Book Review 5: The Eight Doctors, written by Terrance Dicks (1997)

Released: June 1997

Story Summary (BIG SPOILERS!):

The recently-regenerated 8th Doctor is taken unawares by a trap laid by the recently-deceased Master, which results in him completely losing his memory and identity. Encouraged by the mysterious voice of long-dead Time Lord ruler, Lord Rassilon, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS to visit each of his previous selves in the hope that he can reclaim his memory and return to normal. On the way he gives words of wisdom to his earlier selves, helps them defeat old foes, saves some of them from danger, meets some old friends, and even helps to save Gallifrey from a political crisis of its own making.

The Doctor also accidentally arrives back at Coal Hill, only in 1997, where he meets young student Sam Jones, who is in danger from a particularly vicious bully and drug dealer called Baz. Once the Doctor recovers all his memory, he returns to save Sam from trouble before he moves on. Sam decides to join the newly restored Doctor in his travels, and depart to experience new adventures in space and time.


Story Placement

Between The TV Movie (TV Serial) and Vampire Science (BBC Book).

(1st Doctor: During An Unearthly Child; 2nd Doctor: During The War Games; 3rd Doctor: Immediately after The Sea Devils; 4th Doctor: Immediately after State of Decay; 5th Doctor: Immediately after The Five Doctors; 6th Doctor: During Parts 13-14 of The Trial of a Time Lord; 7th Doctor: Probably concurrent to The Room with No Doors (Virgin New Adventures book), and after Bullet Time (BBC Book PDA) as this has to take place before Lungbarrow (Virgin New Adventures book) during which the TARDIS interior is altered.)


Review:

It was a new Doctor, and the beginning of the BBC’s first official Doctor Who book range, and yet at times The Eight Doctors just beggars belief. Now, it goes without saying that Terrance Dicks has written some fantastic Doctor Who, both in print as well as more obviously for the Television show itself, but sadly this book isn’t one of them.

Perhaps what is most striking about it is how bizarre Terrance Dicks’ logic is in writing such a story. His invented storyline for The Eight Doctors, isn’t odd in itself, in fact it recalls his own story The Five Doctors, and his celebrated writing style from his Target novelisations. However, the idea that you introduce new people to Doctor Who by writing a novel filled with enough TV episode-specific continuity to fill a mini-encyclopaedia, and then try to introduce a new Doctor in print by instead introducing all the previous (and probably better-known) Doctors and their respective characters is surely bordering on madness. Terrance Dicks enables this multi-Doctor extravaganza by contriving a rather trite trap laid by the recently deceased Master, after somewhat openly (and hypocritically) criticising some of the TV Movie’s contrived events. Furthermore, as this story has to serve as an introduction for a new companion, Sam Jones, Dicks also reluctantly contrives an accidental visit by the 8th Doctor to Totter’s Lane and London’s fictional Coal Hill region (maybe in Shoreditch possibly) in 1997 as first seen in the first TV episode, An Unearthly Child.

Even if we ignore the story’s crazy and frankly, messy development though, Terrance Dicks shoots himself in the foot by writing rather poor characterisation for the majority of the book. The new and ‘current’ 8th Doctor suffers the most, becoming amnesic yet again, and rather too soon in light of his immediately preceding regeneration and opening story, the TV Movie. Far more criminal though is the fact that Terrance Dicks writes him as the blandest and most generic Doctor ever, not even offering hints of possible character development. The brief character aspects he is given are one-dimensional, often gimmicky attributes which are only there to help him through the plot at convenient moments, like regaining his talent at Venusian Aikido, being able to drink several tankards of beer, or effortlessly taking up the role of a diplomatic politician. In fact Terrance Dicks seems to have tried to extrapolate a character for the 8th Doctor, purely from the fact that he’s somewhat dashing – the main cliché of the 8th Doctor taken from the TV Movie. Thankfully future books in the series would repair the damage done here and do a much better take on the 8th Doctor, taking him into various interesting areas.

Another big failure is in the characterisation of the past Doctors as well, which is also rather odd, considering that Terrance Dicks has had more experience writing most of them, than most other writers at this point. Only the 1st, 3rd and 5th Doctors actually resemble their TV personas, and even then, there seem to be discrepancies. The 3rd Doctor, rather incongruously threatens to kill his future self in order to escape back into Time and Space, and he really means it, which feels so out of character, you have to wonder if Terrance has done any research or is just falling back on the distorted memory of when he used to write the character for television. The 2nd Doctor is rather grumpy, the 4th is also quite generic, and the 7th is just a manic depressive (yes he did have bouts of depression now and again, but there’s a very lot more to him than that!). The worst past-Doctor characterisation though has to be the 6th Doctor, who is written by Terrance as always egotistical, gets angry a lot, and mainly wants to eat a lot. As characterisations go it’s scandalous. Outside the use of season 22 clichés, the fact that Terrance Dicks uses his portrayal of the sixth Doctor as a mean slur against Colin Baker just for being a bit overweight, is not only in bad taste, but also cruel (and hypocritical again – has Terrance looked in the mirror recently). The rest of the characters are very simplistic, occasionally bland, and usually full of clichés abound, including sadly, the new companion Sam Jones. From these weak beginnings, her character would struggle to have much impact on the BBC Book range, aside from Lawrence Miles’ Time-twisting tales, but that’s still to come.

