Doctor Who: The Paternoster Gang return in the latest volume of their own spin-off!
By James Aggas
Madame Vastra, Strax and Jenny return for three more episodes of their own Doctor Who audio spin-off series in The Paternoster Gang: Heritage 2!
Back in June, the popular Doctor Who characters of Madame Vastra, Strax and Jenny finally got their own spin-off thanks to Big Finish in The Paternoster Gang: Heritage 1. Today, their adventures continue with the release of the second volume in the series, Heritage 2! What new adventures can we expect from the much-loved trio?
"Dining with Death by Dan StarkeyWhen negotiations between two warring alien races are sabotaged, Madame Vastra offers Paternoster Row as neutral ground upon which to continue their diplomacy – and to celebrate the treaty with a feast.While Strax frets about hosting two species with very different dietary needs, Jenny investigates the dissenters who want to halt the peace process.But a deadly plot is brewing, and the diners may not survive the cheese course…The Screaming Ceiling by Guy AdamsIn one of the earliest cases of his illustrious career, Thomas Carnacki heads to the Highlands to embark upon the terrifying investigation of Castle Kraighten.On arrival, he finds that another party of sleuths has been engaged – surely these amateurs of Paternoster Row have nothing to teach the great Ghost Finder?But this is no ordinary haunting. A room in the castle has a mouth in its ceiling. And it screams…Spring-Heeled Jack by Gemma ArrowsmithPeople are being stolen from the streets by a monster. By all accounts, it has burning eyes, breathes blue flames, and can leap the height of a building at a bound.While Vastra and Jenny fend off an over-eager member of the gutter press, Strax dives into dangerous waters.Is this Spring-Heeled Jack of legend, returned to terrorise the capital? Or are there more sinister forces at work?"
(L to R) Dan Starkey, Neve McIntosh and Catrin Stewart return as the Paternoster Gang!
(Image Courtesy Big Finish Productions.)
Victorian meals, haunted castles and famous monsters
As you may have noticed, one of the episodes in this latest volume has been written by Strax himself, Dan Starkey. This isn’t the first script he’s written for Big Finish, as he’s written several other stories by this point, including Fourth Doctor story The Bad Penny, and Terror of the Sontarans with John Dorney. For his latest story, Dining with Death, he had to do some considerable research on Victorian meals.
"I had a browse through a couple of Victorian cookbooks and they included a menu for a hunt ball – it’s amazing! It’s ten courses. The amount of food they made for those big formal dinners was astonishing. It was quite a fun thing to ask, what does Vastra eat? We know she mentions in one episode she’s just come from eating Jack the Ripper… if that’s true, what else is true?"
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Guy Adams’s story being set at a haunted Scottish castle is extremely promising, especially as Adams is one of the best writers of horror at Big Finish, while Gemma Arrowsmith concludes the set with a tale based around Spring-heeled Jack – apparently, at the suggestion of Madame Vastra herself, Neve McIntosh, as producer David Richardson reveals.
"We started the production by meeting with the cast, and many ideas from that meeting surface here. Dan Starkey’s written his own script to kick off the set, and Neve McIntosh had suggested it would be fun to do an episode about Spring-heeled Jack."
Once again, it sounds like we’ve got more exciting adventures for this particular trio, and we can’t wait to listen to them! You can listen to their latest adventures from Big Finish by purchasing them on CD or download directly from their website.
Next. Season Ten of the Classic Series is now available on Blu-Ray in North America!. dark
Are you a fan of the Paternoster Gang? Will you be checking out their latest audio adventures? Have you heard the previous volume of their own spin-off? Let us know in the comments below.