The Dream Team: Dream Team

"The last place in the universe to need advertising."

Writer: Lizzie Hopley

Format: Audio

Released: April 2024

Series: Fifth Doctor Adventures 7.02

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Adrian, Nyssa, Tegan

Synopsis

"Welcome to Concordium! The one-stop destination for elite and effective corporate bonding."

A protected wonder of space is being exploited for 'company away days' but when the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric land to challenge the organisers, they fall into a web of perfectly tailored nightmares. As the Doctor confronts one of the most dangerous monsters in existence, one that uses your own mind against you while it feeds, his companions fall deeper into the trap and a nasty truth is revealed – you can die in dreams.

Verdict

Dream Team was an excellent story to conclude The Dream Team series of Fifth Doctor Adventures! This was a superb follow up to the opener of The Merfolk Murders to round out what has been a quite brilliant little series! I was excited by the prospect of the Kantrofarri returning as the story had something of a Classic Doctors, New Monsters vibe to it which is absolutely in my wheelhouse. I’m a huge fan of that range. It’s a little bit ironic too as I wasn’t a massive fan of the Dream Crabs when they appeared in Last Christmas, but now I’m really enjoying what they bring with the dream states and especially when dreams overlap. I think it might have been overdone in that Christmas Special from a decade ago but here was just about the right amount of dreams within dreams. The quartet of the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Adric and Tegan works really well and usually a four strong team means there might be a little stumbling around each other, but that wasn’t a problem here as one or more could just be asleep! The modern technology mixing in with the Classic era was terrific and I loved how things started with the TARDIS being infiltrated by a commercial virus. It was unique and quite fun but Nyssa wasn’t happy at being woken up. The fact it was reverberating all around the TARDIS was good and showed just how powerful it was. The Doctor talking Nyssa out of the dream once they were out at a supposedly peaceful wonder was quite brilliant and the sequence where they were both trying to snap each other out of the dream was incredible. I nearly howled on the train at the fact the Doctor slapped Nyssa without her asking. He’d asked for it twice but the image of him just walloping her in the face as a surprise was hilarious! Nyssa’s innocence made that funnier than it probably ought to have been. The nature of the Dream Crabs meant they didn’t make a huge impact in the audio format other than the disturbing sound effects, but that was more than made up for with the incredible artwork for this series. The familiar outfits of Doctor and companions adorned with the Dream Crabs is so striking. It was an ultimate selling point for me! The mathematical sequence that the Doctor orchestrated for both Nyssa and Adric to keep them concentrated and focused on not being consumed by the dream was really good and anytime I tried to do it in my head I nearly found myself ignoring the audio to work out the answer. That wasn’t ideal! But it was a fun little teaser. I liked the emotion that consumed Tegan in hearing her mum within the dream and Adric showed some strong maturity in this story to not only convince her that she was dreaming and her mum wasn’t real, but to also give himself to the Dream Crabs later and enter the dream to save Nyssa. That was admirable stuff. I thought the conclusion was a little predictable in that the penultimate dream was where they thought they’d won but were still actually in a dream, but I did like the ambitious ending in the TARDIS with Tegan not convinced they were actually out of the dream at all! The Doctor stating that they would never really know was quite fun. Overall, an excellent story!

Rating: 9/10