As the 8th Doctor has lost his memory, the plot mainly consists of revisiting the Doctor’s past incarnations, so he can regain his memory bit-by-bit from each one of his past selves. Instead of 7 new and original short stories, Terrance Dicks overall decides to return back to old Doctor Who TV serials, three of which he originally wrote (The War Games, State of Decay and The Five Doctors), and one of which he wrote up as a novelisation (An Unearthly Child). Unfortunately, this method works more against him than for him. The 1st and 2nd Doctor segments are a shameless revision of some of the best script work in the programme. Here the 8th Doctor talks the 1st into being more kind, compassionate and selfless, and talks the 2nd into giving himself up to the Time Lords, which I feel cheapens some of the great writing in An Unearthly Child and The War Games, as well as the journeys those Doctors have to go through as characters. Thankfully Terrance Dicks chooses a much better tack for later stories that act as codas to the TV serials they relate to rather than direct intervention in them. The 3rd Doctor segment sees the Master on the run to his TARDIS immediately after The Sea Devils; the next shows the 4th Doctor and Romana encountering another hidden nest of Vampires after State of Decay; and in the 5th Doctor segment, the 8th Doctor visits his previous self back in the Eye of Orion, trying a second attempt at relaxation after the resolution of The Five Doctors, and being ambushed by some past monsters.

The sixth mini adventure is the best of these, where the 8th Doctor goes back to Gallifrey at the time of the last episodes of The Trial of a Time Lord, to help reveal the truth and scandal of it to his fellow Time Lords, expose the corrupted Time Lords at its heart and help restore Gallifreyan society and politics to a more democratic, organised and morally virtuous position. This is probably the first time in the book where the 8th Doctor has a real positive impact on story events, and stops being a walking, talking plot device, even if it doesn’t last for long. Terrance also gets the opportunity to correct a couple of small problems and fill in and elaborate on a few plot developments from The Trial of a Time Lord that went unexplained previously. In fact it’s probably the first and only time Terrance’s continuity feast does anything useful in the book. The 7th story segment is by comparison the weakest, showing the 7th Doctor revisiting Metebelis III on a whim and getting caught off-guard by a giant spider that survived the events of Planet of the Spiders. The 8th Doctor turns up in the nick to save his former self with a flash of the Master’s Tissue Compression Eliminator, which he conveniently picked up during the third mini adventure.

Terrance Dicks also brings back a host of old Time Lord characters for a couple of Gallifrey subplots. The first involves President Flavia monitoring the 8th Doctor’s odd revisits to his past incarnations from a far, aided by Castellan Spandrell, and the activities of disgruntled and ruthless Time Lord Ryoth, who tries to kill the 8th Doctor by sending a Raston Warrior Robot, Sontarans and a Drashig to the 5th Doctor in the Eye of Orion. The second involves the corrupt President Niroc, who oversaw the Ravalox/Earth atrocity as seen in The Trial of a Time Lord, and deposed Flavia after the events of The Five Doctors, being exposed by the 8th Doctor, who with the help of a temporarily revived Borusa, deposes him to elect a new High Council and correct the events of the Ravalox affair. Even Rassilon seems to play a large part in the story, conveniently aiding the Doctor to pilot the TARDIS back to see his former selves while still in his amnesic state, and seemly manipulating his meeting with Sam Jones. All this wallowing in Doctor Who’s past does produce a nice cosy blanket of nostalgia, but even by Terrance Dick’s past efforts, this feels particularly excessive. Digging up Flavia for the 6th Doctor’s segment is fair enough (although bringing back Borusa is dubious), but using her to represent Gallifrey in the ‘present’, shows up Terrance’s reluctance to do anything other than just be stuck in the past, completely ignoring the imaginative, legitimate and genuine developments in the story of the Time Lords as written in the Missing and New Adventures book ranges published by Virgin throughout the 1990s. Terrance Dicks even brings back the cheetah-infected Master to help explain the Master’s remains at the beginning of the TV Movie, which also completely ignores a lot of what the New Adventures did with the character.

And yet despite all these faults, The Eight Doctors is very readable. It may not challenge the grey cells very much, if at all, but it’s certainly a fun and pleasant read if nothing else. Like I mentioned at the start of the review, the book puts you in mind of the Target novelisations Terrance Dicks used to write so well. The Eight Doctors may sadly not be up to the same standards as most of those novelisations, with a contrived story, made up of short stories that are tacked on to the end of old narratives, often written rather generically and lacking character, feeling like padding, and with convenient plot devices at every turn. However, most of the stories are decent and entertaining tales that are far from being dull and empty passages of no consequence. The third, fifth and sixth Doctor segments in particular, are very entertaining tales that perfectly put the reader in mind of the period of Doctor Who that inspired them. Although, it’s hard to tell if Terrance Dicks is just lazily sticking to what he knows, because he doesn’t really want to write the novel, or is merely taking up a chance to once again relieve the glory days and pass comment on the general production history of Doctor Who up to this point. And there lies my main issue with the book. The Eight Doctors is a nice warm slice of cosy Doctor Who nostalgia, but it could have been so much more.

