Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Kingdom Of Silver / Keepsake

Doctor Who: Kingdom Of Silver / KeepsakeThe Doctor arrives on the planet Tasak, a pre-nuclear industrial civilization struggling to recover from years of civil war. The nation of Argentia helped to bring the fighting to an end by sharing medical and technological advances based on alien technology discovered on a remote island. Having arrived just before a grand summit meeting of all of Tasak’s nations, the Doctor is scrutinized, especially since he’s providing cover for the first person he met on Tasak, an android agent named Temeter. Scouting reports of Cyberman technology that have survived the Orion War, Temeter thinks he knows where the Argentia are getting their unusually advanced technology…and he doesn’t entrust the Doctor with this fact until it’s too late to escape the truth: the island is the site of a Cyberman tomb, and the technology used and distributed by Argentia is helping to prime the entire planet for a Cyberman takeover.

Order this CDwritten by James Swallow
directed by Ken Bentley and Nicholas Briggs
music by David Darlington

Kingdom Of Silver Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Neil Roberts (Temeter), Kate Terence (Sara), Terry Molloy (Magus Riga), James George (Merel), Bunny Reed (Ardith), Holly King (Etin), Nicholas Briggs (Cybermen)

Keepsake Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Neil Roberts (Temeter), Kate Terence (Sara), Terry Molloy (Examiner 2), James George (Corvus), Nicholas Briggs (Examiner 1)

Timeline: between The Death Collectors and…

Notes: The audio Cybermen have suddenly developed a clanking mechanical march – obviously inspired by the sound of the new TV series Cybermen, whose voices are also provided by Big Finish producer Nicholas Briggs.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who

Forty-Five

Doctor Who: Forty-FiveThe Doctor, Ace and Hex arrive just in time to see famed archaeologist Howard Carter unearth one of the more interesting Egyptian tombs he would excavate prior to discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun. But what Carter finds here startles the TARDIS crew: evidence that another time traveler may be nearby, altering the course of human history. A distress call then leads the Doctor and his friends to a remote laboratory where Dr. Verryman is trying to crack a genetic code that could lead to the mental improvement of the human race – whether the human race wants it or not. The code turns out to be a mathematical virus which infects the Doctor’s mind: kill and cure could be the same thing. The TARDIS next lands in England on V-E day, where a man from 1945 has procured alien technology allowing him to control others’ minds. The device has attracted the attention of not only the Doctor, but of the Forge as well, and the consequences hit close to home for both Ace and Hex. At a top secret base in Antarctica in 2012, the time travelers arrive just after a murder that should never have happened with the base’s tight security measures…and of course, this means the Doctor and his companions are now the prime suspects.

Order this CDwritten by Mark Morris (False Gods), Nick Scovell (Order Of Simplicity), Mark Michalowski (Casualties Of War), Steven Hall (The Word Lord)
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Richard Fox and Lauren Yason, Matthew Cochrane, and Steve Foxon

False Gods: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Benedict Cumberbatch (Howard Carter), Lucy Adams (Jane Templeton), Paul Lincoln (Robert Charles), Jon Glover (Creodont), Paul Lincoln (Robot)

Order of Simplicity: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Jon Glover (Dr. Verryman), Lucy Adams (Mrs Crisp), Benedict Cumberbatch (Thing 2), Paul Lincoln (Thing 1)

Casualties of War: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Paul Reynolds (Joey Carlisle), Linda Marlowe (May), Beth Chalmers (Audrey), Beth Chalmers (Miss Merchant), Andrew Dickens (PC Miller)

The Word Lord: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Linda Marlowe (Commander Claire Spencer), Paul Reynolds (Nobody No-One), Andrew Dickens (Captain James Hurst), Paul Lincoln (Private Fenton), Beth Chalmers (System)

Timeline: between The Dark Husband and The Magic Mousetrap

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who

The Magic Mousetrap

Doctor Who: The Magic MousetrapA strange gathering takes place in a sanitorium in the Swiss Alps in 1926. Among the strangest patients there is a man known only as the Doctor, who seems not to have the slightest idea who he is – and anytime he seems to stray anywhere near finding out the truth, there always seems to be something handy to prevent him from remembering too much: chloroform here, a powerful electric shock there. Other patients go through the motions of playing an endless series of games, and being subjected to similar memory-erasing tactics by the shadowy couple calling the shots from the sanitorium’s attic. These two mysterious people are named Ace and Hex, and they’re keeping the patients – and their Doctor – imprisoned for a reason: to rid the universe of a malevolent presence. But it turns out that the Doctor, even without his memory, doesn’t take kindly to being imprisoned.

