Big Finish, producer of Doctor Who audio adventures since 1999, has announced they will be celebrating four decades of Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor next year by releasing two anniversary box sets filled with adventure. The first of these box sets will release in January to coincide with the broadcast of the very first Fifth Doctor adventure, Castrovalva.
Volume 1 of Doctor Who – The Fifth Doctor Adventures: Forty opens with The Secrets of Telos by Matt Fitton and is a direct sequel to the original 1967 Doctor Who episode Tomb of the Cybermen. In this episode the expedition to the tombs was not a success and though they are on their way home in a space ship the danger has not yet passed, fortunately the Doctor enters the fray and things are bound to start going smoothly aren’t they? Unfortunately, something odd has happened to the Doctor as he finds himself inhabiting his future self in a different part of his own timeline with no idea of why or how this has happened.
In the second episode of the volume, the Doctor is still bouncing through his own timeline and finds himself in a small Viking settlement on the edge of a volcano in Iceland. The Viking leader believes he has found a god in the ice and soon the Doctor, along with Nyssa, Tegan and Adric, find themselves battling fearsome Ice Warriors in order to defend themselves and those settlers around them.
Producer David Richardson said: “Can it really be 40 years since Peter Davison stepped into his cricketing gear and brought a whole new zest and energy to Doctor Who? The anniversary of the arrival of the first young Doctor deserves to be celebrated, and the party lasts over two box sets. Why is the Fifth Doctor travelling along his own time stream? All will be revealed in a surprise-filled arc, and many old friends are back alongside some of the show’s best-loved foes.”
This epic pair of adventures will be available in Doctor Who – The Fifth Doctor Adventures: Forty Volume 1 in January 2022 and is available to pre-order now as a collector’s edition CD at £19.99 or as a download at £16.99 from the Big Finish website.
Volume 2 is scheduled to release in September 2022 with pre-orders also available. Fans will be able to pre-order both volumes as a bundle.
