Andrew Cartmel is someone
you wouldn’t think would be writing a Fifth Doctor adventure. Known best for script editing Seasons 25 and
26 of the Classic Series, writing a trilogy of Virgin New Adventures and
penning three of the four Lost Season 27 Stories, you would think he would
write for the Seventh Doctor. Even
though he is out of his usual element Cartmel really shows how much he
understands the differences between the different Doctors masterfully. The script early on looks like it might be
suffering from having the wrong Doctor and companion with the names switched
around with the Doctor withholding information from Nyssa and not appearing
until Part Two, but it is eventually revealed he didn’t actually know what was
going on and didn’t have a master plan. It feels very much in line with the
Fifth Doctor as throughout Season 19 he was trying to get Tegan home but was
never able to do so until the end of the season. The story fits nicely into that seasonal gap
and like a real start to the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa adventures Big Finish would
give us after the false start that was The
Land of the Dead.
Winter for the Adept’s
plot sees Nyssa teleported to a school in the French Alps which has been snowed
in and is being haunted. The Doctor
eventually follows on and they get wrapped up in an adventure with telepathic
aliens called the Spillage and the ghost of a mountain climber. Cartmel’s script does its best in two
regards, the characters and the atmosphere of the story. As I said Cartmel understands the differences
between the different incarnations of the Doctor and the way he does the Fifth
Doctor is very similar to the way Robert Holmes and Christopher Bailey saw
him. This allows Peter Davison to flex
his acting chops and he is obviously having a ball with the script. Sarah Sutton also gets to have a good time as
she doesn’t understand Earth culture and has to help in an all-girls school
without the Doctor. She doesn’t believe
in ghosts and knows that there must be a scientific explanation for everything
that’s going on.
The supporting cast is
also great with standout being Ms. Tremayne played by Sally Faulkner, who is a religious
zealot. Now you would think they would
make her go through some sort of character arc broadening her horizons, but no
she dies halfway through which is a shame as Faulkner is a really good
actress. Next we have the double act of
Allison and Peril played by Liz Sutherland and India Fisher respectively who
are two girls with telepathic powers stuck in the school for Christmas. Peril is the more mischievous of the two as
she wants to escape the school to get married with a mountaineer and ends up
causing the most trouble throughout the story.
Allison is the naïve girl as she wants something more and tries her
hardest to sneak into the TARDIS. She’s
honestly a really boring character especially when paired with Peril as India
Fisher has one of those voices that is always intrigued. You also have the ghost Harding Wellman
played by Chris Webber who is just sort of comic relief as he is accidentally
doing the haunting of the school. The villains
of the piece are the Spillage which is a very boring villain as they’re motivation
is to take over the world.
The direction and music
of the story really add to the atmosphere as it feels a lot like the closing
scene of Survival. It’s a sort of melancholy that just pervades
every atom of your being and you can get lost in it. There are however quite a few problems in the
story as the frame story really could have been cut as it doesn’t add much and
the story takes a long time to get going.
To summarize Winter for the Adept is a fascinating
character piece that only really fails in getting going with some great
dialogue and characters who get explored to their fullest. The story can be described as romantic in the
classic sense of stirring emotions and is quite underrated. 82/100
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