Order this CDwritten by Matthew Sweet
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Richard Fox & Lauren Yason

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Paul Anthony-Barber (Ludovic Comfort), Joan Walker (Lola Luna), Nadim Sawalha (Swapnil Khan), Nadine Lewington (Queenie Glasscock), Andrew Fettes (Harry Randall), Andrew Dickens (Herbert Randall)

Timeline: between Forty-Five and Enemy Of The Daleks

Notes: Spoiler-heavy notes are placed below the review.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who

Enemy Of The Daleks

Doctor Who: Enemy Of The DaleksOn the planet Bliss, an isolated human research base is besieged by both the local insect life and by an approaching attack force of Daleks. The TARDIS arrives outside the base, and the Doctor, Ace and Hex demand shelter from the deadly insect swarm. Once inside, the time travelers find that the base’s crew is demoralized and on edge. Something is drawing the Daleks’ attention to this otherwise unremarkable outpost – and the Doctor discovers that it could be something even more horrifyingly destructive than the Daleks themselves. Will he actually join forces with his dreaded enemies to keep it contained?

Order this CDwritten by David Bishop
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Kate Ashfield (Lieutenant Beth Stokes), Bindya Solanki (Sergeant Tahira Khan), Eiji Kusuhara (Professor Toshio Shimura), Jeremy James (Sistermatic / Kiseibya / Male Patient / Male Voice), Nicholas Briggs (Daleks)

Timeline: between The Magic Mousetrap and Angel Of Scutari

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who

The Angel Of Scutari

Doctor Who: The Angel Of ScutariThe Doctor takes Hex to the Crimean War, in the wake of the costly and ultimately futile charge of the Light Brigade. Ace understands why the Doctor has brought them here all too well: Hex can, at least temporarily, make a difference and regain his confidence about traveling in the TARDIS. But this adventure becomes more than any of them can handle when the three time travelers are separated; Hex takes charge of battlefield medicine at the front of the war, but when the TARDIS is lost at sea, Ace and the Doctor are captured by Russian soldiers. The Doctor is treated like a visiting diplomat, while Ace gets to recover from her injuries in a cell. The three time travelers have to use what they know about this juncture in history to try to reunite with each other without changing recorded events. For Hex, avoiding interference with history becomes doubly difficult when he is introduced to Florence Nightingale herself, and is then accused of collusion with the enemy. Hex’s accuser is eager to see Hex dead for this crime, whether he actually committed it or not, and this time the Doctor isn’t there to help him.

Order this CDwritten by Paul Sutton
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Toby Hrycek-Robinson

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Hugh Bonneville (Sir Sidney Herbert / Tsar Nicholas I), Jeany Spark (Florence Nightingale), John Paul Connolly (William Russell / Russian Dungeon Guard), Alex Lowe (Brigadier-General Bartholomew Kitchen), Sean Brosnan (Sir Hamilton Seymour), John Albasiny (Lev Tolstoy / Preston)

Timeline: between Enemy Of The Daleks and Project: Destiny

Notes: Most of the characters portrayed in The Angel Of Scutari – minus the time travelers and their interference in history, of course – were real people, including Florence Nightingale herself, journalist William Russell, Tsar Nicholas I, Sir George Hamilton Seymour and Sir Sidney Herbert. At the end of the story, the Doctor says he’s taking the wounded Hex to St. Gart’s Hospital, the near-future hospital where Hex was working in his first story, The Harvest.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

A Thousand Tiny Wings

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS lands in Kenya, during the native Mau Mau uprising against British colonialists, where the Doctor finds an isolated community of women awaiting either an end to the fighting or a rescue party. But among them is Elizabeth Klein, the Nazi scientist from an alternate future that the Doctor first met during his internment at Colditz Castle. Now trapped in a timeline where the Third Reich fell, Klein is living in exile among fascist sympathizers, making her own plans. When an alien influence is found to be waiting for its chance to invade, the Doctor and Klein are forced into an uneasy alliance.

