Mass Movement Magazine

Doctor Who: The Oseidon Adventure – Starring Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Geoffrey Beevers, Michael Cochrane, Dan Starkey, John Banks & Written by Alan Barnes – CD / Download (Big Finish Productions www.bigfinish.com)
And so we reach the end of the Fourth Doctor’s first season, or rather the Fourth Doctor’s first season at Big Finish, and it’s a season finale to cherish, as ‘The Oseidon Adventure’ (another delightful seventies reference) finishes on a high. Picking up immediately where ‘Trail Of The White Worm’ finished, with The Masters alien allies, The Kraals ( the monsters responsible for‘The Android Invasion’) launching their invasion of Earth, ‘The Oseidon Adventure’ starts at a sprint and quickly picks up the pace, hurtling through its myriad twists and turns incorporating doubles, androids, disguises, plans within plans and a wonderful ending that wraps everything up neatly. It’ a delightful tale, the Doctor (Tim Baker) and The Master (Geoffrey Beevers) bouncing, and feeding, off each other perfectly, pitting their wits and intellects against each, as The Master’s ultimate goal, a continuation of the twisted scheme that fuelled the story in ‘The Deadly Assassin’, is finally revealed, and once again thwarted, by The Doctor. It’s a perfect ending to a brilliant first season, which has saved it’s best for last, and it’s always fun to see The Doctor cross swords (in the intellectual sense, not the physical one, not that The Doctor doesn’t love a good old sword fight, he does and we know he does, it’s just that he doesn’t this time) with woefully underused and under appreciated enemies, and it was nice to see The Kraals back in action, but it was, The Master’s return that was especially delicious, a return that will hopefully continue in season two. The Fourth Doctor was right, it really is like Saturday tea time in nineteen seventy seven all over again, and as far as temporal dinner and entertainment destinations are concerned, there’s nowhere I’d rather be… Tim Mass Movement