Helter Skelter

"It's so fun nobody can resist."

Writer: James Moran

Format: Audio

Released: April 2026

Series: Fifth Doctor Adventures 10.02

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough

Synopsis

When a bio-engineered planet and amusement park undergoes a critical malfunction, the entire planet tears itself apart – and the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are thrown back to their arrival, trapped in a repeating time loop.

But for some reason, only Tegan can see the loop, not the Doctor – it has been hidden from him somehow. So why can Tegan see it, and how is she going to fix it?

Verdict

Helter Skelter was an excellent episode to continue my way through the Fifth Doctor Adventures series for which this is the titular story for the audio anthology! It's a fun name and I liked how for a good chunk of the first part that it did just seem like the Doctor had brought Tegan and Turlough to somewhere fun. It was a holiday made of entertainment in the form of Funtopia, an intergalactic theme park which is a marvellous concept and the only bad thing might actually just be that it was in a non-visual format. I thought the world building here was really strong and I do think the cover art helps reflect that for its portion of the illustration. The actual episode starting with an unseen adventure seeing the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough being on the run from Genghis Khan was good fun and was this the attack mentioned by the Ninth Doctor in Rose? It seems a shame that we don't get the full episode for that because that would be terrific! Tegan was less than pleased with the Doctor for having them in the wrong time by a millennium and to be fair I feel like that's warranted so her commenting on the Doctor's dematerialisation parking as a 6.5 was good fun. I thought the way the mystery at Funtopia came in segments was really well done and after a little bit of a slow burner, the pace picked up perfectly. The Doctor being in the queue for a rollercoaster without really knowing why was intriguing and obviously pointed towards something bigger being at play. But I wasn't expecting the entire planet to then blow up! I don't really know why that would be included in the synopsis for the episode because that's a pretty impactful moment! I do love a time loop and the twist here of only Tegan being the one to know it was happening was fantastic. The realisation of what was happening to her and her growing frustrations were great but I also liked how she was showing initiative and getting to grips with things after each reset. The Doctor claiming to be able to feel immediately if they were in a time loop was great because then that allowed him to realise it had been manufactured specifically for him to not be aware. And that meant only one person in the universe could have created it. Himself! That was a really good twist and I must admit I was expecting someone else to be revealed but that worked well. It certainly provided good logic to the story's events and I enjoyed how particularly in the second part things advanced as we learned more about the hooded figures and the Cult of Coreolis. I do wish the Doctor hadn't heard of them because I prefer as a listener to share the same knowledge as he does because where would he have acquired the knowledge to name them so quickly? I liked how they were seeking to free a warlord from another dimension and getting the people of Funtopia to all focus on one thought was great as a means to open the portal. It explained why the Doctor and Turlough were acting up rather differently! Deandra and Bridger were fun characters and I liked how their interactions with Tegan changed as she got more comfortable with the time loop. She really wasn't messing around by the end! I was intrigued that no matter where the TARDIS went as well, the time loop stayed active. I wasn't actually expecting that! Turlough trying to make sense of the same event and action from the Doctor in preventing the explosion being both the cause and solution of the time loop was marvellous and the continued insistence to look at things four dimensionally was magnificent. I'm so glad that was the final line of the episode. Overall, a superb listen to continue the series!

Rating: 9/10