Order this CDwritten by Andy Lane
directed by Lisa Bowerman
music by Richard Fox & Lauren Yason

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Tracey Childs (Elizabeth Klein), Ann Bell (Mrs. Sylvia O’Donnell), Abigail McKern (Mrs. Denise Waterford), Joannah Tincey (Miss Lucy Watts), Chuk Iwuji (Joshua Sembeke), Alex Mallinson (Abraham)

Notes: Klein, played by Tracey Childs, first appeared in the 2001 audio drama Colditz, which revealed only that she was from an alternate, Nazi-dominated future Earth, and had the capability of piloting the TARDIS. Between her first and second appearances as Klein, actress Tracey Childs made an appearance in the Doctor Who TV episode The Fires Of Pompeii, as the matriarch of the only family to survive the eruption of Vesuvius. Chuk Iwuji also made an appearance on TV Doctor Who, as a Secret Service agent in The Impossible Astronaut (2011). Klein is apparently acquainted with exiled Nazi de Flores (Silver Nemesis, 1988).

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Survival Of The Fittest

Doctor WhoKlein’s Story: The Doctor is curious as to how Klein went from the future to Colditz Castle, the first time he encountered her. He learns of an alternate Doctor’s grisly fate, and the very precise guidance of a young man named Johann Schmidt in helping Klein learn how to control the fallen Doctor’s TARDIS. And Klein learns, to her alarm, that the Doctor has been pulling the strings of her life all along.

Survival Of The Fittest: The Doctor and Klein arrive on a planet whose native insect population, the Vrill, has been decimated by chemical weapons. The time travelers split up, with Klein following the trail of clues back to the mercenary humans who prey upon this planet’s populace, while the Doctor discovers that even chasing the humans away may not stave off the insects’ doom due to the tightly-regimented nature of their society. But in sparring with the genocidal humans, who claim to be eradicating pests in advance to make much-needed space for a human colony, Klein has a revelation about the nature of many of the perils that the Doctor faces… and decides to take the TARDIS for herself.

Order this CDSurvival Of The Fittest written by Jonathan Clements
Klein’s Story written by John Ainsworth and Lee Mansfield
directed by John Ainsworth
music by Simon Robinson

Survival Of The Fittest Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Tracey Childs (Elizabeth Klein), Adrian Bower (Steffen), Hannah Smith (Rose), Evie Dawnay (Lilly), Mark Donovan (Jackson), Alex Mallinson (The Carrion)

Klein’s Story Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Tracey Childs (Elizabeth Klein), Rupert Wickham (Faber), Paul McGann (Johann Schmidt)

Notes: Klein’s Story is a single-part story which tries to reconcile various loose ends left dangling in Klein’s first audio appearance, Colditz (2001). In Survival Of The Fittest, the Vrill race communicates by smell, which may be a sly reference to the decidedly outside-of-accepted-canon charity spoof The Curse Of Fatal Death (1999), in which an alternate ninth Doctor played by Rowan Atkinson had to communicate via the “carefully modulated breaking of wind”. There’s no indication that this story involves any such summoning of the posterior winds. This was the finish Big Finish release to pair a three-part story with a single-part secondary story, and the only occasion upon which the single-part story presented before the “main feature” in the CD track order.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Architects Of History

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS is now in Klein’s hands, and she has rewritten history as she pleases. Whenever threats arise to challenge her “Fourth Reich”, she simply goes further back in time and prevents those threats from existing. The web of time is stretched to its breaking point. In a cell in Klein’s headquarters, a Time Lord called the Doctor is kept in chains, because he remembers events that Klein wiped from history, from meeting her in in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising to taking her to an alien world to thwart genocide. To anger Klein is to risk being erased from time itself; even though she’s not the nominal Fuhrer of the Fourth Reich, few dare to cross her. But when a Selachian attack force arrives with its own time travel technology, the Doctor instantly becomes a suspect – and, it turns out, he helped to plan the Selachian invasion in advance. Or maybe he did that in another timeline. In any case, Klein and her “Bureau of Temporal Affairs” have met their match, and her own place in history is subject to revision.