Score: 6/10

Audio Review 10: Hornets' Nest - 4. A Sting in the Tale, written by Paul Magrs (2009)

Released: December 2009

Cast:

The Doctor – Tom Baker
Mike Yates – Richard Franklin
Sister – Susie Riddell
Nun – Clare Corbett
Mrs Wibbsey – Susan Jameson
The Swarm – Rula Lenska

Main Production Credits

Producer and Director – Kate Thomas

Writer – Paul Magrs
Script Editor & Executive Producer – Michael Stevens
Incidental Music – Simon Power
Audio Editor – Neil Gardner
Production Assistant – Lyndsey Melling
Studio Engineers – Simon Willey & Wolfgang Deinst

Story Summary (SPOILERS!):

The Doctor tells Mike Yates of how he tracked down the alien Hornets back to medieval Northumberland, where a Priory of Nuns are under attack from a pack of wild dogs. The Doctor discovers that within the Priory walls, the Nuns guard a Pig, whom they are convinced to be their mother superior. The Pig, in fact, holds the Queen of the Hornets and the wild dogs are possessed by the Hornet workers trying to reclaim her and unite the hive mind. After the Dogs penetrate the Priory and discover the Queen, the Hornets all unite into a collective mind inside one of the dogs, which the Doctor lures back to the TARDIS, to save the Priory.

However, once inside the TARDIS, the Doctor and the Hornets chase each other, in a deadly game of cat and mouse, until the Hornets take their chance to invade the Doctor himself! Powerless, the Doctor is forced to pilot the Hornets back to Earth, whereupon they escape into 18th Century Venice, taking over the young dwarf Antonio along the way.

Story Placement

Between Hornets’ Nest: The Circus of Doom (BBC Audio) and Hornets’ Nest: Hive of Horror (BBC Audio).

Review:

A Sting in the Tale is a successful culmination in the ongoing story of the Hornets’ Nest audio series. We finally learn the whole truth about the mysterious alien hornet creatures, and can at last fully appreciate the status quo between the hornets and the Doctor before their future battle back in the present day takes place. Sadly, partly because of the brilliant plot twist revealed in The Circus of Doom, there is little in the way of surprises in this adventure as the audience will already know that the TARDIS was to be invaded by the hornets, and that they would eventually end up in 18th Century Venice. Despite the overall predictability to the plot though, there is still a fair amount to offer to the loyal listener.

For a start, there’s the greatly atmospheric and romantic setting of a Medieval Priory in Northumberland. Thanks to Paul Magrs’ great narrative passages, it’s easy to imagine the bitterly cold rural landscape, and the Doctor walking on the crisp, thick snow. The medieval scene is also well established and maintained, as the Doctor has to endure barley soup with “rancid” butter while in the barren and claustrophobic stone walls of the Priory.  We also have hornet-possessed animals once again, only this time live and not stuffed. Furthermore they’re used and written much more effectively than in previous Hornets’ Nest audios. We have a bemused Pig, who rather bizarrely and somewhat implausibly is mistaken, and dressed, as a mother superior by the other nuns in the Priory. Rather more threatening are the rabid and ferocious wild dogs that attack and invade the Priory as the Hornets try to reclaim their Queen from the resident Pig. The image of wolf-like dogs stampeding through a medieval stone priory is absolutely picturesque and slightly unnerving. Had this been made for TV, I have no doubt that it would be quite a chilling and impressive sight.

The story’s growing dynamism continues as inevitably the Doctor leads the last Hornet-invested hound away into the TARDIS, and runs around various imaginative made-up rooms. However from that point on, the audio becomes rather more mundane and predictable. The myriad of TARDIS rooms are interesting at first, but after a while the continuing run-a-round just becomes tiresome padding as it has done in many other adventures that feature a lot of the TARDIS. The takeover of the Doctor by the Hornets though, does raise the stakes of the story arc significantly, as its interesting to see the Doctor genuinely out of his depth, even if it doesn’t last long. Also, as previously mentioned, we already know that the TARDIS has to land in the lagoons of 18th century Venice, so loyal listeners spend the last third of the audio just waiting for the inevitable events mentioned in The Circus of Doom to play out. It seems as if the real adventure is yet to come.

The other real disappointment in the audio is the true nature of the Hornet creatures themselves. Apparently, they only came to Earth by chance, and that apart from possession and self-miniaturisation, it seems as if most of the magical powers listeners have witnessed them make use of in previous audios (hypnotism, mind reading, manipulating human emotions, animating still objects) have appeared from nowhere, without explanation. It feels like a bit of a cop-out that so many of these powers, in some cases integral to the plots of previous adventures, like the animated ballet shoes, were just contrived to make the story possible, and that’s even without mentioning all the many convenient coincidences throughout the Hornets’ Nest series.

On a more positive note, Tom Baker is still on good form, particularly on the narration, which you can tell he really loves reading, such is his infectious enthusiasm. The rest of the cast is quite minimal and play much smaller parts on this occasion, although I did notice that one of the Nuns (if there was more than one) had some trouble with their northern accent. The sound design on the alien Hornet voice was really good too. I didn’t even recognise that it was played by Rula Lenska when I listened the first time around! Simon Power’s music has also clearly been steadily improving since The Stuff of Nightmares too. Some of it sounds positively Dudley Simpson-esque. Although it’s still disappointing that the music just consists of a small selection of repeatedly used cues. Maybe the music budget is rather tight on BBC audios. BIG Finish seems to manage well enough.

