Given that Ling wrote the amazing Second Doctor story "The Mind Robber" back in 1968, and that Finch wrote Leviathan, the best of the series of Sixth Doctor lost stories produced by Big Finish a couple of years ago, my expectations were high. And I am glad to say that they were largely met; the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa, finding that an old friend of Tegan's (played by Toby Hadoke) has been abducted by aliens, pursue him to a planet off Proxima Centauri which is ruled by a mysterious and slightly insectile queen, played by none other than Jacqueline "Servalan" Pearce. 'Orrible things are going on beneath the surface, and the plot largely successfully balances the politics of the queen's court with the insects' master plan, giving both Tegan and Nyssa some romantic tension along the way. I think for once it is a play that would be entirely accessible to listeners outside the core constituency. ( )

Hexagora is the second of the Lost Stories to feature the fifth Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan, following straight on from The Elite in a way that feels nicely authentic to the 1980s. The original outline for Hexagora was written by Peter Ling and Hazel Adair (Ling was the writer of The Mind Robber back in the 1960s), and it was adapted to audio by Paul Finch (who's penned a few Big Finish stories the past couple years, including a sixth Doctor Lost Story, Leviathan). Vacationing in Australia, Tegan alerts the Doctor to the fact that a guy she knew at school has gone missing... and of course the Doctor determines that he’s been abducted to another planet. But when the TARDIS arrives on Proxima Centauri, they find not an advanced civilization, but a recreation of Elizabethan London.

Hexagora starts off roughly, with a hoary scene where Mike Bretherton talks to his editor on the phone in a distracting accent when he sees a meteor, then a couple scenes where the Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa work to track Mike down that are high on technogubbins and low on energy. But once the plot makes it to Luparis, it picks up in energy. At first, I was worried because Hexagora seemed to do that thing that bad Doctor Who stories do-- jam together a number of disparate elements in the hope that it creates something interesting-- with Elizabethan London, Proxima Centauri, alien insects, and court politics, but in fact as the story unfolds, we see that all of these elements go together quite nicely.

In the CD Extras, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton remark that Hexagora feels very of its time in a way that many Big Finish stories don't. And I think they're right; in its depiction of the characters and action, Hexagora actually feels a little bit more accurate to its time than The Elite did. But that's more due to a lack of energy, and slightly flat characterisation for Tegan and Nyssa; here, accuracy has not been a virtue. Hexagora isn't bad, but like some of the stories from the first season of Lost Stories (Paradise 5, Point of Entry), it verges a little bit too close to dull at times.

You can read a longer version of this review at Unreality SF.