The Four Doctors
The fifth Doctor visits a Jariden space station where that race is conducting surprisingly advanced experiments in time travel. But the Doctor isn’t the only one with a keen interest in these experiments: a fleet of Dalek ships moves in, and an invasion force boards the station, demanding access to the contents of a sealed vault. And one of the Jaridens, Colonel Ulrik, intends to help the Daleks retrieve what’s in the vault, despite the wishes of his sister, who happens to be the station’s lead scientist. Someone identifying himself only as another Time Lord contacts the Doctor and offers hints of how to resolve the situation, but not any actual help. The sixth Doctor encounters the battle-scarred Colonel Ulrik – at an earlier point in his history – during the bloody battle of Pejorica, in which the Daleks decimated the Jariden species. It seems that the Doctor is pushing Ulric and his race toward a major evolutionary turning point that could help in their struggle against Dalek oppression. The seventh Doctor pays a visit to Michael Faraday, only to find that Ulrik is here as well, followed by a small squadron of Daleks. The small battle that plays out before Faraday’s eyes is almost too much for one of human science’s greatest visionaries. And the eighth Doctor visits the Jariden space station, gently manipulating Ulrik and the fifth Doctor’s actions – and therefore those of his other previous selves – to ensure that the tide of history doesn’t turn to favor the Daleks.
written by Peter Anghelides
directed by Nicholas Briggs & Ken Bentley
music by Steve FoxonCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Colin Baker (The Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Paul McGann (The Doctor), Nicholas Briggs (The Daleks), Ellie Burrow (Professor Kalinda / Lady Cowen), David Bamber (Colonel Ulrik / Whitmore), Nigel Lambert (Professor Michael Faraday / Magran), Alex Mallinson (Roboman / Jariden Device)
Notes: This single-disc story, presented in a slightly unusual format consisting of shorter-than-usual episodes, was the annual free gift to Big Finish subscribers. It was released with the December 2010 story from the main monthly Doctor Who range, The Demons Of Red Lodge. The Four Doctors marks the first time that Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann have “appeared” together since the 2003 audio story marking Doctor Who’s 40th anniversary, Zagreus. Unlike past Big Finish subscriber specials, which were generally available for sale a year after their original “giveaway” release, Big Finish has vowed that The Four Doctors will only ever be available to its subscribers.
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
A peaceful visit to early 21st century London becomes less restful for the Doctor and Evelyn when they find themselves pursued by robotic insects with deadly homing instincts. Help comes from an unlikely ally within the police, D.I. Patricia Menzies, pursuing a criminal investigation well outside her home jurisdiction in Manchester. The Doctor has never met Menzies before, but she knows him well, and keeps silent about their past meetings (which take place in his future). Total strangers or not, though, she does need his help in ending the crminal activities of a mysterious gang operating in London. The Doctor and Evelyn quickly find out that the trail leads to a criminal known as the Doctor – described as a fair-haired young man in Edwardian clothes. Though the sixth Doctor is troubled by the thought that another of his incarnations is acting criminally, he follows the clues until he finds out who the other Doctor is: his unethical former companion, Thomas Brewster. Acting as “the Doctor”, Brewster is trying to restore his ability to time travel, and has done a deal with a species from another world. Naturally, what Brewster has failed to take into account is that he himself has been double-crossed by the aliens, who wish to wipe out the human race and take Earth for themselves.
Having left Lucie on 22nd century Earth with Susan and Alex, the Doctor has been imprisoned in a facility where he is charged with maintaining a notoriously unreliable system preventing the local star from destroying the planets in its solar system. He is given artificial “assistants” – all of whom he quickly programs with Lucie’s voice and personality – and has made several jailbreak attempts, but is always drawn back into captivity by the responsibility of keeping billions of people safe from their own sun. Elsewhere in the universe, the Doctor’s help is needed, but how much blood will be on his hands if he pursues his own freedom?