So A Sting in the Tale mainly consists of a rounding up and summary of all the plot threads in the Hornets’ Nest series so far. The first third is a short atmospheric adventure into medieval Britain that is really well-written, but as soon as the action moves to the TARDIS the story seems to stop in its tracks and begins to wind down just as it was getting exciting. Despite a short burst of tension when the Doctor is momentarily taken over by the Hornets, the last half of the audio is an exercise in padding and summing up, which is a big shame, because it seemed that A Sting in the Tale had the potential to be the best in the series so far.

Score: 8/10

Audio Review 9: Whispers of Terror, written by Justin Richards (1999)

Released: November 1999

Cast:

The Doctor – Colin Baker
Peri Brown – Nicola Bryant
Amber Dent – Rebecca Jenkins
Goth Fotherill – Hylton Collins
Visteen Krane – Matthew Brenher
Radio Announcer – Harvey Summers
Museum Curator Gantman – Peter Miles
Detective Berkeley – Nick Scovell
Hans Stengard – Steffan Boje
Beth Pernell – Lisa Bowerman

Main Production

Producers – Gary Russell & Jason Haigh-Ellery
Writer – Justin Richards
Director – Gary Russell
Incidental Music – Nicholas Briggs
Recording, Sound Design, Post-Production and CD mastering – Harvey Summers at Medium Moose
Title Music – Ron Grainer, Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
TARDIS Sounds – Brian Hodgson and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Executive Producer (for BBC Worldwide) – Stephen Cole

Story Summary (SPOILERS!):

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Peri to an advanced world, were they find themselves in the Museum of Aural Antiquities...and stumble upon a dead body. As the Doctor searches for answers, he uncovers far more than just the political conspiracy he was expecting. A homicidal creature, made purely of sound is on the loose in the museum, and as the bodies start to pile up, the Doctor struggles to foil the conspiracy and solve the mystery of the creature’s existence. The sound creature, while intelligent, has been driven insane by the trauma of the murder of its former human persona, leading politician Visteen Krane. Krane was killed at the behest of Beth Pernell, another politician and colleague of his, whose ambition for the Presidency and obsession and lust for power leads her to resort to any means in order to achieve it. Krane cheated death by channelling his mind and brainwaves into a machine that condenses them into sound waves, creating the wild sound creature, who has been seeking revenge ever since.

After pacifying and calming the sound creature, allowing it to return to sanity and become Krane again psychologically (albeit still as a sound creature), the Doctor, with Krane’s help, thwarts Beth Pernell’s fixed political election campaign, and reveals her as Krane’s murderer.

Story Placement

Between The Twin Dilemma (TV Serial) and Attack of the Cybermen (TV Serial).

Although BIG Finish’s intended placement was after Revelation of the Daleks (TV Serial), the bad tempered exchanges between the Doctor and Peri in this audio feel even more heated than what usually occurred at this point in their character development, despite The Twin Dilemma being directly referenced in Attack of the Cybermen.

Favourite Lines

The Doctor – “It’s what you say that’s important, not how loudly you say it. Could be a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, but signifying...nothing”.
Peri – “I’m glad you’ve learnt that at last, Doctor”.
The Doctor – “Me? Huh! Me?! You’re the one that needs to learn how to speak properly”.


Review:

I don’t mean to pick on poor Justin Richards, honestly. Taking a break from the Hornets’ Nest audio series, I fancied revisiting a BIG Finish release, and this was one I hadn’t listened to for a long while.

Whispers of Terror was only BIG Finish’s third official Doctor Who audio, and already they were trying to think outside the box with ideas that explored the potential of the audio medium. Justin Richards comes up with perhaps one of most obvious, but great ideas nonetheless – a creature made purely of sound. This particular sound creature is of course homicidal, but don’t be fooled, there is more to this character than either the synopsis or the first episode implies. Justin Richards has also neatly set this adventure in one big sound museum and editing suite, wonderfully including all the paraphernalia and jargon that comes with it. Of course there is a slight danger that some listeners may see this storyline as trite and unoriginal, like supermarket workers writing a story about people working in a supermarket, but I don’t, I love it. Then again, being an amateur sound engineer myself, perhaps I’m biased. Another plotline in the mix is a peculiar conspiracy involving the deliberate editing or vandalism of old sound recordings. Again I can imagine some listeners finding this part of the story quite dull, but I find it really intriguing. It’s not very often that you get a mystery quite as odd and small in scale in Doctor Who, just like some of the odd plot points in Agatha Christie’s stories, so it feels very fresh and interesting here. Even the identity of the creature itself is something of a ‘whodunit’, in more ways than one.

