Doctor Who: Rat Trap
by Tony Lee (Big Finish, 2011)
Heavy-handed on the guest characterisation but a good story for the regulars (particularly the Doctor, Nyssa and Turlough). Although the ethics of animal experimentation provide a strong underpinning, this is rather destabilised by Big Finish’s penchant for rasping, borderline unintelligible monster voices.
Doctor Who: Loups-Garoux
by Marc Platt (Big Finish, 2001)
Werewolves are given some welly for a change, Platt anticipating Glen Duncan by a decade in substituting patrician cold-bloodedness for mere savagery. The Fifth Doctor and Turlough are treated as characters, not cut-outs. The only flaw is the deus ex machina ending.
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead
by Peter Grimwade; dir. Peter Moffatt (BBC, 1983)
Doctor Who’s take on the Flying Dutchman offers up what should have been a staggering moral quandary, played subtly by Peter Davison but undercut by the plot’s bumbling Brigadier resolution. Turlough is a welcome addition, the exuberant synthesiser music perhaps less so.