#1 Fourth Doctor Adventures: The Wrath of the Iceni

It begins... I have a stockpile of around three hundred Big Finish audios. There are many I've never listened to at all, and there are few I've listened to more than once. This is where I start doing something about that. My first spin of my personal Randomoid Selectortron brings up...

Fourth Doctor Adventures: The Wrath of the Iceni

Starring: Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor and Louise Jameson as Leela
Format: one full-cast CD (or download) of two half-CD episodes
Silly? The character of the Fourth Doctor acts a little silly, but the story is serious.
Standalone? Yes. Only vague prior familiarity with Leela is called for.
Recommended? Yes, though not at full price unless you're specifically a Leela fan.

My reflections on this story contain spoilers for it.

Before listening

I've definitely listened to this one at least once. I might have enjoyed it so much that I relistened soon after. I don't think I returned to it for any further listening after that initial point in time.

As I remember it, it's my favorite of the Fourth Doctor Adventures I've heard, with strong characterization moments for Leela and and a nice historical plot. I think it might have been a "pure" historical, but I might be forgetting some more science-fictional turn near the end. I didn't know what the Iceni were going into it and assumed they were going to be some kind of alien.

After listening to episode 1 of 2

The story begins with some cryptic foreshadowing about storytelling, then the TARDIS lands and there is some nice Doctor/Leela banter. Like the rest of this Fourth Doctor Adventures season, the Doctor is showing Leela around the universe to give her an "education". There is a nicely characterized gag in which the Doctor name-drops Noel Coward and Leela takes the surname literally. (Noel Coward has a prominent role in one of Paul Magrs's weirdest Doctor Who novels; that is not mentioned here in any way and was probably not on author John Dorney's mind).
Strong characterization continues with Leela and Boudica bonding over fighting some Romans, with the Doctor tagging along as Leela's fool/seer. A conversation between side characters is saddled with unnecessarily archaic grammar ("Wait you for something?"), but aside from that, they are well-painted for side characters on a one-disc Doctor Who.
The Doctor wants to leave with Leela before the Iceni are massacred by the Romans, or so he claims. From previous listening, I remember that there is a twist in Episode 2, and the real massacre does not go quite the way the Doctor says it will. The listener is obviously expected to have heard of Boudica, but not to necessarily pick up on where the Doctor is fudging the facts.
The actual cliffhanger at the end of the episode isn't much, but the overall plot that it's interrupting is a very engaging plot and I'm looking forward to Episode 2. I think that half-remembering the coming twist is enhancing my anticipation, not blunting it.

After listening to episode 2 of 2

A problem baked into the narrative rules of Doctor Who is that the the Doctor can't do things in Earth's history that he could do anywhere else. The Doctor would be able to overthrow a direct point-for-point analog of the British Raj on some asteroid, for instance, but it would be impossible for him to go up against the real one. In Wrath of the Iceni, the Doctor can ultimately do nothing either for or against either the Roman occupation of Britain or Boudica's rebellion against that occupation. The writers know this, and the writers know the audience knows it, and so the question of who wins the battle in episode 2 is just a background detail for the smaller-scale story, which has at its heart Leela's "education". Leela has seen and caused death, but her noble savagery has no place for the indiscriminate slaughter this story's Boudica revels in. Leela and Boudica are the same in many ways, but their paths violently diverge, to the disappointment of both. (It is left unclear whether what we see in Leela is due to the Doctor's influence or something inherent in her.)
This is not a story that would have aired during Leela's time on the television show. Aside from being a pure historical, it is a character-focused story of a type the television show never did. The climax is more about Leela coming to a personal realization than about the swordfight that follows from it, which would never have fit the TV show, but works excellently in audio as it's nearly impossible to make a swordfight interesting in itself in audio. Wrath of the Iceni is an excellent example of what Big Finish does, taking a pre-existing television property and finding something in it that that can be explored more deeply in the audio medium.
I wouldn't recommend paying full price for most Fourth Doctor Adventures, as Big Finish has better value for money in their other ranges, but if you are a fan of Tom Baker or Louise Jameson in particular, Wrath of the Iceni is one to get. If you happen to catch it at a good sale price, you should definitely get it.