Even with all these great elements in its favour though, it still falls far short of its promise, and on this particular occasion it’s because of the script. Despite Justin Richards coming up with a great story concept, setting and other small ideas to give an interesting variation and dynamic to the characters, he fails to bring any of them to life with much depth and development. There’s nothing wrong with the plot per se, just that it is rather simplistic. So simplistic in fact, that it struggles to fill out its four 25-minute episodes, and has to be padded out with extended music cues and pointless banter. Also, rather bizarrely, Beth Pernell manages to somehow escape arrest, only to have a confusing and bombastic death scene that feels tacked on to fill up the story’s remaining minutes. BIG Finish’s own behind-the-scenes book, Doctor Who: The New Audio Adventures – The Inside Story (Benjamin Cook, 2003) reveals that the original draft of the script was much, much longer, so who knows how painfully slow it could have been? The book also reveals that the odd ending was a rewrite, while the original death scene seems a much better, Macbeth-inspired version where Beth commits suicide, although it would’ve been even better had Beth still been arrested. The script in the produced version of Whispers of Terror though, has a simple and slow enough plot that most listeners would be able to correctly guess the mysterious identity of the sound creature, and who originally murdered their human persona early on into the second episode, and be waiting patiently for nearly another two episodes before the plot fully catches up. So food for thought, it is not.

Speaking of pointless banter, this storyline is supposed to be set during the more turbulent period of the sixth Doctor and Peri’s friendship, so the script has a pushed in a few argumentative passages between the two characters to remind us of the fact. Although I commend Justin Richards’ attention to detail by trying to make the story fit in with the tone of the early sixth Doctor’s TV adventures, I can’t help but feel that he’s over-egged these passages, making the Doctor and Peri a bit too argumentative and rude, the result being rather grating (and I say that as a fan of the sixth Doctor). I think only The Twin Dilemma has more tiresome exchanges between the Doctor and Peri, although I must admit, I did find the Doctor’s jibe at Peri’s accent a bit amusing. However, having said that, the Doctor does have a solid presence in this audio, and is likeable most of the time. Peri though is reduced to being rather ineffectual in places, and often falls into casual stereotype, as per most of her TV episodes.

The other characters are simplistic too, but Justin Richards (and to some extent, Gary Russell) does make an effort to make them interesting. Beth Pernell is the spiteful, paranoid and power-hungry politician; Stengard her calm, smug and sarcastic producer, come lackey; Berkeley is the open-minded and weary-eyed detective; and Curator Gantman is a blind, but proud archivist, media historian and audio expert. Gantman’s blindness despite having a poetic irony to it is also used as a device for a neat plot twist later on in the story. All these characters are interesting and enjoyable to listen to, but they offer little for the audience to relate or react to, mostly because they are only a short distance from their established stereotypes (power-mad megalomaniac, thug or goon, ineffectual detective, eccentric librarian). Also despite their interesting quirks, all the characters are still ultimately at the mercy of the needs of the plot, rather than always acting on their ‘natural’ motivations. An example of this can be found during episode three, when Stengard has a contrived lapse in character, undergoing a sudden and a bizarre attack on his conscience (which is never believable for a moment), allowing him to conveniently be in a good position to enable Peri to release the sound creature from Beth Pernell’s grasp two minutes later. All-in-all then, two-dimensional characters are better than one-dimensional ones, but they’re still not as rewarding as three-dimensional characters are. It probably doesn’t help them that they’ve also been given some occasionally rather theatrical dialogue. Visteen Krane and Beth Pernell get away with it, given that they were leading and public-speaking politicians, Krane in particular astutely labelled as an “actor”, given how much of an emphasis the New Labour politicians gave to ‘spin’ since 1997, and the unfortunate high level of prominence it has in 21st century British politics. Other characters however, aren’t so lucky. The Doctor’s “Nooooooooo!” during the risible cliff-hanger of episode three, for instance, is rather embarrassing to say the least. If this wasn’t enough, there are also lots of bad sound jokes peppered throughout.

However, Whispers of Terror is partly bolstered by the fact that it benefits from a great cast. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant both give assured performances, once again highlighting how good a TARDIS team they are, however their characters are ultimately handled by the script. Fan favourite and 1970s British TV stalwart Peter Miles generally excels and does his best as Curator Gantman in what is quite a modest role for an actor of his experience and skill, nicely underplaying his lines. Lisa Bowerman, star of the Benny Summerfield audios and director extraordinaire is also a very strong performer, verbally sparring with Colin Baker quite brilliantly as the Doctor clashes or faces off with Beth Pernell at various points throughout the audio, and give Beth a coldly calm and calculated edge that helps turn the character into a great villain. Matthew Brenher is also rather impressive as Visteen Krane, giving a colourful performance that gives the perfect impression of the character as a theatrical performer as well as a politician.

The audio is also strengthened by some great sound work by Harvey Summers and Nicholas Briggs. The sound design in particular is stunning, with the myriad of sounds and echoes created giving the audio a very claustrophobic, atmospheric and creepy feel that is well maintained throughout the adventure. The flighty whispers and distorted voices, as well as being very clever and creative, help give the sound creature a continuous, all-pervasive presence that can go anywhere, at any time, and in fact never ever truly goes away. I imagine it could be a bit scary to younger listeners, playing Whispers of Terror on a dark autumn night. You can’t really say that about most Doctor Who monsters on audio, which reinforces how great a creation it is, as well as how brilliantly BIG Finish have brought it to life. As rushed incidental scores go, Nicholas Briggs’ is really quite decent, considering how he had to step in at the last minute to do it, and his score fits in perfectly with the incidental scores written for TV Doctor Who episodes in the mid-1980s, so another job well done by the BIG Finish production team!

