Winter for the Adept

There’s a limit to skepticism, you know. You’ll end up cutting your throat with Occam’s razor!

The Fifth Doctor

Synopsis

When a teleportation accident goes badly wrong, Nyssa finds herself stranded on the freezing slopes of the Swiss Alps in 1963. But is it mere coincidence that she finds shelter in a snowbound school haunted by a malevolent poltergeist?

When the Doctor arrives, Nyssa and the other inhabitants of the school soon discover that the ghost is merely part of a darker, deeper and more deadly game involving rogue psi talents and something else… something not of this Earth.

Review

Winter for the Adept is the strongest Fifth Doctor story in the main range that I have listened to so far. It has a strong sense of mystery and a well-paced plot, with some of the best writing of the Fifth Doctor.

The story is a really solid one, with a compelling mystery. The Doctor is out to stop the villainous Spillagers, who he describes as connoisseurs of slaughter from breaking from their dimension into ours. There are multiple mysteries, including for the first part as to where the Doctor is. Whilst listening, I did wonder whether Davison would not appear until much later, so it was a pleasant surprise for the TARDIS to appear at the end of Part One, with one of the more dramatic entrances the Doctor. It is a ghost story and an alien invasion story, tying it’s threads very closely together at the end. There’s a lot going on in Winter for the Adept, with psychic and telekinetic children, religious zealotry and two seances thrown into the mix, but it never feels muddled, which is to the credit of both Cartmel and director Gary Russell. I found the music to be jarring at first though – it sounded much more in keeping with the Seventh Doctor’s era than the Fifth’s – but it does eventually settle down.

The guest cast are all pretty strong here too. The most notable is India Fisher, who would go on to play Charley Pollard, a companion to two incarnations of the Doctor and quite significant in the history of Big Finish. She plays Peril in this story which is a small but important role in the narrative. Special mention must also be given to Hannah Dickinson and Sally Faulkner for their performances, and Faulkner in particular for seeming so evil that you completely look away from both Dickinson’s French teacher and Peter Jurasik’s lieutenant. The Spillagers, when they do appear, aren’t fantastically developed but they are a race of cruel and violent creatures who don’t really seem the type to monologue. The lack of nuance perhaps lets them down, but in a story with so much going on, it is inevitable that something would fall through the cracks.

Whilst it seems strange to have Andrew Cartmel writing for the Fifth Doctor, what is clear as you listen to Winter for the Adept is that he fundamentally understands both the fundamental character of the Doctor as well as his Fifth incarnation. That’s something that the script editor for the majority of Davison’s time on television, Eric Saward, never seemed to grasp. The Fifth Doctor has a sense of almost embarrassment throughout the story, and doesn’t have the inate confidence of his predecessors. Davison is good at capturing this element of the character, the uncertainty of his more youthful countenance belying the intelligence we know the Doctor has. He is capable of mistakes, trusting Peter despite the fact that he is a Spillager, and believing that the portal between dimensions would be a grand event, rather than a gradual opening. Davison’s entry into the story, in the midst of a poltergeist attack is really dramatic and works really well on audio, especially in headphones. It’s definitely a strong story for him on audio, with more good stories to come!

Whilst Cartmel gets the character of the Doctor, the same cannot necessarily be said of his companion in this story, Nyssa. Nyssa leads the first part of the story, teleported to the Alps through an experiment of the Doctor’s that has gone wrong, and it is good to see how versatile she can be. From the Fifth Doctor’s arrival at the end of the first part, Nyssa becomes spiky and argumentative, much more like Tegan than Nyssa. Sarah Sutton does everything the script asks of her, but it almost feels as though Cartmel got the two mixed up here. It’s nice for the character to be able to use her psychic abilities, something that the televised show did not do enough of before her exit in Terminus.

Verdict: Winter for the Adept is a really solid story, with a mystery that keeps you guessing. 8/10

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Liz Sutherland (Alison Speer), Sally Faulkner (Miss Tremayne), Hannah Dickinson (Mlle. Maupassant), India Fisher (Peril Bellamy), Peter Jurasik (Lt Peter Sandoz), Christopher Webber (Harding Wellman), Andy Coleman (Commodore) & Nicky Goldie (Empress).

Writer: Andrew Cartmel

Director: Gary Russell

Producers: Jason Haigh-Ellery and Gary Russell

Music: Russell Stone

Sound: Andy Hardwick

Release Date: July 2000

Main Range Release Number: 10

Parts: 4

Behind the Scenes

• This is Andrew Cartmel’s first script for Big Finish, and his only story that was featured in the Main Range.

Cast Notes

• Liz Sutherland has gone to appear in Warzone and Conversion.
• Sally Faulkner played Isobel Watkins in The Invasion.
• India Fisher would go on to play Charlotte Pollard, companion to the Eighth and Sixth Doctors. Her first story, Storm Warning, would be recorded two months after this one.
• Andy Coleman, the stage name of Andrew Collins, has also appeared in The Fires of Vulcan and The Church and the Crown.
• Nicky Goldie also appeared in The Fires of Vulcan.

Best Quote

We’re going over the same ground.

Yes, and for the first time I think I’m starting to recognise the terrain.

Nyssa and the Fifth Doctor

Previous Fifth Doctor review: The Land of the Dead

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