The Rapture: Lots of Who stories begin with the Doctor trying to take his companions to some noted holiday spot to unwind and then ending up somewhere they didn’t expect. This time round, however, they actually arrive in contemporary Ibiza; only, of course, to discover that there are angelic beings, with an evil agenda, running the top night-club, and that Ace’s family history is catching up with her. I had my doubts about the attempts to give Ace some family background in Season 26, but I thought this was working rather well. (Perhaps if I’d slogged through the New Adventures I might have a different view.) All rather well done, with a jazzed-up version of the theme tune introduced by veteran DJ Tony Blackburn.

NB Irish character (first of several this week): troubled Caitriona, played by Anne Bird.

The Sandman: This is another of those Doctor-returns-to-the-scene-of-a-previous-adventure stories, which generally don’t grab me, combined with the Is-the-sixth-Doctor-evil? theme which did so much to blight his years on the programme. Good marks for a complex and detailed alien culture with which the Doctor has to grapple (one of the Galyari is played by Anneke Wills, aka Polly). Poor marks for lots of expository passages and for not really working a plot into the situation. Probably my least favourite Six/Evelyn story so far.

NB Irish character: a slightly improbable interstellar peddler, Mordecan, played by the versatile Robin Bowerman.

The Church and the Crown is a straight historical story, with absolutely no sfnal content apart from the presence of the Tardis crew, and the fact that Peri is the exact double of the Queen of France (a previous Fifth Doctor companion found she had a local double in the last televised purely historical story, and of course this happened to the Doctor himself in France a few decades earlier).

It’s all done rather well, and Caroline Morris as ancient Egyptian companion Erimem is fab (though I thought Andrew Mackay’s King Louis was too demotic and too exaggerated). But there is a basic problem with the plot: the Doctor takes it upon himself to thwart an English invasion of France, purely because he knows it didn’t happen in 1626. In this story, the alien force intervening to alter history is the Doctor himself, which (if this is the same Doctor who would not intervene to save Anne Chaplette in 1572) raises all kinds of issues that are not properly addressed, never mind resolved.

No Irish characters this time (all French or English).

Bang-Bang-A-Boom! ought to be a disaster – Doctor Who trying to satirise popular entertainment usually fails dismally. But it largely works, partly due to the all-star cast – former Goodie Graeme Garden as the doomed but slightly comical professor, former Sheriff of Nottingham Nickolas Grace as the sinister Mr Loozley, and former interstellar vampire Patricia Quinn as an alien princess (so no type-casting there then). There is also an alien which can only crackle rather than talking.

And lots of piss-taking of other sf stories – the space station where the contest is taking place is called “Dark Space Eight”, and the rather colourless station doctor thinks she is in Star Trek – while at the same time the Doctor is trying to solve a murder mystery – one of whose victims is this play’s Irish character, Commentator WLogan, played by David Tughan (presumably the jazz musician).

Jubilee was of course the basis for the superb Ninth Doctor story Dalek. I was surprised, though, by how different it was. There are similarities – the first confrontation between Doctor and imprisoned Dalek, the relationship between Dalek and companion (done more convincingly on TV), the Dalek’s quest for orders (done more convincingly here); but there is a huge difference in setting, the audio play taking place in an alternate 2003 where the world is ruled from London by the villainous Mr and Mrs Martin Jarvis, thanks to the Doctor’s intervention a hundred years earlier. And yet this doesn’t fall into the category of Doctor-returns-to-the-scene-of-a-previous-adventure stories, because the earlier Sixth Doctor is still there. It’s a good one, but the TV version is I think better (not always the case; see Spare Parts).

So, in summary, all good stuff, with The Rapture the best and The Sandman the least impressive.