Order this CDwritten by Steve Lyons
directed by John Ainsworth
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Tracey Childs (Elizabeth Klein), Lenora Crichlow (Rachel Cooper), Ian Hayles (Sam Kirke), Jamie Parker (Major Richter), Lloyd McGuire (Generalleutnant Tendexter), Chris Porter (Selachian Leader), Rachel Laurence (Feldwebel/Computer Voice), David Dobson (Pilot/Selachian)

Notes: The Doctor’s TARDIS is disguised from the Selachians, and everyone else, by means of a perception filter, a decidedly new-series Who of terminology (The Sound Of Drums, Torchwood: Everything Changes). The other Doctor’s TARDIS is reduced to the dimensions of a mere police box in a scene that instantly recalls the ninth Doctor’s discovery of the gutted TARDIS in Father’s Day. The end of this story, which sees Klein in a new role as UNIT’s new scientific advisor, sets up the sprawling chain of events of UNIT: Dominion. The Selachians were introduced in the BBC Books Past Doctor Adventures novel The Final Sanction, written by Steve Lyons, who scripted this story as well as Klein’s introduction in Colditz.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Project: Destiny

Doctor Who: Project: DestinyThe Doctor and Ace rush the critically injured Hex back to his own time, to St. Gart’s, the hospital where the time travelers first met Hex. The TARDIS slips a little too far forward in time, however, and arrives in 2026. St. Gart’s is closed down at the heart of a quarantine zone, and the streets of London are deserted. Using his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor breaks into the hospital and gets ready to operate on Hex himself, only to be interrupted by armored soldiers in the employ of Department C4 – once known as The Forge. Nimrod, now a public figure using his real name or Sir William Abberton, is still in charge, seeking a solution to a widespread mutation of humans into insect-like life forms. In the absence of a cure, Nimrod is happy to treat the outbreak as a pest control situation, and he’s also delighted to learn that the Doctor has never told Hex about how his mother died. When the Doctor himself becomes infected with the mutation, Hex fights to keep the Doctor calm to prevent the mutation from taking hold. Nimrod, on the other hand, wants to see the mutation process first-hand and eliminate his arch-enemy at the same time…

Order this CDwritten by Paul Sutton
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Toby Hrycek-Robinson

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Stephen Chance (Sir William Abberton), Maggie O’Neill (Captain Lysandra Aristedes), Philip Dinsdale (Sergeant Jarrod), Ingrid Oliver (Helen / Oracle)

Timeline: between The Angel Of Scutari and A Death In The Family

Notes: Hex is taken to St. Gart’s Hospital, the near-future hospital where he first met the Doctor and Ace in his first story, The Harvest. Hex’s mother, Cassie Schofield, appeared in the first two Doctor Who audio stories featuring the Forge, Project: Twilight (2001) and Project: Lazarus (2003). The Doctor’s future adventure with Aristedes is chronicled in the 2012 Companion Chronicles release Project: Nirvana.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

A Death In The Family

Doctor Who: A Death In The FamilyHis curiosity piqued by the mention of an artifact in the Forge’s vaults bearing the seal of Rassilon, the Doctor discreetly sticks around as UNIT shows up to clean up the Forge’s mess. Hex, still plagued by his doubts that the Doctor ever would have told him the truth about his mother, unwittingly encounters Nobody No One, in a regenerated form, verbally giving the Word Lord the means to take revenge on the Doctor. The Doctor perishes in his attempt to stop Nobody No One from destroying Earth, and Ace and Hex are left to pursue somewhat normal lives. But Hex’s idea of normal isn’t to wind up on an alien world when any mention of space or time travel is considered heresy; he does befriend a fellow time traveler, a woman named Evelyn who claims to have traveled with the Doctor in the past. Ace must learn to accept an even more terrifying fate: married life. Even though he appears to have been beaten by the Doctor, the Word Lord still waits for his chance to strike again, only to discover that the former companions of the Doctor have learned much from their mentor.

Order this CDwritten by Steven Hall
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Richard Fox & Lauren Yason

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Maggie Stables (Evelyn), Ian Reddington (Nobody No One), John Dorney (Henry / Corporal / Novice), Alison Thea-Skot (Ayl-San / Faber / Nurse), Andrew Dickens (Captain Stillwell / Applin / Tour Guide), Harriet Kershaw (Ann the Van / Story Speaker / Webster)

Timeline: for the Doctor, Ace and Hex, between Project: Destiny and Lurker’s At Sunlight’s Edge; for Evelyn, years after Thicker Than Water.

