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4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Auntie Matter

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, having set the TARDIS’ randomizer to send the timeship to a thousand planets under the supervision of K-9 in order to throw the Black Guardian off his scent, settles down in 1920s England to relax. Romana reluctantly joins him, finding little to stimulate her intellectually. She happens upon Reginald Bassett, the heir-apparent of a local estate, and is stunned when he seems to demonstrate a more-than-passing acquaintance with quantum theory. She’s even more stunned, however, when he pops the question unexpectedly, asking her to marry him and insisting upon introducing her to his aunt, a sinister matriarch whose interest in Reggie’s choices in women is more than mere family concern.

Order this CDwritten by Jonathan Morris
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Howard Carter

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Mary Tamm (Romana), Julia McKenzie (Florence), Robert Portal (Reggie), Lucy Griffiths (Mabel), Alan Cox (Grenville), Jane Slavin (Ligeia)

Notes: Both Earth and the Doctor himself are described as “harmless… well, mostly,” a nod to Earth’s “mostly harmless” status in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, which was written by Douglas Adams. His earliest produced Doctor Who scripts were part of the 16th season, which introduced Romana.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Wrong Doctors

Doctor Who: The Wrong DoctorsAfter: Prematurely introduced to Melanie during the course of his trial, the Doctor returns her to Pease Pottage. He hasn’t met her or begun his travels with her yet, and keeping her around is begging for a paradox to be created.

Before: The Doctor has parted ways with Evelyn Smythe, and resigns himself to the future that he already knows is coming: traveling with Melanie toward the end of his sixth incarnation. He sets the TARDIS on a course for Pease Pottage, and meets Mel right on schedule. But there’s one than one Mel there at the same time, and it’s not because the TARDIS has come to the right place at the wrong time. Someone else is tinkering with time, and it will take two Doctors and two Melanies to stop them.

Order this CDwritten by Matt Fitton
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Simon Robinson

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Mel), Tony Gardner (Stapleton Petherbridge), James Joyce (Jedediah Thurwell), Patricia Leventon (Mrs. Wilberforce), Beth Chalmers (Vaneesh), John Banks (Ksllak)

Notes: This story attempts to resolve one of Doctor Who’s longest-standing paradoxes: how the sixth Doctor, on trial, could present a future adventure with Melanie (whom he has yet to meet) as evidence, only to have a future Melanie brought to the trial by the Time Lords to testify, and then leave with her at the end of the story. Even the Target novelization of that story strongly implied that the Doctor drops Melanie off in her timeline and then goes about his business, not meeting her “properly” until later. Another chronicle of Melanie’s first meeting with the sixth Doctor – from her perspective – occurs in Gary Russell’s novel Business Unusual, which this story does not necessarily contradict.

Timeline: For the sixth Doctor and Melanie, after part 14 of Trial Of A Time Lord. For the sixth Doctor and Melanie, on the other hand, before part 9 of Trial Of A Time Lord.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Antidote To Oblivion

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS picks up a distress call from another TARDIS, and the Doctor and Flip follow the signal to 24th century London, a near-wasteland in which it is no longer the capitol city of the UK, but is instead part of a geographical area govened by ConCorp, a corporate entity which runs the once-great nation like a huge company. But ConCorp’s chief benefactor is Sil, a profiteering Mentor who has extended enough loans that he and his species stand to own the entire country if those loans are defaulted upon. The Doctor and Flip learn that ConCorp (at Sil’s urging) is embarking on a genocidal plan to reduce the numbers of the unemployed to whom it must pay benefits: Sil and his chief scientist, Cordelia Crozier, are about to unleash a deadly plague to wipe out most life on Earth. And they’ve duped the Doctor into coming to Earth so they can mine an antidote from his Time Lord immune system… a cure for which they’ll happily charge the plague’s survivors a princely sum.

Order this CDwritten by Philip Martin
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Fool Circle Productions

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Lisa Greenwood (Flip Jackson), Nabil Shaban (Sil), Dawn Murphy (Miss Cordelia), David Dobson (Pan / Lord Mav), Mary-Ann Cafferkey (Cerise), Scott Joseph (Boscoe / Voda / Knight Marshal), Mandy Weston (Kristal / Mistress Na / Velena)

Notes: Cordelia Crozier is the daughter of “young Crozier,” whose mind-transplantation process resulted in the direct intervention of the Time Lords and Peri’s removal from the timeline. The Time Lord Anzor was first mentioned in the scripts of the unmade 1986 television adventure Mission To Magnus, which established his past relationship with the Doctor. Mission To Magnus was novelized in the late ’80s and then recorded as a full-cast adventure in the Lost Stories range in 2009, so Antidote To Oblivion effectively canonizes that story. A disease known as Lasarti’s Wasting is mentioned, which may be a reference to Nyssa’s husband Lasarti (Circular Time, Cobwebs, Prisoners Of Fate).

