Winter For The Adept
A girls’ school in the Swiss Alps in late 1963 is the site of some unusual incidents. Two of the students have escaped, but they’re wandering through the already bitterly cold snow with a major storm just hours away. The headmistress of the school is convinced that evil is lurking just around the corner. And a man sent to track down and rescue the two truants finds only one girl, who identifies herself as Nyssa, and claims that some kind of experiment gone awry has brought her to this place. Nyssa is taken back to the school to warm up, while Lt. Peter Sandoz, her rescuer, continues his struggle to find the other missing girls. When they are found and brought back, unexplainable - some might even say paranomal - happenings begin to take place, endangering them all. At the height of one of these “poltergeist” events, a Police Box materializes in the school’s attic. A man who calls himself the Doctor emerges, and is immediately drawn into the mystery. Is the school truly haunted? Or is a much more sinister - and more tangible - threat at work here?
written by Andrew Cartmel
directed by Gary Russell
music by Russell StoneCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Sally Faulkner (Miss Tremayne), Liz Sutherland (Alison Speers), India Fisher (Peril Bellamy), Peter Jurasik (Lt. Peter Sandoz), Hannah Dickinson (Madamoiselle Maupassant), Christopher Webber (Harding Wellman), Andy Coleman (Commodore), Nicky Goldie (Empress)
Timeline: between Land Of The Dead and The Mutant Phase
Review: The second ghost story in a row, this Fifth Doctor adventure starts out most atypically and continues to proceed that way. Little about the adventure is predictable, even if the elements are all shockingly traditional. (more…)