Doctor Who: The Last Adventure Announced

Source: BBC America

Did Colin Baker's incarnation of the Doctor truly succumb to death by exercise bike? Scandalous revelations are on the horizon.
Big Finish have today announced the recording of a new Doctor Who audio drama which will chronicle the final escapades of the Sixth Doctor. Originally portrayed by I'm A Celebrity! Get Me Out of Here's Colin Baker between 1984 and 1986, this part-flamboyant, part-enigmatic incarnation of the centuries-old time traveller who gives the show its name was tragically well-known by many fans - not least by this writer - for only having the opportunity to utter the hollow final sentiments of "carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice" in 1986's "The Trial of a Time Lord" before Baker was booted out of the production team and his successor, Sylvester McCoy, was subsequently asked to don a blonde wig so as to act out the regeneration into the Seventh Doctor himself.

Yet as the press release - which comes via a Gallifrey Guardian article published in the just-released 483rd issue of Doctor Who Magazine - in question reveals, after having resumed the role of arguably one of the more controversial Doctors to date in recent years for Big Finish's audio output, Baker will now step back into the TARDIS for four one-hour episodes - "The End of the Line", "The Red House", "Stage Fright" and "The Brink of Death" - before bowing out in what the studio are calling a "heroic exit" at the end of the collection, the title of which is a fitting one: Doctor Who: The Last Adventure. If nothing else, this final quartet of time-travelling voyages - all of which will star Michael Jayston as the mysterious Valeyard, suggesting the "Trial" antagonist's character arc could finally receive a resolution of some kind after its continuation in Big Finish's Trial of the Valeyard - should more than serve their purpose in giving Baker's Doctor the "heroic" sacrifice many would, we'd wager, claim that the character deserved back in 1986, and if recent Who audio dramas such as Starlight Robbery and The Light at the End are anything to go by, the journey to this particular swansong should prove just as satisfying as the sure-to-be emotionally rigorous denouement.

Doctor Who: The Last Adventure will launch both as a multi-disc commemorative CD box-set and as a digital release this September. Before then, though, why not discover just why the Sixth Doctor evidently deserves better by watching McCoy's jumbled regeneration sequence from 1986's "Time and the Rani" (which, for those wondering, ranks as perhaps our most scorned Who serial of all-time for a myriad of reasons, amongst which this dreadful opening scene was a notable contender)?