Review by Daniel Mansfield

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After years of stories set later on in the Fourth Doctor’s TV tenure, Big Finish is throwing it back to Tom Baker‘s earliest days in the TARDIS with The Ministry of Death.

While many of Baker’s initial TV stories carved out their own identity, giving us a series of iconic sci-fi takes on Gothic horror classics, a select few returned to the status quo of Jon Pertwee‘s stint as the Time Lord, showing us what would have happened had the Fourth Doctor stayed on as UNIT’s scientific advisor.

It’s this tantalising what if that we revisit in The Ministry of Death, which sees the Doctor and Sarah Jane teaming up with UNIT once again to defend the Earth from two new alien incursions.

The titular story makes the best use of this premise, with the Brigadier summoning the Doctor and Sarah to investigate a series of most peculiar deaths. There’s very much a feel of the Pertwee era about Robert Valentine‘s script, with unscrupulous authority figures, mad science and lots of action, but there’s also the added bonkersness that Tom Baker brings to proceedings, which gives you the delicious sense that, despite the familiar trappings, anything might happen.

To hear the Fourth Doctor playing off against the Brigadier once again is a delight, both Baker and Jon Culshaw sharing an excellent rapport, while it’s always lovely to hear Sarah and Harry back together, the voices of Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter lovingly recreated by Sadie Miller and Christopher Naylor. Add to that a camp performance from Carolyn Seymour as the villainous Diana Stravius, as well as some unexpected moments of pathos amid all the action, and you get a thoroughly enjoyable story that feels both cosily familiar and unique all at once.

Far slighter, but still just as engaging, is The Inhuman Empire by Phil Mulryne, which sees the Doctor and Sarah get caught up in ‘rum goings on’ at the National Museum. With just an hour to play with, this one wastes no time getting going, thrusting us headlong into the story and slowly ramping up the tension until an unexpected cliffhanger that will have you dying to press play on part two immediately!

Overall, The Ministry of Death is the perfect slice of comfort Who, taking much-loved characters on a charming pair of new adventures. Listening to this, it really does feel like it’s teatime in 1975 all over again.

The Ministry of Death is available on CD or as a download from http://www.bigfinish.com