As a new day breaks over Nest Cottage, the Doctor and Mike know they have to face their enemy for a final confrontation. Reduced to miniature size, and with Mrs Wibbsey along as an unwilling adventurer, they venture inside the hornets’ nest itself - but are they the pursuers or the pursued? The Queen lies in wait for the enemy that she and her brood have faced so many times over the millennia. If she is to guarantee the survival of her alien hornet race for another thousand years, this is a battle she must win! The loyalty of the Doctor’s friends will be tested to the limit. As they fight the hornets on their own ground, the insects are determined to possess their minds...

This is what many fans have been waiting for throughout this series of audio books, a present-tense adventure with the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) together - and they bring the wonderfully gloomy Mrs Wibbsey (Susan Jameson) along for the ride.

Their confrontation with the hornets involves miniaturisation, something that seems to happen to the Fourth Doctor quite a lot, having previously occurred in The Invisible Enemy, The Armageddon Factor and The Dead Shoes. The plot is most similar of all to The Invisible Enemy, involving as it does a Fantastic Voyage-style journey into a brain, which is also the creatures’ main hive.

For those of you who have so far failed to see the point of teaming the Fourth Doctor with Mike Yates, especially given the fact that the latter has been largely absent from the last three episodes, the retired UNIT officer comes into his own here. Having previously fallen foul of BOSS in The Green Death and Operation Golden Age in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, he would appear to be easy prey for the mind-controlling hornet queen (Rula Lenska). The tale could not have been told in quite the same way with any other companion.

A few bits of the story are narrated in the past tense, as previous instalments have been, but the vast majority of it is a full-blown, full-cast audio drama - one that provides an exciting resolution to the series.

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Richard McGinlay