Winter for the Adept starts strong: a haunted Swiss boarding school, weird poltergeist activity, snowstorms, creepy headmistresses… it should be right up Big Finish’s alley. And for the first episode or so, it kind of is. But then the wheels start to wobble. The Doctor barely shows up early on, Nyssa’s in a mood, and the spooky atmosphere slowly gives way to a much more generic alien invasion plot. Honestly, it’s a bit like being promised a ghost story andending up with homework from the Spillagers.

Yep — the ghosts aren’t ghosts, just psychic aliens trying to break through a wormhole. The twist could work, but it all happens so fast in Part Four that it feels like the story’s taken a hard left turn into Saturday morning cartoon territory. The schoolgirl romance subplot is meant to add emotional depth, but mostly just drags. You can feel the potential in here, but it’s buried under a script that can’t decide what kind of story it wants to be.It’s also the second body-snatcher story in a row, and this one doesn’t land nearly as well.

There are some nice touches. Sally Faulkner (from off of The Invasion) adds a bit of classic Who cred, and Peter Jurasik from Babylon 5 turns up doing… well, an accent, but your guess is as good as mine as to which one… but the cast can’t rescue what’s essentially a mess of cool ideas that don’t go anywhere. It’s not terrible as much as just deeply frustrating. I’m still a Davison stan holding out hope for his Big Finish breakthrough, but this probably isn’t it. More like a lukewarm cup of tea than a spine-tingling ghost story.