The Evil One

"Run all you like, Doctor. You cannot escape the Evil One."

Writer: Nicholas Briggs

Format: Audio

Released: April 2014

Series: FDA 3.04

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Leela

Synopsis 

The TARDIS lands in the cargo hold of luxury space cruiser the Moray Rose. The crew and passengers are missing. The agents of Inter-Galaxy Insurance are determined to find out what's happened and the shadowy Interplanetary Police Inspector Efendi is showing a very particular interest. 

Caught up in all this, the Doctor and Leela find themselves facing a horde of metal mantis-like aliens. But throughout it all, Leela is haunted by terrible nightmares and the dawning realisation that everything she knows about her life is a lie. 

Verdict 

The Evil One was a brilliant audio story to continue along the Fourth Doctor Adventures very nicely. With my love of Romana II, I still eagerly await the fourth season of stories with Lalla Ward returning alongside Tom Baker for what I think is my all time favourite TARDIS pairing, but if there's a companion to the Fourth Doctor that challenges my opinion on that then it's the wonderful savage Leela. The humour that comes with the Fourth Doctor and Leela is just incredibly good and that was seen in abundance in the first series within this range but I think it's been a bit lessened this time around and the focus has solely been on storytelling which is probably the right move. And from it we got a great adventure here. It was intriguing seeing the journey Leela went on throughout the hour with her really being tormented by what turned out to be the returning emaciated Master. It wasn't the strongest of performances from Geoffrey Beevers and to be honest the villain I love so much was only just above average here. I think the form of the Master that is present during the Tom Baker era should have stayed where it was after the first series of this range. I really liked Geoffrey Beevers strange, eery and calm take on the Master in Trail of the White Worm and The Oseidon Adventure, as well as Dust Breeding with the Seventh Doctor, but now here it's clear this incarnation can only go so far I'm afraid. Despite my disappointment at a slightly lacklustre performance from the infamous lead villain, the Salonu made up for it a bit. I liked them. They didn't do mass amounts but the creepiness of them and they just seemed to have something about them that made me think they were fantastic! Leela's disapproval of them might be the reason. I loved how she disliked their voices. The role of the Salonu was decent throughout but despite the mediocre performance the plot inspired by the plan of the Master was the obvious highlight. I liked the continuation from the last time the Fourth Doctor and Leela met the Master at the end of the first series of FDAs in the already mentioned stories, and now the Master really was going to target the primitive savage mind of Leela and turn it against the Doctor, and it was done rather beautifully. She was questioning who she was. She came to believe that she revelled in the death of her own father but as seen and referenced in The Face of Evil, that certainly was not the case. Leela took great pride in her heritage and family and the recollection of her first kill was a touching moment. It really was lovely. The way Leela described her inspired and inaccurate hatred towards the Doctor was superb and I thought her taunting of his life was shocking and horrifying. The way the Master lost his hold upon the women at the subject of his latest scheme was tremendous! I don't need much to make me like a story, simple logic does it for me and because these stories are Doctor Who, I rarely rate below a 6 and here I was always on the 8/9 border, I get a feeling throughout where it's going to lie and then we had that stunning final scene in the TARDIS with the Doctor explaining just how much he valued Leela and cherished their friendship. He explained just how remarkable she was and that really was such a good scene. I liked how the Master escaped once more but Leela was the highlight for me, believing she was the evil one but ending up as the remarkable one. Great audio!

Rating: 9/10