The Cloisters of Terror (#4.6)

  Big Finish, Fourth Doctor Series

 

Leela and the Doctor land in Oxford, England, at an all women’s college (St. Matilda’s), where a girl, Lynn, has disappeared. The dean of the college, Dame Emily Shaw, has put in a call to the police to help find the missing girl and instead, she gets the Doctor and Leela. They are the only ones who can figure out how to get the missing girl back. And thus begins their adventure back and forth across the college, trying to figure out the mystery. So of course they do and find alien technology at the heart of it all. With the sacrifice of one person required in order to save everyone. Very typical 4th Doctor story arc there! And the final boom, naturally.

Music is a bit too obviously spooky to be effective. The irony is that Leela is the other young woman who can hear the nuns, yet the actress isn’t the young girl anymore. And there are lots of women running around in danger at the end yet the nuns and teachers aren’t able to keep order and get people running away. Though I do like the ending boom results. “This is way the world ends – not with a bang but with a wimple.” Too funny!


Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Rowena Cooper (Emily Shaw), Richenda Carey (Sister Frances Beckett), Claudia Grant (Megan Matthews), Allison McKenzie (Lynn Pickering), Jane Slavin (Ancient Nun/Brenda)

Writer: Jonathan Morris

Director: Nicholas Briggs

Release: June 2015

© Laura Vilensky 2019