Big Finish Productions The Foe From the Future

Written by	Robert Banks Stewart and John Dorney
Format	Compact Disc
Released	2012

Starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson

Synopsis: The Grange is haunted, so they say. This stately home in the depths of Devon has been the site of many an apparition. And now people are turning up dead. The ghosts are wild in the forest. But the Doctor doesn't believe in ghosts. The TARDIS follows a twist in the vortex to the village of Staffham in 1977 and discovers something is very wrong with time. But spectral highwaymen and cavaliers are the least of the Doctor's worries. For the Grange is owned by the sinister Jalnik, and Jalnik has a scheme two thousand years in the making. Only the Doctor and Leela stand between him and the destruction of history itself. It's the biggest adventure of their lives -- but do they have the time?

• The Talons of Weng-Chiang but with Praying Mantises by Jacob Licklider

The Talons of Weng-Chiang but with Praying Mantises by Jacob Licklider 18/10/23

The second season of the Lost Stories ended with the finale to the adaptations of Season 27 in Earth Aid, but that isn't where the season really ended. The season really ended with a special treat Big Finish had prepared for us. In early September 2011, presumably with jelly babies as bait, they coaxed Tom Baker to come into the recording studio and, for the first time in thirty years, have him portray the Fourth Doctor once again alongside Louise Jameson as Leela for two specially produced Lost Stories for release in October 2011. The first story featured in this box set is The Foe from the Future by Robert Banks Stewart, the story that inspired Robert Holmes to write The Talons of Weng-Chiang once it was realised that Banks Stewart had scripts that were too expensive to film. Most fans had this story dismissed as an inspiration that would have had the same plot as The Talons of Weng-Chiang, but it actually is much different. The story concerns the Grange, a manor where the mysterious Professor Jalnik lives with his butler, Butler, and how anyone going to the house or being in the surrounding town disappearing in time corridors that keep popping up. The Doctor and Leela are dragged into the area with Charlotte, a girl from the village, and investigate the house. Parts One and Two play out very similarly to portions of The Talons of Weng-Chiang as people have been going missing and seem to be eaten by Jelnik, but Part Two reveals that Jalnik is from the future. In this future, he was involved in time experiments and has mutated, The Fly-style into a human plus praying mantis hybrid that has to eat flesh to survive. This twist catapults us to the future where humanity is forced into domes and are trying out time experiments to avert their fate. However, the people in charge of the projects have ulterior motives to take over the world, with Jalnik wanting to infect everyone with Pantophageon DNA, making them hybrids.

The plot of the story feels very much like a Hinchcliffe story, with a lot of body horror and classic horror tropes. The images that come through the story are a lot of pant-wettingly terrifying scenes of the hybrids near the end. This is Banks Stewart's third story for the series and may just be one of his best, with a lot of the great things in the story. John Dorney does the adaptation for this story, which is great, as he improves on a lot of the body horror as in the notes he says 50% of the story is down to his own creative liberty. The story is about three hours long, and it is extremely easy to listen to, as you have such a good story that really fits in well with the Golden Age of Doctor Who. There is this atmosphere in the early portions of the story, which is grea,t as characters are forgetting quite a lot of what has been going on, which is a good idea for things to happen. The Doctor and Leela also feel very much like they don't have any clue what could possibly be happening, which is great for this story, as it gives it a good feeling of mystery. Jalnik is a great villain, as he is really disturbing, as he eats the people he knows, which is really quite a good angle to take the villain. He wants to see the human race evolve into a form where they aren't vulnerable and are carnivorous. They are very similar to the Krynoids in that they would eventually die out from eating every sort of meat.

To close this review before my summary, let's talk about that elephant in the room. Tom Baker has returned to Doctor Who, and it is glorious. He has not lost any of the magic that made him the Doctor and just to hear this performance from him is worth the rather hefty price tag for this box set alone. He really is in love with this script and uses a lot of things that are done in the story that feel like it is made in that period of 1977 where there really is a lot to work with the material. He even gets along better with Louise Jameson, as they have had a relationship improvement with time. Louise Jameson as Leela also has not lost any of the magic for the character, mainly because of the Gallifrey spinoff series and the Companion Chronicles range, which had her reprise her role. Jameson is an actor who is really too good in the role of Leela. A real sense of cameraderie has begun with Tom and Louise, mainly because of how nicely they get along with each other in this story. They really feel like they have had enough time to have a friendly relationship build up after their rather antagonistic relationship behind the scenes of the show.

To summarize, The Foe from the Future begins very much like The Talons of Weng-Chiang with praying mantises, but turns into a much more terrifying story with body horror and gore that really allows the story to work. John Dorney comes crashing in on the Big Finish scene with a bang, as he probably didn't have a lot of time to adapt the script. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are both very good and have created the beginning of a series that will finally bring us more Fourth Doctor stories in the future. 100/100