So in summary, Whispers of Terror is an enjoyable small-scale adventure for the sixth Doctor and Peri that matches the tone and style of their original 1980s TV episodes. Sadly it probably matches it a bit too much, but that isn’t really what stops the audio from being a great adventure. It’s simple, slow, and mostly quite predictable, but on the plus side, the mystery is intriguing, and the sound creature, both in concept and realisation is a revelation. What’s more some of the characters are actually quite interesting, with a great cast to help make them really memorable, especially Lisa Bowerman; and Harvey Summers creates one of the best soundscapes BIG Finish has ever produced! I just wish it was less tiresome...and three episodes instead of four...with less bad jokes and theatrical dialogue. I’ll just shut up now.

Score: 6/10

Audio Review 8: Hornets' Nest - 3. The Circus of Doom, written by Paul Magrs (2009)

Released: November 2009

Cast:

The Doctor – Tom Baker

Mike Yates – Richard Franklin

Sally – Susie Riddell

Dr Adam Farrow – Michael Maloney

Old lady – Susan Jameson

Francesca – Jilly Bond

Antonio – Stephen Thorne

Main Production Credits

Producer and Director – Kate Thomas

Writer – Paul Magrs

Script Editor & Executive Producer – Michael Stevens

Incidental Music – Simon Power

Audio Editor – Neil Gardner

Production Assistant – Lyndsey Melling

Studio Engineers – Simon Willey & Wolfgang Deinst

Story Summary (SPOILERS!):

The Doctor tells his friend, the retired Mike Yates about his third encounter with the alien Hornet creatures. Arriving in the town of Blandford in 1832, he learns that a travelling circus is in residence – the Circus of Delights. Upon visiting it himself, the Doctor finds that Hornets are using the Circus to kidnap and possess the local residents, intending to send them out into the wider world as an invasion force to help spread and multiply the influence of the alien Hornets further. While hypnotising and interrogating the circus ringmaster, Antonio, the Doctor also discovers that the ringmaster first met the Hornets back in his home city of Venice as a child, after seeing them fly out of a recently landed TARDIS – his TARDIS! The Hornet hive mind evacuates Antonio as his husk of a body dies from old age, and then takes over the body of Francesca, the circus’ dancer and tightrope walker. The Hornets force Francesca to commit suicide in order to escape from the Doctor’s clutches once more.

Story Placement

Between Hornets’ Nest: The Dead Shoes (BBC Audio) and Hornets’ Nest: A Sting in the Tale (BBC Audio).

Favourite Lines

The Doctor – “I can’t abide the waste of good gobstoppers”.

Review:

After the decidedly mixed quality of the previous two instalments of Hornets’ Nest, I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to be anything more than inconsequential and disposable entertainment, but happily The Circus of Doom bucks the trend, and starts to finally add meat to the bones of Hornets’ Nest story arc set up in The Stuff of Nightmares. Furthermore, the tone of the script is slightly darker, and is much more enjoyable as a result, losing some of the lightweight material in the two previous audios. When I say darker, I don’t mean that the story itself is especially dark, just that the balance between light and dark is much more equal, and more in line with the tone in what is usually considered ‘traditional’ Doctor Who.

The storyline for this adventure is a perfect example of this, being an inspired twist on the age-old alien invasion story, with the Hornet creatures trying to takeover mankind via a sinister travelling circus, possessing their audiences, and sending them out into the world to help infiltrate and takeover populations. The circus in particular is a fascinating playground for Paul Magrs’ creations, both mysterious and creepy, with the expert build up to its first appearance transmitting a real sense of apprehension in the listener. Another big positive difference is that for the first time, the alien hornets feel like a genuine threat. Paul Magrs wisely delays their first appearance in the story until the Doctor confronts the Ringmaster Antonio during the circus performance, so their presence in the story is much more dramatic and keenly felt.

This is also the first time in the Hornets’ Nest series that the Doctor feels out of his depth, being forced to challenge Antonio and the Hornets openly before he has any real plan, and in a great moment seems to come close to death as the possessed clowns force his head into the mouth of a lion. Paul Magrs then immediately tops this with the brilliant twist that the lion is also a hornet-animated stuffed animal, as the Doctor notices the unmistakable smell of formaldehyde, cleverly referencing the stuffed animals from The Stuff of Nightmares. However, another far bigger twist lays in wait as the Hornets’ Nest story arc comes to the fore, developing and expanding on the continuing mystery of the Hornets’ presence for the first time. The Doctor discovers to his horror that the Hornet creatures arrived at Venice (in front of Antonio) in the TARDIS. This clever twist is a real wake up call to the listeners as well as the Doctor, being something I never expected, and shows that Paul Magrs is significantly raising his game.

It’s therefore a big shame then that The Circus of Doom, like its predecessor has a rather feeble ending. Outside of their impressive entrance, the Hornets seem to give the Doctor free roam for most of the story, teasing him on towards the big twist about the TARDIS, and then just locking him up. The Doctor foils the Hornets’ invasion attempt just by freeing the kidnapped audience members with his sonic screwdriver, and then confronts the new host of the hornet hive mind, Francesca (since Antonio’s body died earlier in the story). It’s at this point that Paul Magrs is somewhat pushed into a corner as a result of his plot detail in The Dead Shoes, and has to contrive a sequence which ultimately ends with the Hornets’ murder of Francesca, by forcing her to commit suicide. This hereby allows for her dead feet to be the resting place for the Hornet hive (and queen) as discovered in The Dead Shoes a hundred years later in 1932. Although disappointingly, there’s still no explanation as to why it was so important for the Hornets to animate the ballet shoes that became a key plot device of The Dead Shoes.

