The Early Adventures are a cross between The Companion Chronicles and a regular full cast audio. It would feature returning actors to their original companion roles, recasts for characters who’s actors had past on, and new actors brought in to play bit parts and guest characters. However, along with this full cast, there would still be narration like in the CC ranges and oftentimes actors from the original run would double up on parts. Which is the case for this story.

Frazer Hines plays both the Doctor and Jamie in this outing, and I think he does a fine job. Less convincing, sadly, is Deborah Watling as Victoria. It’s no one’s fault really, but you can’t help but notice how much her voice has changed over the years every time she speaks. It’s something of a distraction from an other wise strong cast. Speaking of which the guest characters are all superb in this.

It’s hard to talk about the story without getting into spoilers but I shall try.

The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria land inside a spaceship colony that’s been entrapped by a black hole. Everyone but them is affected by this; with time suddenly freezing or people winking out of existence. The only people who know what’s going on is the leader of the colony and an another investigating Time Lord.

There’s some great twists in this serial. Hence my reluctance to spoil anything. I truly appreciate anyone being able to pull off a decent twist correctly, let alone the three or four we get in this story. All of which you don’t see coming but make absolute sense once revealed.

If I have any criticism it’s that the final act does feel a bit rushed. The monster of the day arrives late on the scene and fails to make much of an impression, and being on audio, the action can be hard to follow at times. But as these creatures aren’t the main focus of the story, this is a very minor complaint.

Overall I do recommend this story to anyone who is a Second Doctor fan. It’s a well executed story that plays around with continuity without braking it, brings back some fun old foes, introduces new and interesting characters, and gives me the shippy Jamie and Victoria scenes that I’ve been asking for this marathon.