The Doctor Who – The Audio Novels range returns today with the release of The Lord of Misrule by Paul Morris. Narrated by Jon Culshaw, this is a brand-new adventure for the Fourth Doctor and Romana, as played on TV by Tom Baker and Mary Tamm. 

Arriving in 1901, the Doctor is thrilled to be reunited with his friends Jago and Litefoot, the duo of Victorian gentleman investigators who first appeared in 1977 TV serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang (played by Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter), and who have since been paired on several adventures in their own Big Finish series. 

It’s the end of the Victorian era, and Litefoot is in a melancholy mood about the changing years. But time isn’t just moving forward, as our heroes find out when a strange carriage takes them back a century. The Doctor and his friends have a mystery to solve – across two time periods. 

Doctor Who – The Audio Novels: The Lord of Misrule has a running time of around seven and a half hours and is now available to purchase as a digital download for just £19.99, exclusively here.   

In 1901, something strange haunts the streets of London. A mysterious carriage appears from nowhere and seems to spirit away the unwary. But to where? 

When Romana is taken by the carriage, the Doctor teams up with that other redoubtable pair, Jago and Litefoot, to find her. Their investigations lead them to discover an alien plot that could alter history. 

And before the Doctor can stop it, he must first save his friend... 

The author, Paul Morris, makes his Audio Novels debut, having previously written several stories for Big Finish’s Jago and Litefoot audio dramas. 

Morris said: “It’s always a joy to write for Jago and Litefoot, even in prose form. But one thing that is slightly different, although I can still hear the voices of Trevor and Chris as these characters, knowing that it wouldn’t be performed by them, it did give me some freedom to split the characters up, which was necessary to tell a story over this length.” 

“I had one Jago and Litefoot idea which I came up with back when we were working on the original series and never used. I was very impressed by the film Midnight in Paris, where the young writer is taken back to the 1920s; he meets all his heroes and finds they aren’t as enamoured of their era as he is, they look back to an earlier era. 

“I thought that type of story would work very well for Litefoot, because he has a touch of the melancholy – he’s a very thoughtful man, and in some ways old-fashioned, even when we see him in what to us is the historical Victorian era. I’d long wondered what would happen if a similar magical taxi – a magical barouche in this story – took him back to an earlier era.” 

Script editor Roland Moore added: “The attraction of this story is that not only is it set in two time periods, it’s quite timey-wimey in the way it uses that, it’s got a modern series sensibility to it. And what Paul’s done brilliantly is revel in the language of Jago, Litefoot, and the Fourth Doctor. He’s absolutely nailed those characterisations and it’s a joy to hear them talking to each other. It’s really like a lost adventure.” 

Big Finish listeners can save money on The Lord of Misrule and the next three releases in the Doctor Who – The Audio Novels range by pre-ordering them together in a multi-buy download bundle for just £70, exclusively here. 

All the above prices include the special pre-order discount and are subject to change after general release.