Doctor Who: The Eternal Summer

The second part of the ‘Stockbridge trilogy' brings us to the village in the present day - more or less. In fact, the recent history of Stockbridge has become jumbled up, with the Doctor and Nyssa thrown into the middle of it, trying to solve the mystery of what's happened.

This could lead to timey-wimey weirdness, but, instead, historical events appear fixed, and they're focussed on the individual lives of the people in the village. This gives the story a strong emotional heart, without overdoing it (as the modern TV series has occasionally done). While the play does, necessarily, focus on a limited number of inhabitants of what is presumably quite a large village all of whom are experiencing the same thing, this only strengthens the core of the story.

I confess to being a fan of stories in which an apparently normal setting isn't quite right, and I've (mostly) liked Morris's earlier work so this was always likely to appeal to me. It's reminiscent of Groundhog Day in some respects, although the resemblance is really quite superficial, and there is an explanation as to why it's all happening. In fact, the explanation is probably the weakest bit, although Davison and Sutton have good fun with it. Mark Williams, who would, of course, later go on to appear in the TV series, is also superb as the local UFO nut and ghost hunter - a character who is apparently borrowed from the '80s DWM comics.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

The CD also includes the first part of the final segment of The Three Companions, which brings back Thomas Brewster, the dodgy sort-of-companion who has appeared in earlier Big Finish stories of variable quality. By bringing together the three titular characters for the first time, it manages to feel more like a play than the earlier two segments, although there are still significant elements of narration. Not much happens in this ten-minute chunk, though, apart from it raining a lot.