Almost certainly my favourite supporting characters in the long history of Doctor Who, The Paternoster Gang are sorely underused in the main series, despite their unique dynamic and excellent premise, with their last appearance being in the Twelfth Doctor’s first full adventure, Deep Breath – way back in 2014.

Silurian Madame Vastra (played by Neve McIntosh), her human maid/wife Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart) and Sontaran Butler Strax (Dan Starkey) live in Victorian London, solving fantastical mysteries and kicking ass all over the city and beyond.

The first Heritage audio box set was a welcome return for the characters, reunited after a long period where rights issues kept them all from appearing together at the same time.

So it’s great that they proved popular enough that a full series of their adventures was commissioned, so here we are with the second set in the Heritage series.

The first story in the set, Dining with Death, is written by Strax actor Dan Starkey. It concerns the Gang’s efforts to offer neutral territory for two alien races (basically anthropomorphic animals; Walruses vs Foxes) at war with each other.

There’s some really interesting elements of this setup, with the bickering, distrustful alien races coming to dinner at Paternoster Row – and our trio trying their hand at diplomacy.

Starkey very generously takes a bit of a back seat with Strax here, though it’s fair to say that he still gets some brilliantly funny one liners, as always.

It’s a great piece of world building for The Paternoster Gang, giving us a bit more insight into what they find themselves doing between mysteries.

It does end up feeling a little bit inconsequential, but it’s a nicely light hearted story with some fun in-jokes and references.

Next up is The Screaming Ceiling, in which the Gang join fictional ghost finder Thomas Carnacki (who appeared in numerous short stories by William Hope Hodgson in the early 20th Century) to solve the mystery of a castle with a room that has a mouth – and screams!

This is another fun adventure, mostly told by Carnacki (Joe Jameson) himself, albeit in one of his earliest adventures. It’s one of those classic Whovian tales where it seems that the supernatural may be real, but instead there’s an extra terrestrial explanation.

Lastly, there’s Spring-Heeled Jack, which has a similar supernatural vibe and again, pulls the same Whovian trick as The Screaming Ceiling. It’s a wonderfully unpredictable tale that isn’t anywhere near as straightforward as it initially seems.

Though I didn’t enjoy this box set as much as Heritage 1, which I just felt was a lot stronger in terms of its stories, I always look forward to spending more time with The Paternoster Gang.

They have such wonderful chemistry and, even though the stories may not have quite hit the mark this time around, they’re never less than entertaining and Vastra, Jenny and Strax remain three of the finest characters to have ever emerged from Doctor Who.

You can buy The Paternoster Gang: Heritage 2 directly from Big Finish here.