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Rebels Season 3 Star Wars

Warhead

Star Wars: RebelsA pod slams into the desert near Chopper Base, and a droid emerges: not an Imperial probe droid, but something more like a protocol droid. The desert-dwelling spiders find the droid and descend upon it, rendering it harmless. Zeb and Chopper, left behind to mind the base while the rest of the Ghost crew goes on a mission, discover the droid during a perimeter sweep, taking it back to the base and reactivating it. An urgent message from Fulcrum alerts Zeb to the droid’s true origins: disguised as a protocol droid, EXD-9 is in fact a killing machine. A fierce fight ensues, but Zeb and AP-5 manage to shut down the Imperial droid…only to discover a failsafe mechanism that will detonate a proton warhead within the droid’s casing in the event that it is captured. If Zeb, Chopper and AP-5 can survive long enough, they intend to return EXD-9 to the Empire…with interest.

Order the DVDsDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Gary Whitta
directed by Bosco Ng
music by Kevin Kiner
additional music by David Russell, Sean Kiner, and Dean Kiner
based on original themes and music by John Williams

RebelsCast: Taylor Gray (Ezra Bridger), Vanessa Marshall (Hera Syndulla), Freddie Prinze Jr. (Kanan Jarrus), Tiya Sircar (Sabine Wren), Steve Blum (Zeb Orrelios / Droid Technician #1), David Oyelowo (Agent Kallus), Stephen Stanton (AP-5 / Droid Technician #2 / Imperial Officer), David Acord (Imperial Infiltrator Droid EXD-9 / Rebel Officer #1 / Rebel Officer #2), Lars Mikkelson (Grand Admiral Thrawn)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Discovery Season 1 Star Trek

The Wolf Inside

Star Trek: DiscoveryStardate not given: Aboard the Shenzhou, “Captain” Burnham receives orders to wipe out an enclave of an organized resistance. These renegades, inclduing Klingons, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites, have banded together to fight the xenophobic oppression of the Terran Empire. With Tyler at her side, Burnham beams down to meet with the resistance leader – the Klingon known in Burnham’s timeline as Voq. The sight of Voq has a strange effect on Tyler; moments after this timeline’s Sarek establishes that Burnham is telling the truth, Tyler screams in Klingon and attacks Voq, but is nearly killed for his trouble. Burnham manages to plead for his life and return to the Shenzhou, where Tyler admits that his recent confusion and flashes of trauma are a glimpse into a horrifying surgical procedure that transformed him from Klingon to human.

Order DVDsStream this episode via Amazonwritten by Lisa Randolph
directed by T.J. Scott
music by Jeff Russo

Star Trek DiscoveryCast: Sonequa Martin-Green (Commander Michael Burnham), Doug Jones (Lt. Commander Saru), Shazad Latif (Lt. Ash Tyler / Voq), Anthony Rapp (Lt. Paul Stamets), Mary Wiseman (Cadet Sylvia Tilly), Jason Isaacs (Captain Gabriel Lorca), Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber), James Frain (Sarek), Michelle Yeoh (Emperor Georgiou), Emily Coutts (Keyla Detmer), Riley Gilchrist (Shukar), Julianne Grossman (Discovery Computer), Devon MacDonald (Service Engineer), Alo Momen (Kamran Gant), Dwain Murphy (Captain Maddox), Tasia Valenzia (Shenzhou Computer), Chris Violette (Britch Weeton), Romaine Waite (Troy Januzzi)

Star Trek DiscoveryNotes: After months of fan speculation, Voq and Ash Tyler are revealed to be one and the same. This episode features the first Andorians and Tellarites seen since Star Trek: Enterprise, as well as continuing the odd Mirror Universe tradition of male Vulcans wearing goatees (Spock, Soval, and now Sarek; only Tuvok seems to have bucked the trend).

LogBook entry by Earl Green