Doctor Who review: Feast of Fear is perfect for the Halloween season

When the Doctor and Nyssa go missing, it’s up to Tegan and Marc to find them. What horror will they find in the second half of this month’s Doctor Who double bill, Feast of Fear?

"At the height of the Irish famine, a carnival travels the country bringing cheer to all they encounter. But it also brings something else along with them… and it already has the Doctor."

OK, first thing’s first: how gorgeous is that cover artwork? Nyssa looking extremely sinister (Nyssa, of all people!), while dressed in a carnival outfit. It’s simple, but it’s one of the most effective Big Finish covers I’ve seen in a while.

Now onto the story itself. When Feast of Fear begins, it feels like it’s already in the middle of the story, and we’re playing catch-up. The Doctor and Nyssa have not only been captured, but the latter has even been possessed by a sinister force. A force that’s both powerful and terrifying.

This is quite a bold way to begin a story. Normally, the story would lead up to the Doctor and his companion getting captured, at least. But it works, especially when the story is just an hour long anyway. It has us asking a huge amount of questions almost straight away and really draws the listener in.

(L to R) Melissa Dean (Brianna), Peter Heenan (Armstrong), Deirdre Mullins (The Spae Wife), Michael Yare (Lorcan), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), George Watkins (Marc) and Peter Davison (The Doctor) feature in Feast of Fear.

(Image Courtesy: Big Finish Productions.)

How to use a four-member team

What really helps is the fact that there are four people in this TARDIS team: along with the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa, we also have Tegan and new companion Marc, looking for their friends. Usually, having as many as four members can work against the effectiveness of a TARDIS team, especially when the stories are shorter and it’s difficult to give equal focus to all of them.

But Tegan and Marc have decent roles in this story. With their friends gone missing, they take the time to look for them, and as a result, help to allow the audience to catch up. They don’t have all the answers themselves, not at first, so they’re still learning a lot.

But they do help us to catch up on the setting, and what happened before the Doctor and Nyssa went missing. It helps that Marc is a rare companion from ancient history, so Tegan has to explain a great deal to him about history she knows, such as the Irish famine of the nineteenth century.

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A mix of horror and fairy tale

But once we are all caught up, does the story work well? Absolutely. Martyn Waites’s story is completely different to the other half of this month’s double bill, Interstitial. But Feast of Fear works very nicely, coming across as a mix of horror and dark fairy tale. Some of the best Doctor Who stories have featured such a mix, so it’s great to see a writer that’s brand new to Big Finish handle it so well.

Interstitial is interesting, but Feast of Fear is the kind of story that drew me into Doctor Who in the first place. Dark, creepy and with just a hint of fantasy, it’s a great story that knows how to use the Doctor and his companions effectively. Another strong story for the Fifth Doctor and his team, and like Ravenous 4‘s Whisper, it’s a perfect spooky tale for the Halloween season.

What stories do you enjoy where the companions go bad? What are your favorite creepy Doctor Who stories? And which ones left you guessing as to what was going on? Let us know in the comments below.