We now come to The Last Adventure, probably the biggest and most anticipated Sixth Doctor release Big Finish has ever done, the Sixth Doctor’s regeneration is one of the most infamous in the show’s history, Colin Baker, still reeling from having been fired over the phone was then approached to film a regeneration scene, a regeneration that would take place in the opening scene of the new season. Angrily and rightly he told them where to stick the offer. Now a smart producer would just forgo the regeneration and jump straight into the Seventh Doctor era leaving Six’s fate to the imagination, but instead we got Sylvester McCoy in a wig, McCoy who’s about a foot shorter and a lot slimmer than Colin Baker!

The actual cause of death of the Sixth Doctor wasn’t properly explained as the episode opened with him lying on the floor before changing. Over the years there’s been numerous attempts to explain what happened to varying degrees of success, some silly like banging his head on the console, others surreal like being murdered in his own mind by the unborn Seventh Doctor. But eventually Big Finish decided to produce The Last Adventure, the most definitive version of the Sixth Doctor’s death you’re ever likely to come across. Much like Trial of a Time Lord, this is actually four separate stories, but they can also be listened in an omnibus format from the bonus features as a single four hour story. And from the Valeyard’s perspective, it basically is a single four hour story as it revolves around his grand scheme to kill the Doctor which is carried out over various points in the Sixth Doctor’s life with different companions, culminating in the Sixth Doctor’s final adventure.

It opens with The End of the Line where the Sixth Doctor and Constance Clarke in her first appearance in Big Finish find themselves lost in a fog where they encounter multiple versions of the same train with the same passengers. It's a great showcase of the alternate realities and how bringing them together can be catastrophic, I don't enjoy this one as much as most fans do, I appreciate how they worked around involving the Anthony Ainley Master but it was done in such a contrived manner. But I still had fun listening to this, Miranda Raison effortlessly nails having a strong rapport with the Doctor helped in part by their real life friendship and the surprise appearance of the Valeyard was the highlight of the story for me

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

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And so we kick off The Last Adventure with an absolute banger. The start is wonderfully chilling, it has such good atmosphere and it almost evokes Midnight with the idea of a group of people trapped in a scary situation. It doesn't quite reach those levels but I'd argue it's not far off.

The idea of all these trains being from parallel universes is really interesting. Having all these different versions of the character is a bit confusing but nothing you can't figure out and it makes for some excellent moments. The Master reveal was absolutely not one I was expecting, it was a really clever way of doing it though. I have to commend Chris Finney, he got Ainley's mannerisms down to a tee and it sounded exactly like the Master speaking through someone else.

That wasn't the only reveal, the Valeyard was also here. Granted, I did expect that one since I knew something of the contents of this set before but I still didn't expect it to be Tim. The Valeyard/Master interaction was really cool and I'd be lying if I said it didn't hype me for the rest of this set,

Next Story: The Red House

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