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Companion Chronicles Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Blue Tooth

Doctor Who: The Blue ToothLiz Shaw looks back on her days with UNIT and the Doctor, recalling an adventure that began with the disappearance of several prominent scientists. The Doctor and the Brigadier are on the case, and Liz goes undercover to see if a suspicious dentist’s office has any connection to the disappearances. The Doctor figures out that the Cybermen are once again trying to stage a quiet takeover of the human race…and Liz herself may be the next victim of their new conversion process.

Order this CD written by Nigel Fairs
directed by Mark J. Thompson
music by Lawrence Oakley

Cast: Caroline John (Liz Shaw), Nicholas Briggs (Cyberman voices)

Timeline: after Inferno and before Terror Of The Autons

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Companion Chronicles Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Fear Of The Daleks

Doctor Who: Fear Of The DaleksLong after her travels with the Doctor and Jamie ended, and after the Time Lords wiped her memory and returned her to her own timeline, Zoe Herriot experiences disturbing memories of meeting the Doctor. She also remembers him showing her one of his terrifying adventures with the Daleks, and his subsequent reassurances that he had rendered the metal monsters extinct. But in her first trip in the TARDIS, Zoe and her friends find themselves embroiled in interplanetary politics, captured and used as pawns in a conspiracy to sabotage a peace conference. But as if that wasn’t bad enough, Zoe comes face to face with the very terrors that the Doctor said were no more.

Order this CD written by Patrick Chapman
directed by Mark J. Thompson
music by Lawrence Oakley

Cast: Wendy Padbury (Zoe), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voices)

Timeline: after The Wheel In Space and after The War Games

Logbook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Companion Chronicles Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Mother Russia

Doctor Who: Mother RussiaThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, Steven and Dodo to Russia in 1812, not long before Napoleon Bonaparte’s disastrous attempt to take over the country. They stay for a while, making friends, even taking up jobs, and Steven looks forward to being the best man at a wedding for one of his new friends. But then the locals are terrified by blinding lights and the sound of thunder – not the French advance, but a spacecraft exploding moments after it ejects an escape pod, though of course only the time travelers realize this. Steven and his friend rush off to see if there are any survivors, but the unfortunate answer is yes – Steven is attacked and knocked out, and his friend, the groom-to-be, is killed and replaced by a “shape-stealer,” though it’s some time before anyone realizes this. The creature assumes numerous guises to allow it to move freely among the villagers, until finally it impersonates the Doctor and sets off to steal the TARDIS – until it spots someone in a more obvious position of power which will allow it to further its mission: Napoleon himself.

Order this CD written by Marc Platt
directed by Nigel Fairs
music by David Darlington

Cast: Peter Purves (Steven Taylor), Tony Millan (The Interrogator)

Timeline: after The Gunfighters and before The Savages

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Companion Chronicles Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Helicon Prime

Doctor Who: Helicon PrimeHaving long since been parted from the Doctor and Zoe, and back on Earth in the highlands of Scotland, Jamie McCrimmon recounts a story of a visit he and the Doctor once paid to an orbiting resort called Helicon Prime, located in an area of space whose tranquil properties soothe all the vacationers who visit there. But moments after the TARDIS brings them there, one of the resort’s clients is murdered. When the Doctor tries to find out why, he inadvertently brings himself to the attention of a highly-placed ambassador whose dealings on Helicon Prime are shrouded in mystery. When other vacationers die, one by one, the Doctor swings into action and makes himself – and Jamie – the next targets of the killer.

Order this CD written by Jake Elliott
directed by Nigel Fairs
music by David Darlington

Cast: Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon), Suzanne Procter (Mindy Voir)

Timeline: sometime around The Two Doctors and before Spearhead From
Space
?

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green

Categories
Companion Chronicles Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Old Soldiers

Doctor Who: Old SoldiersThe Brigadier receives an urgent but cryptic summons from his old friend, Colonel Heinrich Konrad, of UNIT’s force in West Germany. The message brings Lethbridge-Stewart to an ancient fortification, the Kriegskind, which is now home to a secret UNIT detachment. But rather than being greeted by Konrad, Lethbridge-Stewart is met by his distinctly nervous second-in-command, Schrader, who assures him somewhat unconvincingly that nothing is amiss. The Brigadier pulls rank and is horrified to discover that his old friend is in critical condition in the base’s sick bay, claiming to be the only survivor of some unspecified incident and warning that “time is against me.” Later, Lethbridge-Stewart sees for himself what Schrader didn’t want him to see: medieval swordsmen engaging UNIT troops in a pitched battle, capable of wounding men heavily armed with modern weapons but apparently taking little damage themselves. Lethrbridge-Stewart makes an urgent call to his scientific advisor; the Doctor parachutes into the base hours later. Both men stumble across evidence that they are indeed facing yet another threat of alien origin – but this time, UNIT has brought this menace upon itself.

Order this CD written by James Swallow
directed by Nigel Fairs
music by David Darlington

Colonel Heinrich Konrad

Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Toby Longworth (Schrader / Konrad)

Timeline: after Doctor Who And The Siluarians and before The Ambassadors Of Death

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Companion Chronicles Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Quinnis

Doctor Who: QuinnisStill moving from place to place after leaving their home planet, the Doctor and Susan arrive on the planet Quinnis, a world in the fourth universe. The TARDIS has landed in a market square, and the haggard-looking people of Quinnis seem ready to sell the time travelers anything in exchange for curiosities from their travels – but especially water, as rain has become a rarity. The Doctor quickly grows impatient with the primitive state of scientific knowledge, but is amazed by the local architecture: the town is a vertical maze of unfinished bridges, and the dwellings along its streets are boats, permanently moored to the bridges. Since he’s already performed one miracle – the TARDIS appearing out of thin air – the Doctor is mistaken for a rainmaker, and his protests to the contrary are ignored. The locals want him to make it rain – or else – to trigger their planet’s brief harvest. But even the bountiful vegetation on the ground level could prove to be deadly, especially when the ensuing monsoon washes the TARDIS away.

Order this CD written by Marc Platt
directed by Lisa Bowerman
music by Nigel Fairs

Cast: Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman), Tara-Louise Kaye (Meedla)

Notes: The fish that Susan acquires on Quinnis is seen again when Susan returns to the TARDIS in the eighth Doctor audio story Relative Dimensions (2010). The ending of this story hints strongly that the TARDIS travelers’ next stop is London in the summer of 1963 (a few months prior to the events of the first-ever Doctor Who television story, An Unearthly Child), although this creates a dating problem with the Telos novella “Time And Relative”, which implies that the Doctor and Susan have been in London since 1962. In keeping with the mythology of the series during the Hartnell era, neither the Time Lords nor Gallifrey are ever mentioned.

Timeline: before An Unearthly Child (main story flashback); between An Earthly Child and Relative Dimensions (“present” story)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green