I used to be fond, once upon, of going for walks late at night around my little slab of well-lit suburbia. It was no fun in the summer – it had to be cold and dark for it to be any fun. There can be no better or finer way to enjoy Winter for the Adept than to feel the wind coursing around you as you walk. Thankfully not Alpine, Cheshire can still provide the odd biting wind if you’re lucky. So my empathy with the Doctor and the girls as they got to grips with blizzards and howling gales was plentiful and my attention was hooked. Though intending to walk only for half an hour I would stray a little further and be “forced” to listen to two episodes rather than one. Which rather betrays that this was only a two day event. It seems longer in my memory but that’s memories for you. Bags of chemicals which wouldn’t raise sixpence in your local Boots the Chemist.

Winter for the Adept has no great reputation about it. It is probably Big Finish’s first big casting coup – that of the one with the huge hair in Babylon 5 – but he is so unrecognisable that he might as well be Nick Briggs putting on one of his repertoire of voices. More significantly the cast features on India Fisher in her pre-Pollard days. I may have read somewhere that Peril was considered as a possible companion, and nowadays probably would’ve been added to the TARDIS at the drop of a hat, but that they wanted someone from your actual history instead. Same actress, different name. India is always good value though I can never quite get Wodehouse’s description of (I think) Honoria Glossop out of my mind whenever I see pictures of her. Something about the jaw of a light heavyweight boxer. Certainly I would expect most of you to have seen the resemblance I noted between India and former WWE wrestler Bryan “Spanky” Kendrick.

It is a Doctor Who ghost story which means there must be a perfectly rational explanation for everything. Although I’m buggered if I can remember what the perfectly rational explanation was for the ghost of Harding Wellman. The poltergeist activity was rather ingeniously explained away as the unfortunate (though deliberately engineered) alignment of the two girls and Wellman. If they had just left it at that it would’ve been a fine piece of atmospheric pseudo-horror with lashings of excitement. But it is a Doctor Who story so they had to add some aliens. I am, I confess, guilty of nodding off during a few of these BF stories but as far as I remember the Spillagers (a silly name – at first I was greatly amused by the Doctor fobbing Nyssa off with the patently nonsensical explanation that his gadget is a “spillage detector” until I realised that they were serious) are introduced, enter a worm hole, and then are destroyed when the Doctor closes the other end. All in the space of about two minutes. It is an absurd addition to what was otherwise a nice, tight, quiet little ghost story.

I have a peculiar fondness for the early BFs. Not all of them – the Genocide Machine is the only one of the Dalek trilogy which I can stand – but many of them. Perhaps they have just a hint of the naivety of the Hartnell era when compared to the later, more worldly stories. Or possibly it’s just that I’ve had them longer and they no longer feel like “new” Doctor who but rather as part of the furniture. A comfy place to go when the latest experimental story sends one’s head spinning. Back to the alps and a simple tale with whooshing winds and a chill to send down your spine.

The “baby Jesus” outtake/spoof is rather amusing too. Those with the compact disc should seek it out.

CD Facts

Part 1 - Tracks 1-7

Part 2 - Tracks 8-13

Part 3 - Tracks 1-5

Part 4 - Tracks 6-9