Moving away from the excitement of new releases and continuing with the CDNM series, I’m back looking at the third boxset’s second adventure. Featuring the 4^th Doctor and Leela, the adventure sees them travel to Rome, where they get mixed up with a cowardly Tivolian and his holiday from hell.

Taking an Italian holiday, the Fourth Doctor and Leela encounter another tourist very far from home. Timble Feebis is a particularly timid Tivolian, but he has much to be fearful about!

Guarding a vital data-chip, the three visitors are soon caught up in the machinations of a crime boss and his gang, and a dangerous alien assassin…

Big Finish Synopsis

As much as it pains me to say it, The Tivolian Who Knew Too Much is undoubtedly a weak link in this boxset. Set on the 70s streets of Rome, the plot sees The Doctor and Leela mixed in with helping a Tivolian evade a local mafia group known as The Red Hand. Pretty standard fare, the plot is a generic run-around caper that picks on every overused trope in the book, from one-dimensional antagonists to our protagonists being held captive for long stints of time. While using tropes isn’t always a negative (in fact they more often than not form the basis for a great story), the problem this story has is that these tropes are just that, tropes. Throughout the episode, there are no attempts to add anything that might elevate these genre mainstays, so they end up more resembling a blur of plot points rather than anything engaging.

With the plot on thin ice, there are two aspects of this adventure that fortunately stop it from falling under the banner of forgettable. The first of these saving graces comes from the witty script material given to Tom’s 4^th Doctor. His quips and chemistry with Leela are on top form throughout and are a joy to listen to even when the story lags in interesting moments.

The second positive from this story comes from Valentine’s knowledge of the Tivolians. First appearing during the Moffat era of the TV show, they are a cowardly race of aliens who enjoy being subjugated by whatever invaders come their way. This story expands on the Tivolians’ cowardly aspirations by showing how ingrained this relationship has become to the survival of their species. Without an invader the Tivolians are lost, and if they are without one for too long, they ultimately head out and resort to searching for prospective invaders themselves. It’s an interesting, almost needy symbiosis that really helped me warm to their creation in a way that I never did during their TV appearances.