight up kind of menace but with enough of a motivational twist to remain interesting. In all I am glad it wasn't a super complicated listen as I was driving at the time and didn't want to miss anything crucial as can happen with some of the more complex Big Finish tales.

NEXT EPISODE: THE RISE OF THE NEW HUMANS