The Last Adventure: Stage Fright (2015)

The third part of this boxset sees Henry Gordon Jago and Professor Litefoot reunite with the Sixth Doctor. The trio previously appeared in two special releases where the Doctor took Jago and Litefoot to the New World and to Venus back in 2012. It also sees Flip Jackson make her first appearance since seemingly falling to her death in Scavenger in 2014.

Flip’s first encounter with Jago and Litefoot doesn’t start well with Flip sounding like a Chav when she lambasts Jago for calling her lad and she responds with ‘Oi Whiskers, d’you wanna wear that pie?’ The confusing a woman for a lad is very similar to Strax confusing Clara for a lad in The Snowmen (2012 Christmas Special). It’s not a particularly strong joke so its reuse isn’t the wisest decision. Another thing that doesn’t do Flip any favours is when she admits she likes the character of Jar Jar Binks from the god awful Star Wars film. Thankfully things get better for her as she becomes more involved in the story and her initial reluctance to grace the stage disappears at the right time and she ends up saving the Doctor.

Jago’s Theatre is being used by some called Yardvale. Even if you couldn’t tell that it was the Valeyard by the fact that Jayston’s voice is quite recognisable then the name he uses should start alarm bells ringing. It’s the sort of trick that the Master would use and the thing about the character of the Valeyard is that he isn’t really too dissimilar to the Master. Michael Jayston is enjoying himself and is smack bang in the centre of this story and thrives in the story. We know that the Valeyard is the dark side of the Doctor between his penultimate and last regeneration although in Trial it was between his 12^th and 13^th regenerations but now that has changed, this aspect of the character has to change as well.

The Yardvale is doing a play where scenes are copied from previous regenerations of the Doctor. I love this idea and felt that it just added to the tension of what was going on. I like the game that we seem to have to play to figure out which regeneration is being played out. As I get closer to the end of the boxset, its clear that things are building up to something. The encounter between the Doctor and the Valeyard didn’t disappoint and was the first time in this boxset that we had had quite a big scene between the two and both Michael Jayston and Colin Baker stepped up and gave a good account for themselves.

Even though the Yardvale part of the story was dealt with the ending of this story was more of a cliffhanger to the final story. There is a rather downbeat feel at the end of this story with the Doctor and Flip off in the TARDIS and Jago and Litefoot continues their business. Like The Red House, this story isn’t as good as End of the Line but was still enjoyable. Having Flip back was welcome as her character is well written and well performed by Lisa Greenwood. It was also having Jago and Litefoot back on good form after a less than stellar series nine in their own series.