Review by Daniel Mansfield

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The dream team of the Fourth Doctor, Leela and K-9 returns for two new audio adventures in The Last Queen of the Nile.

Boxset opener Conspiracy of Silence by Jonathan Morris is a slender, polished story that pits the TARDIS trio (plus the Brigadier, who they last linked up with in The Ruins of Kaerula earlier this year) against the terrifying Silents first seen in 2011’s The Impossible Astronaut.

Like that episode, this is a story that requires your undivided attention, Morris incorporating a very clever structural conceit that ties in perfectly with the Silents’ memory-manipulating abilities. To go into any more detail would be to spoil a great surprise, but it’s safe to say that, while you might find yourself scratching your head after finishing Part One, by the time the story is over you’ll be marvelling at how well everything has slotted into place.

If Conspiracy of Silence echoes more recent Who, then its follow-up, The Last Queen of the Nile by David K Barnes is very much in the vein of the show’s earliest days. A four-part ‘pure historical’ with no sci-fi elements aside from the main characters and the TARDIS, this story takes us to Ancient Alexandria, where a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions is about to unfold.

Central to this tragedy are Cleopatra (Pippa Bennett-Warner) and Mark Antony (Michael Lumsden), such pivotal figures that it’s surprising they’ve never been examined in the Whoniverse before. If you know the tragedy of these two historical icons, you’ll know where this story ends up, but you might be surprised at how it gets there. Barnes marries historical accuracy with the somewhat liberal approach to the facts that Doctor Who sometimes takes to give us an epic, emotional audio blockbuster that is guaranteed to rival some of the best televised Who historicals.

Tom Baker and Louise Jameson give some of their very best performances here, shrugging off the somewhat irreverent tone the Fourth Doctor Adventures range often requires them to adopt in favour of gravitas and earnestness. Baker excels as a more melancholic, resigned Doctor, while Jamieson puts in an utterly ferocious turn as a Leela who finds herself caught in a dilemma many a companion has faced during their travels in the TARDIS – to change history, or not to change history?

After a shaky start, this year’s Fourth Doctor Adventures come to a close with the best boxset the range has had in a very long time, which goes to show just how great this series can be when firing on all cylinders. More like this please.

The Last Queen of the Nile is available on CD or as a download from http://www.bigfinish.com