Just like in previous Hornets’ Nest audios the characterisation is rather simplistic and inconsequential. Dr. Adam Farrow first looks like being an interesting foil to the 4th Doctor, but ends up being a cipher to help prompt the Doctor to explain the plot and ongoing story arc, and spends most of his time endlessly cursing or despairing about his daughter, Francesca, and her part in the sinister circus. Sally, the local shopkeeper’s daughter, is also a character with much wasted promise, very likeable and spirited, but ends up as the cardboard cut out of a damsel-in-distress that regularly needs to be rescued. The Hornets and their possessed human orators fare only a little better this time too, occasionally more subtle, but ultimately still amounting to the wicked witch in the seasonal play, with some lines of dialogue that threaten to break into camp territory, such as Francesca’s “I can rise to ever greater heights!”.

The basic characterisation though, is made much better by the strong cast that holds the whole production together nicely. Tom Baker in particular, is on top form here, and delightfully relishes some of his narrative dialogue, also adding great dramatic presence and tension to key moments quite powerfully and seductively. Stephen Thorne performs a subtle and slimy Italian variation of his Max Vilmio character from The Ghosts of N-Space, adding a welcome colour and variety to the audio soundtrack, and faces off well with Tom Baker, even if his character Antonio isn’t give all that much to say, and is also used as a talking plot device for the second half of the story. The rest of the cast are good also, especially Susie Riddell, but due to the one-dimensional nature of their characters, they have difficulty finding a chance to shine. Jilly Bond in particular is hampered by some really cringeworthy over theatrical dialogue.

Even if dialogue isn’t Paul Magrs’ biggest strong point, his beautifully imaginative and descriptive narrative passages joyously remain so. You can really picture being in that quiet and traditional rural town, full of cold fresh air in the mornings and the pungent smells of animals in the fields. The Circus is also greatly visualised, especially the reaction of the hypnotised audience of Blandford residents, staring wide-eyed and open mouthed with rigid fixed grins like Victorian ventriloquist or ‘Punch and Judy’ dolls. A Circus hasn’t been this creepy in Doctor Who since The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (1988 TV Serial), and it shows.

Overall, The Circus of Doom is a real treat for listeners, and a marked improvement on the previous Hornets’ Nest audios. The plot, characterisation and dialogue may not have been as well realised or developed as it could have been, and weakened what has otherwise been a great production, but the ideas and storyline are genuinely thrilling and make you appreciate the potential and ingenuity of the Hornets’ Nest series for the first time. This is where the underlying story arc really starts to get interesting, and I’m fascinated to see where Paul Magrs will take us next.

Score: 8/10

Audio Review 7: Hornets' Nest - 2.The Dead Shoes, written by Paul Magrs (2009)

Released: October 2009

Cast:

The Doctor – Tom Baker

Mrs Wibbsey – Susan Jameson

Ernestina Stott – Clare Corbett

Reverend Small – Christian Rodska

Mike Yates – Richard Franklin

Main Production Credits

Producer and Director – Kate Thomas

Writer – Paul Magrs

Script Editor & Executive Producer – Michael Stevens

Incidental Music – Simon Power

Audio Editor – Neil Gardner

Production Assistant – Lyndsey Melling

Studio Engineers – Simon Willey & Wolfgang Deinst

Story Summary (SPOILERS!):

The Doctor relates to his old friend, the retired Mike Yates, a tale of his visit to Cromer in 1932, where he experienced another encounter with the deadly alien hornet creatures. On this occasion he discovers that they are searching for a new host body, within which the hornets’ queen and hive mind and reside. The hornets intend to do this through the use of an alien instrument, which has been created in the appearance of a pair of pink ballet shoes, through which they can make the human owner dance with impossible ability to suit their own rhythms and desires.

These shoes, along with the mummified feet of their previous owner, are to be found at the Cromer Palace of Curios, where the curator is one Mrs Wibbsey. During a visit to the museum of curious collectables, the Doctor witnesses a ballerina, Ernestina Stott steal the ballet shoes, before using them for her own ballet performance on Cromer Pier’s stage. Ernestina was stung accidentally by an alien hornet and was unconsciously drawn to the pink ballet shoes in the Palace. After the Doctor saves Ernestina Stott from near death, in a revenge attack by the hornets, through the ballet shoes, they both return the shoes to Mrs Wibbsey and confront her. The Doctor has suspected all along that the hornets were behind the miraculous shoes all along, as well as the fact that Mrs Wibbsey is a controlled servant of the creatures.

However, Mrs Wibbsey is not quite as harmless as she appears, and summoning the power of the hornet creatures, she miniaturising the Doctor and Ernestina, and leaves them in a Dollhouse, populated by angry hornet-controlled dolls. The Doctor and Ernestina manage to escape the dollhouse, and return to normal abilities via the sonic screwdriver, but Mrs Wibbsey tricks Ernestina into putting the ballet shoes back on. The Doctor once again saves Ernestina from her dance of doom, and the hornets invisibly retreat when they realise that the ballet shoes are lost. The Doctor takes Mrs Wibbsey back to Nest Cottage in 2009, where she becomes the housekeeper that we met at the beginning of the Hornets’ Nest story arc.