A private expedition from Earth sets out to gain access to the time-looped space parasite Axos, hoping to trap and tame the living space vehicle that once threatened to drain Earth of all life and energy. With Earth now facing a debilitating energy crisis, it is hoped that Axos can be harnessed to transmit energy to Earth from within its time loop. Awakened by the activity in its immediate vicinity, Axos begins making its own plans to regain full strength. “Hijacked” by Thomas Brewster, the TARDIS arrives aboard Axos, and the Doctor is immediately wary of the motivation of the human astronauts trying to revive the being. When not all of the astronauts turn out to be following the same plans, this only serves to intensify the Doctor’s suspicions of them, and Brewster’s ever-changing loyalties make matters even worse. Reawakened, Axos reverses the apparatus designed to bleed its energy off and send it to Earth, instead draning energy from Earth to feed itself. With the unwitting help of the explorers from Earth, and the very willing help of Brewster, will Axos succeed in sucking Earth dry this time?
Left on 22nd century Earth to spend time with Susan and Alex, Lucie Miller is almost settling into a normal life of traveling around the world with Alex when the plague hits. A deadly disease wipes out entire countries around the world, though Alex and Susan are immune. Lucie contracts the illness and almost dies; the payoff for surviving is losing the use of her legs, and going blind in one eye. Just when things can’t get any worse, a Dalek invasion force arrives to retake Earth: the true source of the plague, the Daleks intend to finish the job that their first invasion of Earth never did. Alex becomes a leader in the resistance movement against the Daleks and plans a bold strike at the heart of the Daleks’ plan to remove Earth from the solar system. But after all this time, no one expects the Doctor to appear – and certainly no one expects him to appear aboard one of the Daleks’ own ships.
The Doctor miraculously survives the destruction of the Dalek ship on which he’s being held prisoner, but his brief time among the Daleks leaves him riddled with guilt: the Dalek Time Controller, who he thought he had destroyed in the distant future, has traveled back in time to lead the Daleks’ second invasion of Earth. The Doctor learns that the Dalek Time Controller was sucked into the time vortex and had an eternity to observe history and concoct a plan to wipe out all non-Dalek life using a combination of potent viruses, spreading disease through the universe by using Earth as a mobile plague planet. The Doctor plans to take a nuclear bomb that the Monk has stashed away forward in time to correct his error and prevent this chain of events from happening, but Lucie insists on using the nuke in the present to wipe out the Dalek invasion force. For once, the Doctor is in no position to save the world, but he will witness the death of many dear friends and family members as they battle the Daleks without him.
Notes: Dwarf star alloy is very handy for trapping time travelers; Rorvik and his crew landed a ship with an entire outer hull made of dwarf star alloy – said to be super-dense material – to enslave the time-hopping Tharils in 1981’s 
The TARDIS arrives at the planet Samur, a strategic location in Rutan space which was once the site of fierce fighting between the Rutans and Sontarans. The planet is now coated in a colorful form of mold, with no other signs of life, at least until a Sontaran ship crashes. Only a few of its warrior crew is left alive, but they’ve lost their sealed order. When the Sontarans round up the TARDIS travelers and learn that one of them is the Doctor, they assume that their orders are somehow related to the capture and execution of the Time Lord and his companions. There are only things that save the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa, and Turlough: this platoon of Sontarans is more inept than most, and Samur may not be as uninhabited as it looks.
The Doctor responds to Ace’s request to experience the Summer of Love in 1967 by bringing her to Soviet Russia in 1967, where strangely-helmeted motorcyclists are trying to track down a man who’s stolen classified experimental weaponry. Immediately recognizing the weapon, the Doctor knows that it’s unsafe not just in civilian hands, but in any human hands. At an official reception, the time travelers home in on wildly out-of-place businessman Markus Creevy, who has both personal and professional reasons to be mingling with members of the KGB. He’s employed by the owner of the alien weapons: Ice Lord Hhessh, on a mission to retrieve some of the Ice Warriors’ most sacred relics before humans can defile them with further experimentation. But Hhessh isn’t the only alien on the scene. A Time Lord is operating incognito on Earth, and the Doctor is doing his bidding by letting Ace do most of the work.
Notes: The Time Lord telepathic distress call boxes haven’t been seen since the Doctor himself summoned the Time Lords with one in 1969’s