Wicked!, the next volume of audio adventures starring the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), goes back to the early days of Ace’s (Sophie Aldred) time in the TARDIS… and co-stars Simon Callow, who Doctor Who fans will recognise for playing Charles Dickens in The Unquiet Dead and The Wedding of River Song.
The acclaimed actor plays Don Quixote in The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Wicked!, which is due out next month (October 2025).
The three new stories are set shortly after Ace joins the Doctor in Dragonfire.
In the box set’s third story, the Doctor and Ace visit 15th Century Spain and meet another odd pairing of adventurers: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (the latter voiced by Amandaland‘s Ekow Quartey). The Doctor’s a big fan of these larger-than-life characters from Miguel de Cervantes’ famous novel, and is delighted to discover that, somehow, they are real.
Callow said:
“Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are one of the great double acts of our culture, like Laurel and Hardy! Don Quixote is, as always, looking for demons and bad people to slay because he believes he is a knight whose duty is to save people in distress. But it’s a great break for him when he encounters the Doctor. They’re absolutely on the same page – they prove to be soulmates, which is very touching.”
Writer Alan Ronald added:
“There’s a sort of Quixote voice that I had in my head while I was writing. And when we were lucky enough to get Simon Callow, suddenly that voice was real – it’s just dream casting. You can’t really get better than that.”
The boxset includes:
Backwards and in Heels by Alison Winter
The Doctor has offered young Ace a lift home from Iceworld, promising the scenic route home to Perivale. But when they are diverted to 1920s Soho on what appears to be shady business, Ace wonders if she’s making the right choices, let alone in the right order.
The Price of Snow by Katharine Armitage
Ski resort Val du Cam Belle is ‘the place to be’ for the 1% of the near future. But the Doctor and Ace discover sinister shadows beneath the surface of this winter wonderland. The sun is too hot, the shade is too dark and nothing is quite what it seems…
The Ingenious Gentlemen by Alan Ronald
Fiction and reality collide when a mad man with a box and a mad man with a horse encounter an ancient evil in 15th Century Spain. But the adventurer-and-companion setup is a little too familiar to Ace, and she begins to question if she is anything more than a Sancho to the Doctor’s Quixote.
The guest cast of Wicked! also includes Alexandra Barredo, Luke Barton, Paulo Vieira, Sophie Kennedy Clark, and Tom Alexander.
The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Wicked! is available to pre-order now for £19.99 (download to own) or £24.99 (download and as a three-disc CD box set). The CD box set is strictly limited to 1,500 copies and will not be re-pressed. This is 2025’s second Seventh Doctor Adventures set, after June’s Past Forward. Both can be pre-ordered together in a multibuy bundle from £38 (download) or £47 (download and CD).