Story Placement

Between Hornets’ Nest: The Stuff of Nightmares (BBC Audio) and Hornets’ Nest: The Circus of Doom (BBC Audio).

Review:

After the charming and entertaining entrance of the Hornets’ Nest series, The Stuff of Nightmares, it’s something of a disappointment to discover that after only one story, Paul Magrs already seems to be running on auto-pilot. The Dead Shoes is undoubtedly a weaker story, with plot and dialogue that feel significantly rushed in their creation. Paul Magrs also continues one of his apparent favourite themes here – objects with seemingly magical qualities, in the main element of this story, the magical ballet shoes that through the hornets have a life of their own. Other examples can be seen in some of his previous Big Finish audios, like The Wishing Beast, which features a sentient alien from another dimension that can grant wishes, and resembles a box.

Back to The Dead Shoes though, one of the weakest elements of the production is certainly the storyline itself. The idea of the magical ballet shoes intrigued me at first, until I realised that ultimately they have no logical purpose in the story whatsoever. The hornets seem perfectly able to control their servants just via stings or swarming into them, so the ballet shoes are clearly this story’s gimmick to help make it appear different to the casual listener. And beyond Paul Magrs’ indulgence, why do the hornets invest so much of their power in ballet shoes? The audio makes a great play on how the hornets can make the ballet shoes dance impossible moves and control dancers on a whim, but I can’t really see how making things dance, despite how clever it is, ultimately helps the hornets in their long term aims.

The conclusion of the story is perhaps the most risible though. After the hornets make Ernestina perform her dance into danger a second time, the Doctor does his scarf saving act again, and the hornets just disappear from everything, including Mrs Wibbsey. No battle, no daring do for the Doctor to perform, the plot just stops dead in its tracks, as if Magrs had run out of ideas. The best part of the story by far is when the Doctor and Ernestina are shrunk by the power of the hornets and placed in a dolls house (it almost feels like déjà vu, having just watched the latest TV episode, Night Terrors), but this is mostly just an action set piece to help fill out the episode. All these things combined give me the strong impression that The Dead Shoes was never meant to be more than just a filler story, albeit one that is written with Paul Magrs’ usual flair for visual imagery.

Also adding to this feeling is the dialogue, perhaps the other big weak element in this episode. Compared to the more stilted dialogue of The Stuff of Nightmares, The Dead Shoes thankfully avoids this, only to become more basic, incredibly theatrical and very close to pantomime, which may be different technically, but with just as much of a cringeworthy result. I suppose we should be merciful that The Dead Shoes is still a distance away from the nadir of Doctor Who scripts like Silver Nemesis and Paradise Towers, but it’s not as big a distance as I would have liked. It also doesn’t help that the majority of the characters are also rather pantomime and cartoon in tone. Ernestina is the constant damsel in distress, Mrs Wibbsey is the wicked witch in disguise, Reverend Small is the perfect stereotype of the old eccentric Englishman, and the alien Hornets are still the character-less villains from the last instalment. These characters never surprise us, and we never relate to or believe in them for a moment, which is a shame, because gravitas is what this Hornets’ Nest series earnestly needs. Even City of Death had its serious and dramatic moments.

At least the Doctor seems to be on better form this episode, but this could be down to Tom Baker’s fun performance, which is much more confident and lively, increasingly winning me over with each successive episode. At some points Tom Baker nearly veers close to OTT. The rest of the cast very much perform in line with the limited nature of their roles, but at least Susan Jameson (Mrs Wibbsey) and Christian Rodska (Reverend Small) try and send them up to try and make them more entertaining, albeit with mixed results that show up the limitedness of their characters. Richard Franklin is the only cast member to escape from this pantomime unscathed, but as his role is nearly non-existent in this episode, Mike Yates is only allowed to pitch in with a few lines to remind the audience that he’s still there.

The other main redeeming feature of The Dead Shoes is once again Paul Magrs’ splendidly written narration. It’s surprising just how much of a contrast it is given the unimaginative and clichéd dialogue performed with gusto by the cast. For one thing, I have never ever visited Cromer, let alone its pier, and yet the layers of rich description Paul Magrs produces about it and sprinkles throughout the adventure makes me feel that I had. Also the creepy Dolls house sequence wouldn’t have worked without Magrs’ imaginative details such as there being mounted mouse heads on the walls like the heads of lions, stags and moose in country houses; or the wooden dolls having eerily blank faces. All this makes me feel a little frustrated with the writer, because even though I’m still not sure if I like Paul Magrs’ style of storytelling, he is clearly a great imaginative writer with a lot to offer, but for whatever reason, decides to not to put in a lot of either character or story development. Hopefully I am wrong and this is just a blip, but either way, by the end of Hornets’ Nest I’ll know for sure.

As a result The Dead Shoes comes across as a rather mixed instalment of the Hornets’ Nest series. Just like The Stuff of Nightmares it is full of fun, with wonderfully inventive narration, but also with clichéd characters that offer little to the listener but tired old jokes and a light romp. Even the plot and storyline are ultimately inconsequential to the ongoing series, and feels more than a little rushed and underdeveloped. Still, it is mildly entertaining, if nothing much else.

Score: 6/10