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

Book Review 4: Apollo 23, written by Justin Richards (2010)

Released: April 2010

Story Summary (BIG SPOILERS!):

A strange asphyxiated death and a stray astronaut in a burger bar lead the Doctor and Amy to uncover a secret American Moonbase, who are having trouble with a malfunctioning quantum displacement system – a secret technology used to transport crew and supplies between the Earth and the Moon. However, when the Doctor discovers sabotage, he is separated from Amy, who is now trapped on the Moonbase alone.

Investigating by herself, Amy discovers that alien minds are slowly taking over the minds of the crew via a brainwashing machine, operated by the already taken over Professor Jackson. Amy is eventually captured and ‘blanked’ by Jackson’s machine, but rescued by a free Major Carlisle and the returning Doctor, find out that the victims of the brainwashing process all have their minds backed up in an elaborate water data storage system. After Amy restores herself, by drinking the water containing her own mind and personality, the Doctor sets into motion an idea to restore all the other human minds by venting the water-stored data backups through the fire extinguisher system.

The aliens though, who we learn are Talerians, transmat themselves into the Moonbase, once they discover their first plan has been foiled. The Talerians themselves are pale and fragile creatures with viscous insides, very vulnerable to damage, and desire to inhabit humans for their more robust bodies. After the Doctor frees Professor Jackson from his own personal Talerian invader, Jackson creates an air vacuum in the base, which kills and sucks out the remaining Talerian forces.

Story Placement

Between Victory of the Daleks (TV Serial) and Night of the Humans (BBC Book).

Review:

Apollo 23 is the first Doctor Who story I’ve reviewed that leaves me with a large feeling of ambivalence. It’s certainly not a good thing when looking for exciting adventure and mystery, but it’s not a particularly bad book either. There are many understandable reasons for this, including tight deadlines, and the fact that this had to be written before any of Matt Smith’s first episodes were transmitted.

There’s certainly good features to recommend, in particular the good characterisation of the regulars. For a book written in late 2009, it’s a surprise and a welcome joy to discover how close the character of the 11th Doctor is to what we saw on-screen, as well as how brilliantly Justin Richards has captured Matt Smith’s delightfully offbeat and quirky performance. My favourite part of the book by far, was the nice joke set up around the moment when a car park attendant signs the Doctor’s Psychic paper. Amy reassures him by turning the paper round, only the next time he uses it, the message is amusingly the wrong way round as well. Amy though, is a bit generic as a companion, but considering that Amy’s character took longer to develop on-screen than the new Doctor’s, that is to be expected. However, there was one thing that jarred for me, which was Justin Richards’ specific reference that Amy liked Earl Grey tea, and was rather particular in how she liked it too. Considering Steven Moffat’s jokes around Amy hating the Doctor’s bow tie, this development by Richards did seem rather extraordinary and more than a bit contradictory with Amy’s more hip character.

Far more generic than Amy though, is the story of Apollo 23. It’s basically The Body Snatchers (or Invasion of the Body Snatchers if you only know the 1978 film) on the Moon, only without the wild paranoia or the horror. It’s a nice idea, but not one that has the material to last a plot the size of a novel, or if it was made for TV, the plot of a 90-minute serial, or at least not convincingly anyway. It had me hooked with a really good setup at the beginning with various mysterious happenings, and it’s great to visit the Moon again, as well as an actual Moonbase, but as soon as the Doctor discovers that the Moonbase is being sabotaged, he is quickly whisked back to Earth, leaving Amy alone to solve the mystery. This is only a quarter of the way through the book, and yet here begins an expert exercise in padding. It doesn’t take long for Amy and by extension the reader, to get the gist of what’s been going on, but meanwhile the Doctor is just left pottering down on Earth, until the right position in the book for him to return back to the Moon, albeit, in a lovely Seeds of Death-inspired twist, aboard a magnificent Saturn V space rocket. None of this feels especially dull, as Justin Richards, with his big experience with Who novels paces the story just right. The long traditional plot twist of the Doctor being separated from his companion is well executed here and Richards tries to keep the reader’s attention through a string of well-judged set pieces, but ultimately I still couldn’t shake off the feeling that this was just passing the time till the inevitable confrontation on the Moon that occurred towards the end of the book. All in all this was still quite a good novel, all considered, but then it took a decided turn for the worse.

