Phantoms of the Deep (#2.05)

  Big Finish, Fourth Doctor Series

It’s fabulous to hear the interviews post-story as the story has ghosts in it and there we get to listen to Mary Tamm talk about acting in this story. Apparently this is a bit claustrophobic as stories go but the Doctor and Romana describe the submarine as being rather huge so perhaps it’s the external atmosphere, along with the marine animals. It is a spooky story and once again, the Doctor manages to survive, though barely this time.

I really enjoyed this story but I didn’t love the secondary characters as they aren’t developed a lot after the initial introductions. Chris Fleming is the “heavy,” Terri McCulloch is the engineer and pilot, and Dr. Patricia Sawyer is the moral head of the expedition. And that’s where they stay, though they accept an alien spacecraft pretty easily and the Doctor and Romana and K9 showing up out of a police box. So the characterization fizzles a bit but I really enjoyed this story overall. Either the writers and Big Finish team are getting better at this stuff or I’m just getting easier to please…


Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson, Alice Krige

Writer: Jonathan Morris

Director: Ken Bentley

Release: Mary 2013

© Laura Vilensky 2019