Trail of the White Worm

"Is this a private burglary, or can anyone join in?"

Writer: Alan Barnes
Format: Audio
Released: May 2012
Series: FDA 1.05

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Leela

Synopsis

The legend dates back to Roman times, at least: a great White Worm, as wide as a man, slithers out of the rocks of the Dark Peak Gap to take animals, sometimes even children, for its food.

When the Doctor and Leela arrive in the wilds of Derbyshire, only to get caught up in the hunt for a missing girl, they soon discover that the legend of the Worm is very much alive - even now, in 1979.

Worse still, it seems that the Doctor isn't the only renegade Time Lord on the trail of this deadly and mysterious Worm...

Verdict

Trail of the White Worm continued the high standard of Fourth Doctor Adventures thus far and although the plot threads are far from finished, it was a great little audio. Now, I think I've mentioned this for every blog of my little FDA run so far, but the wonderful humour between the Fourth Doctor and Leela is just magnificent. It really is. It makes the pair so easy to listen to and provides chuckles from almost anywhere. Even being separated from his companion for most of this story, the Doctor still put in some terrific humour of his own (as you can see from my quote). The plot was good and the idea of a legend of a great worm was intriguing, especially when the Doctor and Leela found its tracks. The derby locals failure to name it, in fear presumably, was very good I thought. The 'you know what' was a nice way to put the unnamable. From the cover, I was particularly looking forward to having The Deadly Assassin version of the Master in a performed story once more, but sadly, the Master's role was what let the story down in my view. He didn't really need to be there until the cliffhanger at the end of the whole audio, and if Barnes had kept the revealing of the Master until that point I think it would have been much more effective. But what the Master was up to was indeed fantastic. Causing havoc for his own mysterious gain. I loved the irony of the renegade using a giant worm, seemingly implied that he modified it, to create his own wormhole in space-time. Just what is he up to now? The guest cast of Spindleton and Demesne were very good and I'm not sure why, but the story almost seemed like it was in a land of fiction (not that we saw in The Mind Robber) but almost as if someone was controlling the events from the outside. The unexpected cliffhanger at the end of the audio was intriguing to say the least, using events in this story the Master is bringing through the wormhole alien accomplices! The question I'm looking very forward to being answered in the season finale is, who are those alien accomplices that the Master will be aligning himself with?

Rating: 8/10