I first read the 1994 Seventh Doctor novel All-Consuming Fire, by Andy Lane, in 2008 and hugely enjoyed it.

It melds the worlds of Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu and takes us from a mildly steampunky London to a princely state in India, barely dropping a beat. I reread it in 2012 but didn’t feel I needed another go before listening to the audio adaptation by Guy Adams.

And the 2015 adaptation is also very good. Of course it’s quite a long book, so you can’t have everything in a two-hour drama, but the core plot remains with some of the chrome shaved off. Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor feels especially in command, and Nicholas Briggs as Sherlock Holmes and Lisa Bowerman as Benny are on form too. A couple of other notable names in the guest cast: Sam Béart is both the landlady and Azazoth the Elder God (I was seated next to them at the 2024 Hugo ceremony, though in fact I actually spent all of it backstage), and the sinister Baron Malpertuis is played by Anthony May, who way back in 1970 appeared in Here Come the Double Deckers! as the eponymous Pop Singer. Sherlock Holmes’ sinister brother is played by Big Finish veteran Hugh Fraser, who also has a 1970s musical past: he was one of the band Telltale who composed and performed the theme tune to Rainbow.

You don’t need to have read the book to enjoy this, and you can get it here.

I also recently listened to the First Doctor audio Beware the City of Illusions, by Nicholas Briggs, starring Stephen Noonan as the First Doctor, Anneke Wills as Polly and Lauren Cornelius as Dodo and released earlier this year. I was not quite as blown away by this. I do think that Stephen Noonan has settled into the role, and Anneke Wills is great as an older Polly unexpectedly meeting the Doctor out of sequence, so that he does not know her; Lauren Cornelius is confident as Dodo.

The story is a sinister corporation selling its technology to the British government to achieve Net Zero, a sort of updated Claws of Axos, and that’s part of the problem – it’s not terribly original, and really struggles to fill six half-hour episodes. I also found the voices of some of the female actors difficult to tell apart, though that may be just my middle-aged hearing. The First Doctor range has brought some excellent stuff, but I fear this one is not at the top of my list. Still, you can get it here.