The Nine: Peake Season

"Do you know where you're from?"

Writer: Lizbeth Myles

Format: Audio

Released: June 2022

Series: Fourth Doctor Adventures 11.05

Featuring: Fourth Doctor

Synopsis

After an embarrassing encounter, the Doctor tries to make amends to Mervyn Peake by offering him a trip in the TARDIS. It's a trip the famous author should never have accepted.

Soon he and the Doctor find themselves trapped in a nameless city and working as newspaper cartoonists.

Where are they? More importantly, where is the TARDIS? And more importantly than that – can they escape with their lives?

Verdict

Peake Season was a decent story to conclude The Nine second half of the eleventh series of Fourth Doctor Adventures! I still find it a little baffling to give this boxset an umbrella title of a villain who only appears in the opening story of three, but I suppose it’s no real issue. That just seems a tad more strange here in particular because this adventure was not released separately which wasn’t the case for the first two. This was a shorter story at just two parts but it was quite long for that format in pushing eighty minutes which was good! There was a lot going on but I’m not sure it was all entirely clear at times. I have no idea who Mervyn Peake was which I think actually hindered my listening of the story slightly. He was an enjoyable enough character but when his introduction is the Doctor mistaking him for Tolkien it almost immediately feels lesser than. That wasn’t the best basis to start an adventure with in my opinion, especially for a character who would become the companion for it! His interactions with the Doctor were amusing and I liked that it was hinted at there being a shared history between them already, but even so it did seem a tad strange for him to just get invited aboard the TARDIS! The scale of the story in terms of time was unexpected with it lasting weeks and I just never got the feel that the Doctor and Peake were comfortable in their surroundings. The setting being ambiguous and nameless didn’t help things and it was almost annoying that the city was called just that. The story lacked a little identity which if included could have been much better. The highlight for me was undoubtedly Honor Valspierre. She clearly knew more than she was letting on about the society and its mysteries from the off and I liked that she believed the Doctor and Mervyn to be creations. She didn’t think they were real and the Doctor found that funny which in this incarnation was great fun as a listener. Honor made for a fantastic villain and her knowing the truth about Queen Alexandria was intriguing. I thought the concept of the pocket dimension was pretty decent but I wasn’t a huge fan of her being a little girl. She had drawn things into existing and whilst the Doctor took advantage of that as only this incarnation can, it did feel like it was a basically a Fear Her rip off. On a personal note, that doesn’t work for me as that episode is one of my all time least favourite. I’m not sure why but it’s difficult to make children work and just hearing the Queen wasn’t exciting for me because it’s difficult to take her seriously when a position of power. Even if she supposedly had always been missing! It’s a shame as the concept was strong and with more identity and just details I think this adventure could really have worked even better. I feel like I’ve focused on the negatives more than the positives in this blog entry as my rating does show I enjoyed! I think I’m just frustrated because I know it could have been even better. Alexandria returning to her real dimension and the future some thirty years or so later was fun as there was a new Queen of her name installed now and she’d have to lay low. Overall, a good little story to conclude the series that could have been even better. 

Rating: 7/10