The Doctor and Mrs. Wibbsey travel to 19th century Paris in search of the other missing pieces of the TARDIS’ spatial geometer. The time travelers quickly learn that they’ve arrived during a series of grisly murders, and the word on the street is that artist Toulouse-Latrec is the killer. Not believing that one of history’s greatest artists has blood on his hands, the Doctor tries to find the real killer, unaware that he is being deliberately led astray. Mrs. Wibbsey, on the other hand, becomes Toulouse-Latrec’s new model – a new career choice that puts her in mortal danger, for the being that she and the Doctor have been pursuing is nearby, and it plans to make her the latest in a long line of its victims as it paints the streets of Paris red with human blood.
written by Paul Magrs
directed by Kate Thomas
music by Simon PowerCast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Susan Jameson (Mrs. Wibbsey), Finty Williams (La Charlotte), Rupert Holliday Evans (Artist), Mark Meadows (Henri de Toulouse-Latrec), Rowena Cooper (La Concierge), Richard Franklin (Mike Yates)
Timeline: after The Relics Of Time and before A Shard Of Ice, and probably still before The Ribos Operation
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
Review: In each of the BBC Audiobooks fourth Doctor story cycles, there’s one story that stands out simply because of how much it indulges its star’s eccentricities. The Demon Of Paris is that story for the Demon Quest cycle, and yet that doesn’t stop it from being enjoyable (or, at times, downright scary). And admittedly, it is just a little humorous imagining the fourth Doctor leading a drunken bar crowd in a round of songs – this is about as fun and wacky as Demon Quest gets.
The story successfully creates its atmospheric setting, and then ratchets up the body count (a rather surprising component for a story that seems, on the surface, to be as funny as this one is. Overall, Demon Of Paris stands alongside other famous-historical-figures-happen-to-be-in-close-proximity-to-an-alien-incursion stories, deftly bringing a new series feel to the new audio adventures of the fourth Doctor.