Notes: The Doctor implies that he has a calendar which tracks when his former companions die, but the eleventh Doctor’s shock at receiving word of the death of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (The Wedding Of River Song) would appear to be a hint that his calendar is incomplete.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Lurkers At Sunlight’s Edge

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS, still apparently bleached white, arrives on the Alaskan coastline in the 1930s, and the Doctor, Hex, and Ace encounter an explorer named Corbin who is in possession of a large crystalline key… and what little remains of his mental faculties. Before long, they encounter another party of explorers – disturbingly well-armed explorers led by Emerson Whitcrag III, who has no qualms about sacrificing Corbin or the time traveling interlopers to gain entry to what he describes as a vault of ancient, forbidden secrets. Ace and the Doctor run afoul of Whitecrag’s vicious temper, and Hex believes he has seen his fellow TARDIS travelers die. Held hostage along with the wounded Corbin, Hex has no choice but to be the “guinea pig” for Whitecrag’s attempts to enter the icy structure – a structure whose built-in defenses have killed several men already. The Doctor and Ace survive Whitecrag’s attempt to kill them, but find a mental institute in close proximity, one where famed horror author C.P. Doveday is kept sequestered away from the rest of the world. Dr. Gabriel, who runs the institute and seems deeply concerned for Doveday’s well being, is very worried that Doveday may be upset by the new arrivals – particularly when Ace escapes the institute with Doveday in tow. The truth is finally revealed to the Doctor: impossibly powerful ancient beings with nearly godlike powers slumber in the icy citadel currently being explored by Whitecrag and a terrified Hex. And the man Ace has just helped escape knows their secrets, making him the most dangerous man alive.

Order this CDadapted by Marty Ross
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Michael Brandon (C.P. Doveday), Kate Terence (Dr. Freya Gabriel), Stuart Milligan (Emerson Whytecrag III), Alex Lowe (Professor August Corbin), Sam Clemens (Slade), Duncan Wisbey (Captain Akins)

Timeline: after A Death In The Family and before Robophobia

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who Lost Stories

Thin Ice

Doctor Who: Thin IceThe Doctor responds to Ace’s request to experience the Summer of Love in 1967 by bringing her to Soviet Russia in 1967, where strangely-helmeted motorcyclists are trying to track down a man who’s stolen classified experimental weaponry. Immediately recognizing the weapon, the Doctor knows that it’s unsafe not just in civilian hands, but in any human hands. At an official reception, the time travelers home in on wildly out-of-place businessman Markus Creevy, who has both personal and professional reasons to be mingling with members of the KGB. He’s employed by the owner of the alien weapons: Ice Lord Hhessh, on a mission to retrieve some of the Ice Warriors’ most sacred relics before humans can defile them with further experimentation. But Hhessh isn’t the only alien on the scene. A Time Lord is operating incognito on Earth, and the Doctor is doing his bidding by letting Ace do most of the work.

Order this CDwritten by Marc Platt
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Simon Robinson

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Ricky Groves (Markus Creevy), Beth Chalmers (Raina Kerenskaya), Nicholas Briggs (Hhessh), John Albasiny (Major Felnikov), Nigel Lambert (Adjudicator / Wolshkin / Glarva), John Banks (Yevgeni / Yasha Lemayev)

Notes: Originally titled Ice Time, Thin Ice was conceived as the opening story for the ultimately unmade fourth season of Sylvester McCoy’s tenure ads the Doctor, though past interviews and articles have indicated that the goriginal story would’ve taken place in ’60s London. The “Time Lords assessing Ace” plotline was originally a major feature of Earth Aid, which would have been the second story of the unmade 1990 season.