After a simplistic, but brilliant idea for the Doctor to expel the alien intruders from their stolen human bodies by releasing all the data backup of the colonist’s human personalities in the fire extinguisher water supply, the writer feels obliged to write in a second comeback by the aliens. I can understand the reasons for this, to have a more certain defeat, but the aliens themselves, the Talerians are quite pathetic in the flesh. This is entirely the point, as they required more robust bodies to live and survive in, but unless they expect to come into aggressive situations such as this, surely the planet they evolved on would be fine to house them without any problems. Then again, as the book also seems to imply, the Talerians are just yet another empire-building species who want to take over the Earth. The real let down though, is that the Talerians are also rather pathetic in character too. Even aside from their Earth-conquering stereotype, they just growl, and waddle up and down corridors like a 2010 answer to the Myrka from the Warriors of the Deep TV serial, and when the book reaches its intended page count, they are just killed off without a second thought. Then happy ending. The end. That whole penultimate scene feels just so lazily written, with the main villain in particular, the lead Talerian in control of Professor Jackson’s body, just endlessly spouting vacuous dialogue. It’s such a shame that Apollo 23 ends really callously and poorly, given how much effort Justin Richards has clearly taken making the beginning of the novel full of mystery and suspense.

Of course it doesn’t help that a lot of Justin Richards’ writing throughout the novel is so functional too. Again, it’s not particularly dull, but there’s no real creative description or flair, so it comes across as a bit lifeless. Many of the futuristic gadgets used on the Moonbase, including the quantum displacement system, sometimes feel almost too futuristic for 2010 too, even when recalling Torchwood; and often, like the water data storage system, turn up just in time for their use in the plot. In addition, most of the plot developments often come across as rather predictable, which with the padding as well, adds to this feeling of Apollo 23 being a rather generic novel. I don’t blame Justin Richards though, as with the tight deadline, and the rush to make this without the same knowledge that viewers of the 2010 Doctor Who TV series would gain, I’m sure this isn’t a true example of his work and ability. In fact, he’s already produced sterling efforts for the pre-2005 8th Doctor novel series, but I’ll come back to that another day.

The overall impression of Apollo 23 then is that it’s generally a ‘filler’ story that helps to get the 11th Doctor’s book range up and running. There are a few nice character moments, and the adventure certainly feels very at home amongst Doctor Who’s 2010 TV episodes, but in the long run, it won’t matter if you take it, or leave it.

Score: 6/10

Audio Review 6: Hornets' Nest - 1.The Stuff of Nightmares, written by Paul Magrs (2009)

Released: September 2009

Cast:

The Doctor – Tom Baker

Mike Yates – Richard Franklin

Mrs Wibbsey – Susan Jameson

Percy Noggins – Daniel Hill

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 stumbles on a plot by an alien hornet species to invade the Earth through animated stuffed animals. As the stuffed animals only come alive at night, he tricks the alien hornets, and their stuffed animal vehicles to follow him back to his resident cottage, the Nest, whereupon he traps them there with a force field from the TARDIS’ dimensional stabilisers. During the night, when the stuffed animals reawaken, the Doctor has to subdue them with hypnotic suggestion to stop them attacking him. Feeling alone, the Doctor, through a specifically-worded advert, invites the retired Mike Yates to join him for company at his cottage, in which he has also employed a housekeeper called Mrs Wibbsey. The Doctor relates this adventure back to Mike, and starts to tell him of other encounters he has had with the alien Hornet creatures...

Story Placement

Between The Invasion of Time (TV Serial) and Demon Quest (BBC Audio series).

Favourite Lines

Mike Yates – “But then I heard that you changed, and changed again!”

The Doctor – “Did I? How annoying for all of us”

Percy Noggins – “My head is like a sieve! Have you heard that expression before?”

The Doctor – “I think I invented it”.

The Doctor – “I don’t do fear, you know. I can never take it completely seriously”.

Mike Yates – “A force shield.”

The Doctor – “Yes”.

Mike Yates – “How did I get in then?”

The Doctor – “Semi-permeable. Has to be. Otherwise the Milkman gets suspicious”.

Review:

Before I go into any critique, may I say how wonderful it is to have the legendary Tom Baker back in original Doctor Who adventures again! In the 28 years since Logopolis in 1981, Doctor Who went through numerous changes, was axed, then brought back...twice, and had branched off into numerous different mediums and formats, and gone through six more Doctors. In all the whirlwind of events, it seemed that we would never again enjoy the pleasures of experiencing one of best ever Doctors come alive in a brand new exciting adventure. I suppose, dare I say it, that some of you may have even forgotten quite how magnificent Tom Baker’s portrayal truly was in the intervening decades (not me). With the arrival of Hornets’ Nest though, and later the announcement of Tom Baker joining BIG Finish, thankfully, for now at least, such ideas are things of the past.

The Stuff of Nightmares, the first part of BBC Audio’s Hornets’ Nest series, is a decidedly unusual beast in many respects. The adventure is produced as three-quarters narration, akin to an audio book, but with one-quarter performed action. Having just listened to the first half of the second season of BIG Finish’s Lost Stories audio series, I was less thrown by this than other listeners seem to have been, although it still feels more like an audio book reading than a BIG Finish production, as there’s a distinct lack of sound design. As a result, the narration really stands out at you, which is just as well, because it is certainly Hornets’ Nest’s best feature as far as I can tell. The music is also rather minimal, and appears to be quite generic and functional, supporting the narration efficiently, but without much character in comparison to BIG Finish’s composer team.

