A lost world... A prehistoric civilisation... A dark secret... The Doctor and Nyssa find themselves transported from Victorian London to the dawn of time, accompanied by debonair adventurer Rupert Von Thal and no-nonsense novelist Beatrice Mapp. Together these unlikely heroes must brave primitive jungles and battle ravening arachnids as they make their way to the city of the giant scorpions, ruled over by... the boy that time forgot...

This double-disc release picks up on the events of the Fifth Doctor’s previous audio adventure, The Haunting of Thomas Brewster, which ended with the Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) stranded on 19th-century Earth. You don’t have to have heard that story in order to understand this one, as all you need to know is explained in the dialogue, though a certain knowledge of Davison and Sutton’s television era is essential...

This being a follow-up to Thomas Brewster, some listeners may think that they have already guessed the full story behind the eponymous boy that time forgot (I did), but writer Paul Magrs has a big surprise up his sleeve. Why do the names of his arachnid characters sound like characters out of Marco Polo (Madam Teegarna, played by Claire Wyatt) and Black Orchid (Kranlee, played by Oliver Senton)? Magrs certainly had me fooled... That’s all I can say without spoiling things for you, except that I dare say the end of Part One (downloadable from Big Finish’s website for just 99p) is guaranteed to make you want to purchase Parts Two, Three and Four pronto - which is of course exactly what the company is aiming for.

Unfortunately, the last three episodes don’t quite live up to the excitement of the first one, though the whole pastiche of Victorian-set adventure yarns such as The Lost World, The Land That Time Forgot and At the Earth’s Core, with a time-travel angle (and, rather oddly, a bit of the Lost in Space movie) thrown in, is an enjoyable one. Andrew Sachs is perfectly cast as the so-called Scorpion King, as is Adrian Scarborough as the would-be adventurer Rupert Von Thal.

The Boy That Time Forgot is a ripping yarn that’s worth making time for.

7

Richard McGinlay