April 4th, 2026 17 comments

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Big Finish The Fifth Doctor Adventures Helter Skelter

Available to order from www.bigfinish.com

Tegan’s time loop

Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson face temporal chaos in The Fifth Doctor Adventures: Helter Skelter, a box set of full-cast audio drama, available now.

The TARDIS team from Season 21 of classic Doctor Who – the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding), and Vislor Turlough (Mark Strickson) – are back for three brand-new audio adventures, as today sees the release of the box set Helter Skelter.

In the title story, the time travellers arrive at a massive amusement park in space for some much-needed R&R. But life with the Doctor is never restful for long, and Tegan is the only person aware that they’re stuck in a time loop. With the Doctor and Turlough unable to help, can she take charge of the situation and save the day?

And, in the two other stories, the TARDIS first takes its crew to England in 1951, where the residents of a village, mourning those lost at war, are preyed upon by a powerful alien force, and then to 1980s London, which is very much changed from what it should be…

Doctor Who – The Fifth Doctor Adventures: Helter Skelter is available to purchase now for just £19.99 (download to own) or £24.99 (download to own + collector’s edition 3-disc CD box set). Please note: the collector’s edition CD box set is strictly limited to 1,500 copies and will not be re-pressed.

The three adventures for the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are:

Field of Miracles by Lauren Mooney & Stewart Pringle

The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough arrive in the quaint village of Heatherington in 1951. But something strange is happening. In an England of post-war austerity, Heatherington is thriving – the shops are full of produce and everyone seems to have everything they’ve ever wanted, even if what they’ve wanted is the dead to return to them.

The Doctor and his friends must stop the creeping invasion of the Asteri, wish-granting crystalline organisms of awesome destructive power, before they extract a terrible price from the villagers.

Helter Skelter by James Moran

When a bio-engineered planet and amusement park undergoes a critical malfunction, the entire planet tears itself apart – and the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are thrown back to their arrival, trapped in a repeating time loop.

But for some reason, only Tegan can see the loop, not the Doctor – it has been hidden from him somehow. So why can Tegan see it, and how is she going to fix it?

Land of Fools by Lauren Mooney & Stewart Pringle

The TARDIS arrives in London, 1980, but something has gone wrong with the timeline. The city is a quasi-police state, overseen by a mysterious new company, Luqos, which promises miraculous gifts to its followers.

As Tegan takes off to reconnect with an old friend, and the Doctor teams up with young activist Zan, Turlough is pulled into the heart of Luqos by the shadowy ‘M’, where they discover an old enemy at work beneath the city.

The box set’s guest cast includes Jack Barton (Heartstopper), Sarah Lambie (The Magnus Protocol), Matthew Cottle (The Windsors), and Hiba Medina (Vigil), as well as Paul Bown, Emily Woodward, Richard Goulding, Helen Pearson, Sam Stafford, Beth Chalmers, and Jason Forbes.

Stewart Pringle, co-writer of the first and third episodes, said: “Tegan and Turlough are just great, aren’t they? It’s so lovely that this set is coming out around the time of Season 21 landing on Blu-ray because it’s such a glorious period of Doctor Who. Field of Miracles is our tribute to The Android Invasion with shades of The Wicker Man.”

The second episode’s writer James Moran added: “I will always refer to this story as Tegan Jovanka’s Groundhog Day, which tells you all you need to know up front. It made me endlessly amused that I’d come up with a plot almost custom designed to make Tegan as angry as possible. And that was pretty much deliberate, to see how Janet would run with it!”

The box set’s other writer Lauren Mooney said: “Land of Fools is the Fifth Doctor in the 1980s with shades of Resurrection of the Daleks, but also a vibe of the Sylvester McCoy years. It’s a proper little dystopia in a Back to the Future Part II mould, and it leads somewhere that we hope is unexpected. It’s a thrill to write for this TARDIS team – the bickering, friction and lack of bonhomie gives this era such a delicious flavour of its own.”

Praise for 2025’s Fifth Doctor Adventures story, Hooklight:

“One of the best Doctor Who stories out there. An imaginative, emotional, rip-roaring adventure that zips along from start to finish … 5/5” – Who Review

“[The Fifth Doctor Adventures has] recently been the most brilliant of Big Finish’s classic Doctors ranges, and with Hooklight there’s no sign of that changing.” – Blogtor Who

“Achingly beautiful.” – Doctor Who Magazine

Big Finish listeners can save money by purchasing Helter Skelter in a bundle with 2026’s second Fifth Doctor Adventures box set (Title TBC), due for release in September 2026, for just £38 (download to own) or £47 (download to own + collector’s edition CD box set).

Alternatively, listeners can buy this series as part of a bundle of all 15 Classic Doctor Who box sets released in 2026 for just £285 (download to own) or £352.50 (download to own + collector’s edition CD box set).

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Categorised under: Big Finish, CD, Special Releases