Timeline: after Survival

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who Lost Stories

Crime Of The Century

Doctor Who: Thin IceThe Doctor pays a visit to Markus Creevy’s daughter, Raine, 23 years after her birth. Markus has largely gotten out of organized crime, but despite his best efforts to ensure Raine has an education, she has turned her considerable intelligence toward such pursuits as safecracking. She’s been stealing some very specific items for an unknown client who pays very well; it turns out that the Doctor is the mystery benefactor who’s been engaging her services. He needs the Creevys to help him do one last “job” – and the stakes are high: the survival of humanity itself. An old enemy of the Doctor and Markus is trying to tip the balance of the Cold War by inviting alien mercenaries called the Metatraxi to demonstrate their gift for warfare. But the Metatraxi are losing track of which humans they’ve been hired to assist or attack. The Doctor has an ace up his sleeve to keep the Metatraxi busy…

Order this CDwritten by Andrew Cartmel
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Simon Robinson

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Beth Chalmers (Raine Creevy), Ricky Groves (Markus Creevy), Derek Carlyle (Nikitin / Parvez), John Albasiny (Colonel Felnikov / Waiter), John Banks (Metatraxi / Walnuf), Chris Porter (Sayf Udeen / Valentin)

Notes: In the original plan for Doctor Who’s 1990 season, Crime Of The Century would have been the third story, introducing Raine (originally named Kat Tollinger according to some sources) as Markus’ daughter, with Markus being envisioned as a recurring earthbound ally for the Doctor, a la the Brigadier (and anticipating new series characters like Jackie Tyler, Wilfred Mott and Craig). This story would not have featured Ace in its original form.

Timeline: after Thin Ice and before Animal

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who Lost Stories The Audio Dramas

Animal

Doctor Who: AnimalIntrigued by the robot guardians employed by the Metatraxi and built at Margrave University, the Doctor and friends follow the trail to that university in the year 2001. Brigadier Winifred Bambera and UNIT are already on the scene, conducting an investigation that they’re more than happy to recruit the Doctor’s companions for. Undercover as new students, Ace and Raine both meet Scobie, a brilliant science student whose fight-the-power mentality stretches from an elaborate scheme to free the school’s lab animals, to contacting an alien race and inviting them to Earth to share their enlightened mentality with humanity. One thing Scobie hasn’t counted on is that these beings see Earth as a ready-made feeding ground full of docile creatures. Fortunately, UNIT and its former scientific advisor are on hand to alter that perception.

Order this CDwritten by Andrew Cartmel
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Simon Robinson

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Beth Chalmers (Raine Creevy), Angela Bruce (Brigadier Winifred Bambera), John Banks (Henrick / Metatraxi), Anthony Lewis (Scobie), Dannielle Brent (Willa), Alex Mallinson (Percy), Amy Pemberton (Juno)

Timeline: after Crime Of The Century and before Earth Aid

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Robophobia

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, traveling alone in his TARDIS (which seems to have darkened from blue to black), arrives on a ship bound for the planet Ventaris, carrying a cargo of tens of thousands of robots. His arrival coincides with the beginning of a series of murders, of which he naturally becomes the chief suspect while trying to help the crew. The bodies keep piling up until the ship’s small crew is outnumbered by prematurely activated robots. Ever polite, the robots obliviously try to help the human crew, until a robot is exposed as the killer – and is then exposed to be a killer of a different kind. Now the ship is on a collision course for a heavily populated planet, and if it collides, the robots will be held responsible and others of their kind will be deactivated en masse, unless the Doctor can convince the real murderer to reveal what has driven him to these depths.

Order this CDwritten by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Nicola Walker (Liv Chenka), Toby Hadoke (Farel), William Hazell (Bas Pellico), Nicholas Pegg (Selerat), Dan Starkey (Cravnet), Matt Addis (Tal Karus), John Dorney (Leebar / Computer Voice)

Notes: Robophobia happens within months of the robot incident aboard the Sandminer (The Robots Of Death), which has apparently been swept under the rug. Robophobia sems to steer clear of most of the elements of the spinoff audio series Kaldor City, which was not produced by Big Finish but did have the blessing of Robots Of Death author Chris Boucher. Dan Starkey, the actor behind the Sontaran mask of the eleventh Doctor’s ally Strax, plays Cravanet here. Medtech Liv Chenka resurfaces alongside the eighth Doctor in the Dark Eyes 2 box set (2014).

Timeline: after Lurkers At Sunlight’s Edge and before Project: Nirvana and Black And White; possibly simultaneous with Protect And Survive

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green