Doctor Who Review: Cobwebs-Fifth Doctor Audio Adventure

By Gwyn /

What Exactly Happened on Helheim

Nyssa and Tegan split up from the Doctor and Turlough and go off to find out things on their own. They find the Research Station Control room and have Loki open the door. As they walk into the room, it's obvious they are stepping on something of a precious material. Nyssa and Tegan first think it's glass, but then discover it's crystal which later on in the story it is explained how it gets to be on the floor. Loki detects another form of life in the room with them and explains it is the station; the computer. And that's when a eery deep voice appears, saying that it knew they would return to the station. So now we learn the Doctor, Turlough, Nyssa and Tegan have been to the station before. But how did it happen? Well, the computer, Edgar, tells Tegan and Nyssa they have identified themselves and that they came to the station forty years before. Tegan doesn't remember doing so, but Nyssa explains it hasn't happened for them yet. Nyssa asks Edgar to identify the three crew members: Director Cardell,Enforcement Officer Bragg, and Bio Technician Vragg. It is then the Doctor asks Edgar if there were any other visitors , and Edgar projects the four of them at the station, and the Doctor quickly demands the projection be ended, for very good reasons. Edgar had been the cause of Nyssa's hallucination towards the beginning of the story, when she first sees the Cractids,and another when Turlough was off exploring with the Doctor, and yet another with Tegan, where she almost suffocated from gas that only she could see when the Doctor was talking to her. He had been trying to calm her down from what was going on in the station. After finding four skeletons in a room wrapped in cocoons, wearing the same clothing as the TARDIS crew, I would be frantic as well. The Doctor comes to the conclusion that Edgar was made to play back certain parts of people's memories. Now I'm not going to tell the entire story as I don't want to spoil anything, but the four end up being taken back forty years to when the crew was living in the research station. They discover what had happened on the research station and the effects are astounding. The writing overall was fantastic, with a few questionable moments here and there. The audio story was suspenseful and can keep someone's interest for the full two hours, which is longer then an onscreen Doctor Who adventure, excluding the Classic Who 6-parter episodes of course. Cobwebs is just the beginning, as there are two stories that follow right after, The Whispering Forest, and Cradle of the Snake. If you are a huge fan of this era, especially with these companions, definitely start with Cobwebs. It's a wonderful, thrilling tale, and the acting from all is phenomenal. You wouldn't think it had been 30 years or so since they all played their characters, but seeing Sarah and Peter have been doing the audios more than Mark and Janet, it's not so much them as the latter. But all four of them get right back into the groove of things as though nothing has changed. And that's another reason why to give this one a listen.