This is a story with a lot going on, a large cast of characters and a real sense of energy and fun. Paul McGann and India Fisher return for the start of their second full season as the 8th Doctor and Charley Pollard and they launch themselve into it with gusto. McGann immediately grabs the chance to play the hard-boiled detective and India Fisher embues Charley with an appealing exasperation with the Doctor hinting of further adventures beyond the four from their first season. There is such a comfortable, sparky rapport between them and it isn’t hard to see why they continue to be one of BF’s most popular TARDIS crews.

Alongside the detective noir conceit, replete with gangsters and femme fatales called Glory Bee, there is plot involving Orson Welles famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast which, allegedly, caused mass panic in the US when people thought it was real. A little like the controversy surrounding the BBC’s Ghostwatch, there are varying opinions on precisely how extensive the panic caused was, but – historically accurate or not – it’s a fun backdrop for the adventure and allows Mark Gatiss to play with the idea of an real alien invasion being thwarted by a fake one. It also means we get Orson Welles himself in a Doctor Who story.

The gangster plot, which also involves Nazi sympathisers and Russian spies, brings a clutch of impressive guest stars, namely Mark Benton, Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes (formely Stevenson). All have subsequently appeared in the modern series and are great here. Pegg is almost unrecognisable as Don Chaney, the Al Capone type and Hynes has a lot of fun as Glory Bee in both her fake femme fatale persona and her real Russian spy character. She also gets to go full New Yorker as Carla, an employee at the radio station broadcasting War of the Worlds.

The cast also includes David Benson, known for his turn as Panda in the Iris Wildthyme audios, and Paul Putner who appeared in the sketches for Doctor Who night alongside Mark Gatiss and David Walliams. Both are great. Benson plays Welles and Putner is Bix Biro, the producer of War of the Worlds. While Welles is real, Biro seems to be a fictional creation. Jonathan Rigby also appears as John Houseman who is a real person and founded the Mercury Theatre with Welles.

The real villain of the piece, Cosmo Devine – a Nazi sympathiser – is played by John Arthur. He is hugely camp and leads the overall tone of the story which, belying the noir trappings and gangsters, is actually rather over the top and silly. I remember that, the first couple of times I listened to this, I found his performane a bit much, but this time round I leant into it and found it fitted a bit better than I hard originally thought.

The reason for this is because of the aliens – the bizarrely named Laiderplackers. Bat-like and huge, it turns out they are pretty useless and basically running a protection racket (a fun parallel to the gangsters). Paul Putner doubles as the more destructive (and yet completely ineffectual) of the two, with Jonathan Rigby playing the slightly more intelligent of the two who is more interested in scientific research before the destruction.

I don’t think they are the best Doctor Who monsters ever but the concept behind them is sound and although they are maybe a bit silly, the overall tone is so flamboyant especially in the performances of Arthur, Hynes and Pegg, that it just about works.

Historically, the oncoming war seethes in the background. Devine’s German allies are silent and because he is merely using them as a means to an end, the approach of World War Two is quite low profile but it is there and adds to the overflowing melting pot of this story. Critics may say there is too much going on and too many characters but I just enjoy the sheer bravado and silliness of the whole thing. It has some cracking cliffhangers (although the editing of them is a bit shonky at times – a problem I often have with Big Finish cliffhangers) and a real sense of devil-may-care. McGann and Fisher are sublime which forgives many a sin and listening to this reminded me how exciting those early days of McGann at Big Finish were.