Then there is the choice of characters and setting. Mike Yates wouldn’t be the natural choice for a returning companion, but I’m very glad they did. It certainly makes a change to have a male companion back in the spotlight for a change, and Mike Yates was always one of the greats, even if he was eclipsed by the unbeatably brilliant Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, and the kind gentlemanly Dr. Harry Sullivan. Another unexpected development is the Doctor’s earthbound base of operations in the rather quaint and cosy Nest cottage. It’s particularly surprising since its owner is one of the most restless and mad of Doctors. Nevertheless, this too is an inspired idea, and produces a wonderful and enticing image of Doctor Who mixed with rural Britain that I would love to see re-used for the show’s television escapades.

However, the most off-the-wall aspect of The Stuff of Nightmares is the story itself. The invasion of the Earth by animated stuffed animals is possibly one of the most ridiculous and outlandish storylines that I’ve ever heard of in Doctor Who, let alone the fact that they are also controlled by alien hornets. It’s so ridiculous, that the story feels like an expanded Monty Python sketch. As a result, I, like the Doctor, just can’t take it that seriously. The apparent mad silliness is highlighted by the Doctor in fact, when he points out that on one night he appeared to have been attacked by a stuffed team of creatures that resembled the cast of The Wind in the Willows. Even the lyrical puns unleashed by the writer when important figures are attacked by the beasts, sounds positively Two Ronnies-style.

The story isn’t particularly helped by the characterisation of the villains either. The alien Hornet creatures sadly appear to be one of the all-too many generic and featureless Doctor Who monsters out there who want to just invade and conquer for the pure sake of it. There are little distinctive characteristics at all, other than the obvious gimmick that they are Hornet-like in almost every respect, and can forge wasp-like hive-brains to help control the stuffed animals. There is an interesting character arc to them though – that the Doctor has interfered in their past affairs before; affairs that we are about to discover as we progress through the Hornets’ Nest series. Paul Magrs also finds it a bit difficult to quite get a handle on the right kind of dialogue for the characters to start off with, particularly when trying to replicate Tom Baker’s brilliant style of improvised dialogue he would do during his television episodes. As a result, a lot of the dialogue sounds a bit irregular and clunky at first. Well, except for Percy Noggins, who is so obviously a comedy character, that his dialogue sounds clunky and stilted almost all of the time.

Fortunately, Paul Magrs wins over the listener in other ways, in particular through his highly imaginative and well-written prose and narrative passages. I haven’t had much experience of Paul Magrs’ work, but it always makes a striking impression, displaying a magnificent visual imagination. He manages to instil an industrial factory plant with the same level of character and colourful description as a maddened baboon, and all delivered with a delightfully warm and knowing sense of humour, that suitably feels apt in comparison with the equally colourful and fun Graham Williams-era (1977-1980) of Doctor Who that his writing seems to subtly evoke. Of course, this is why The Stuff of Nightmares works well. Due to the fact that this particular audio series is mainly narration, it means that Paul Magrs’ creative descriptions help make the story come alive, and with Tom Baker’s sumptuous vocals, makes the result at times feel like sheer aural poetry.

Speaking of performances, Tom Baker is undoubtedly the star of show. Although he sounds a bit wooden for the first ten minutes, after a while, he doesn’t take long to get into the spirit of the production, and starts to shine by the end. Richard Franklin and Susan Jameson put in assured and near flawless performances throughout the audio from beginning to end. Richard Franklin in particular is surprisingly good, given that until very recently, his spell away from the Doctor Who world has surely been longer than even Tom Baker’s, even including The Killing Stone (2004 BBV audio). Daniel Hill is possibly something of a sad exception though, hamming up the part of Percy Noggins as much as possible, which along with his stilted lines makes him sound like a character from Psychoville. The Hornets don’t seem to be much better either. It could well be the case that this pantomime-style was intentionally added to the character, either via the director, or even Paul Magrs himself, but it certainly grated with this particular listener after a short while.

I must confess that I enjoyed The Stuff of Nightmares a lot. It may be a simplistic, silly, and absolutely bizarre story, but all in all it’s a pure joy to listen to. It feels like I’ve revisited the late 1970s with a piece that truly feels at home amongst the other weird and wonderful stories that were part of the Graham Williams’ seasons. We have pantomime characters and villains, some classic jokes and one-liners, and a strong leading performance from Tom Baker. Then there’s the brilliantly written narration from Paul Magrs which not only helps the adventure come alive for the listener, but also gives Tom Baker some great material that helps to remind me why I love his Doctor so much. The Stuff of Nightmares may not be the best of what Doctor Who, or even Paul Magrs has to offer, but is fantastic fun to listen to if nothing else. I urge you to try it.

Welcome back Tom! We’re overjoyed to have you back in Doctor Who. We can only wonder at what possible gems could be heading our way. I can’t wait!

Score: 7/10