Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Peter Davison, Maureen O’Brien, Peter Purves, Graeme Garden, Lysette Anthony, Tony Millan, Giles Watling, Tim Wallers, Sarah Woodward, Nicolas Briggs, Elizabeth Morton, John Banks, Barnaby Edwards.

From a fan point of view, the adventures in which The Doctor finds himself plunged into an episode of Earth’s history is usually something to look forward to and salivate over as the listener realises time and again just how pivotal some moments are to the present day. No matter the story, no matter the period in history it is set in, Doctor Who is able to teach the listener so much that in the days before the internet, notes would be scrawled and a visit to the library would be arranged to look up the figure or event being talked about, or these days a short finger press on Wikipedia would despairingly do the same for The Secret History of the incident.

Peter Davison’s Doctor has had more than his fair share of the historical adventures, both on television and in Big Finish’s audio books and they have for the most part been of well drawn out quality. Eddie Robson’s The Secret History firmly sits with a beaming smile and tantalising script in amongst the highs of the history sagas as the continuing affair of the Doctors being taken out of their own time stream and being forced to work with companions from another incarnation weaves its way through the latest of the Big Finish audios and sets a back door option for the company’s future plans.

With the astonishing and exciting news that some figures from the last ten years of the Doctor Who series will be making their way into the canon of the past, it only seems right that the Doctor plays with Time, or rather gets played with by Time, and sees through the eyes of an older incarnation the trouble that could be caused by someone interfering with the tick between the tock.

Whilst Sylvester McCoy’s story wasn’t particular enamouring, The Secret History really gets to the point of the action and reveals The Monk, once more played with a certain degree of panache by Graeme Garden, to be at the very heart of the problem.

With the fifth incarnation replacing the original and having to deal with an initially sceptical Vicki and Steven, played by the tremendous Maureen O’ Brien and Peter Purves, The Monk, a Roman Empire in the verge of being rebuilt by the historical figure of Belisarius and a plague that would ravage the entire Mediterranean over a two year period, the tension is taken seriously and provides, thanks to the ever diligent writing of Eddie Robson, a great backdrop to learning more about this particular section of humanity’s pact with history.

Whilst many of the fans much prefer the Science Fiction element to Doctor Who, the stories set in space and the species encountered, there is no doubting that dealing with Earth’s rich and abundant history is enormous fun and well worth investigating.

The Secret History is one of those moments in Big Finish’s audio dramas where they seem to relish the maxim of the B.B.C. to the full; to educate, to inform and to entertain, there is after all no worthier cause.

Doctor Who: The Secret History by Big Finish is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall