We'll take my old banger, always going to be more reliable than British Rail any day.

I can't deny how much I love Frontios, it remains my second favourite Fifth Doctor story with its extremely nihilistic portrayal of humanity in the future and fantastic performances and musical score. So, imagine my disappointment when people told me the second appearance of the Tractators was terrible. The Hollows of Time was a story I had heard horror stories about and never anything positive, but at the same time, never anything concrete about the quality of the story itself. So this will probably be my most controversial opinion in recent years that The Hollows of Time really isn't all that bad and is actually a great reminder of what could have been for Doctor Who had Christopher Bidmead continued as the script editor with his more naturalistic and scientific style of presentation as opposed to Eric Saward's flair for the dramatic soaps.

The Doctor and Peri have been on holiday, visiting old friend Reverend Foxwell in the sleepy English village of Hollowdean. But why are their memories so hazy? Piecing together events, they recall a mysterious chauffeur, who is not what he seems, and Foxwell's experiments that could alter the nature of reality. Huge sand creatures have been sighted on the dunes, and many of the locals are devoted to a leader known as "Professor Stream". But who is Stream? And what lies within the Hollows of Time? The Doctor will discover that not every question has a definitive answer...

The Hollows of Time sadly went the way of the rest of the originally planned Season 23, the victim of Michael Grade and his cancellation. Christopher H Bidmead completed his scripts in 1984 shortly after Frontios had been broadcast but the serial ended up postponed for nearly 25 years, sat in a loft gathering dust until David Richardson contacted him about possibly adapting them for audio. Considered to be the most visual of the Lost Stories, Chris was given the gargantuan task of essentially taking a finished TV story script with all the trimmings and translating it into an audio story, you can tell what sort of story he was aiming for in trying to push the boundaries of what was possible on TV at the time in 1985. From what I gather, this one was almost a complete rewrite from top to bottom, removing elements that Big Finish didn't quite have the license to at the time and the addition of the framing device throughout to help translate between the two mediums. The most notable aspect that was removed was that of The Master, although from how the story is adapted, he still technically does appear, just not directed named in the form of Professor Stream, an anagram of Master with all the bells and whistles of Anthony Ainley's incarnation and even has the patented laugh. I like this approach to using the character, keeping him mostly in the shadows and never actually revealing his identity to the Doctor; it leaves the overhanging question of whether it really was him or just the Doctor's fuzzy memory playing tricks on him.

This audio is far from perfect, however, Susan Sheridan as the little boy Simon is ear-grating at points despite his well-meaning demeanour, he does come across as a rather spoilt yet over-enthusiastic child who gets thrust into the adventure without a choice, yet seems to relish the danger and death. Trevor Littledale is fabulous as Reverend Foxwell, a vicar who had once worked to decode the Nazi cyphers now working as a humble inventor in his spare time and an old friend of the Doctor having met him previously at Bletchley Park. David Garfield as the mysterious Professor Stream, despite his minimal time within the story, makes for a compelling villain, but sadly the Tractators are far from their previous appearance and are mainly regressed to that of squeaking aliens who don't do much which contrasts heavily with their previously ruthlessly intelligent and terrifying figures from Frontios. A shame since I feel they could be done so much more justice in the audio format, as their major drawback onscreen was their costumes, which didn't seem all that imposing at times and often came across as far too plastic. Colin Baker apparently didn't understand a word of the script due to it being way too convoluted for his liking; however, unlike his performance in The Ultimate Evil, he delivers a rather splendid performance alongside Nicola Bryant as their feisty TARDIS team. Nigel Fairs delivers a fantastic musical score with a great use of woodwind instruments to give this story an unusual score very reminiscent of Frontios' rousing score from Paddy Kingsland, combining this with his sound design, and it works quite remarkably.

Overall, The Hollows of Time seems to be a vastly overhated story that is full of ambition and bright ideas unique to Bidmead's great storytelling mind, with some very abstract ideas and concepts that may take a few minutes to wrap your head around and delivers an overall solid, if flawed, successor to Frontios.

Could I rely on a superior intelligence like his to appreciate the value of an abstract word like survival?