A girls’ school in the Swiss Alps in late 1963 is the site of some unusual incidents. Two of the students have escaped, but they’re wandering through the already bitterly cold snow with a major storm just hours away. The headmistress of the school is convinced that evil is lurking just around the corner. And a man sent to track down and rescue the two truants finds only one girl, who identifies herself as Nyssa, and claims that some kind of experiment gone awry has brought her to this place. Nyssa is taken back to the school to warm up, while Lt. Peter Sandoz, her rescuer, continues his struggle to find the other missing girls. When they are found and brought back, unexplainable – some might even say paranomal – happenings begin to take place, endangering them all. At the height of one of these “poltergeist” events, a Police Box materializes in the school’s attic. A man who calls himself the Doctor emerges, and is immediately drawn into the mystery. Is the school truly haunted? Or is a much more sinister – and more tangible – threat at work here?
written by Andrew Cartmel
directed by Gary Russell
music by Russell StoneCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Sally Faulkner (Miss Tremayne), Liz Sutherland (Alison Speers), India Fisher (Peril Bellamy), Peter Jurasik (Lt. Peter Sandoz), Hannah Dickinson (Madamoiselle Maupassant), Christopher Webber (Harding Wellman), Andy Coleman (Commodore), Nicky Goldie (Empress)
Timeline: between Land Of The Dead and The Mutant Phase
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
Review: The second ghost story in a row, this Fifth Doctor adventure starts out most atypically and continues to proceed that way. Little about the adventure is predictable, even if the elements are all shockingly traditional.
Something about the Doctor and Nyssa’s uncharacteristic constant arguing makes me wonder if this story was originally intended to feature the seventh Doctor and Ace. The constant bickering reminds me more of the fifth Doctor and Tegan – and since Winter was written by Andrew Cartmel, the script editor for the entirety of Sylvester McCoy’s tenure as the Seventh Doctor, I find myself suspecting that this story was retrofitted into a Fifth Doctor outing.
Peter Jurasik – a.k.a. Babylon 5‘s Londo Mollari – puts in a surprise appearance as Lt. Peter Sandoz, who patrols the mountains in search of those who need help, though his relationship to one of the young students turns out to be something more. But with his voice ever recognizable (part of the famous “Londo accent” seems to be natural), he’s a nice guest star for the Audio Adventures and even gets star billing on the front cover of the CD.