Last Doctor Who Story you listened to?

[Christopher]

I've been using Hoopla myself for the last few months, mainly for comics so far. My library gives me access to a ton of comics, including most of Titan's Dr. Who collections.
They've got a ton of Dr. Who audios on there for me too, including a few of the spin-offs, like Davros, one of the UNIT series, and a bunch of Jago & Litefoot.

I was just coming here to talk about that. I've been gradually discovering how much library content is available digitally through Hoopla, Overdrive, and the like, and I just did an inventory of the Who audios they have available on Hoopla. It seemed like a forbidding list at first, over 170 entries and no way to tell what series or sequences they belonged to, so I wrote down all the names and consulted the TARDIS Wiki, and I found they tend to constitute a variety of complete series/sets, less random than they appeared in the list. To sum up, they have:

The Main Range from 1999-2003, everything from The Sirens of Time through Zagreus
First Doctor Early Adventures Series 1
Fourth Doctor Adventures Series 1-2
Eighth Doctor Adventures Series 1-2
The Lost Stories Series 1-2 (including 1st & 2nd Box Set duos and 6th & 7th "seasons") and 4th Doctor Box Set
Philip Hinchcliffe Presents Vol. 1
Companion Chronicles Series 2-3
Short Trips Vol. 3 & 4 and Series 5
Destiny of the Doctor
The Stageplays
Cyberman Series 1-2
Dalek Empire Series 1-2
I, Davros
UNIT (except "The Coup")
The Worlds of Doctor Who

So anyway, I'm trying to decide what I want to try listening to and in what order -- like, whether to go for release order or chronological order. I'm leaning toward release order for the Main Range, since then I'd get to experience its evolution as a series, and I'd get a mix of different Doctors and companions. And my preference would be for the ones that are done full-cast rather than the ones that are mostly narration, though I might get around to the latter in time.

I did hear the first several Eight/Charley stories some years ago when the BBC put them online. I recall finding them mediocre, though I liked getting to know McGann's Doctor better. I recall hearing a Five/Nyssa audio once too, though all I remember about it is how old the actors sounded.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

You're in for a treat Christopher. I just listened to 7/Ace/Hex ones for the first ever, and it was a treat. Don't regret a minute of it. And of course, Charley and Evelyn!

 

[Christopher]

I just listened to The Sirens of Time on Hoopla. An okay story, but a bit scattered due to its format. It was also a bit hard to follow because Davison, Colin Baker, and McCoy have somewhat similar voices. I mistook Seven for Five for the first couple of minutes (I thought I remembered Seven having a thicker Scottish accent than that), and in part 4 I kept mistaking Six for Five. And it wasn't always easy to follow the action. I kinda wish there had been some audiobook-style narration to supplement the dialogue and sound FX, like on the old "Genesis of the Daleks" LP that I re-listened to last week.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Similar voices? I guess I've become accustomed on audio that upon listening to Sirens, which I also listened to the first time recently, I didn't have that issue. I actually think McCoy's voice sounds nothing like Davison's. Baker's was young-sounding enough that it did remind me of Davison, but not confuse me.

I think if you listen to a number of different audios with a given Doctor you become acclimatized to their voices. Although, for myself, I think each of these actors are distinct enough, but whatever. The worst offense of Sirens, and indeed of the first 40 Main Range releases or so is the theme tune being the same, when Parts 1 and 4 are meant to be the McCullough theme, Part 2 the Peter Howell variation and Part 3 the Dominic Glynn one.

 

[Christopher]

Similar voices? I guess I've become accustomed on audio that upon listening to Sirens, which I also listened to the first time recently, I didn't have that issue. I actually think McCoy's voice sounds nothing like Davison's. Baker's was young-sounding enough that it did remind me of Davison, but not confuse me.

Well, it's been a while since I've seen any of their episodes/serials, so maybe my memory of their voices is a bit rusty (though I'm usually pretty good at such things). And I'm just not used to listening to them in audio-only form. I guess I'll get the hang of it.

I didn't really think McCoy sounded like Davison, it's just that I wasn't sure who he was at first, and he didn't have as much of a Scottish accent as I'd expected, but he didn't sound like Baker, so that left Davison. I knew Davison's voice had changed with age, so the fact that he didn't sound that much like Davison didn't rule him out. (See, this is why I could've used narration.)

The worst offense of Sirens, and indeed of the first 40 Main Range releases or so is the theme tune being the same, when Parts 1 and 4 are meant to be the McCullough theme, Part 2 the Peter Howell variation and Part 3 the Dominic Glynn one.

Oh yeah, I did find it odd that they used the Derbyshire arrangement when none of the three featured Doctors used it.

Didn't Baker get the Howell arrangement in his first season, with the Glynn being exclusive to "Trial of a Time Lord"?

 

[Brendan Moody]

Season 22 did have the Howell theme, but Big Finish typically use the Glynn theme for their Sixth Doctor audios (most of which take place after the trial anyway), so if they were to put era-specific music on Part 3 it would be the Glynn. One of the novels places Part 3 of “Sirens” during the Evelyn Smythe era, which is definitely post-Trial.

 

[Christopher]

Season 22 did have the Howell theme, but Big Finish typically use the Glynn theme for their Sixth Doctor audios (most of which take place after the trial anyway), so if they were to put era-specific music on Part 3 it would be the Glynn.

Yeah, that stands to reason. I was just trying to remember which seasons used which theme.

I still have the first three theme arrangements on vinyl from way back when. I have the Howell on a bonus single on the 2-record set along with "Genesis of the Daleks" and a sound-FX album, and I have a 12-inch but 45-RPM record with the Derbyshire and Glynn versions, in a sleeve with a hologram of several monsters on the cover. I never managed to get a record of the McCullough version.

 

[diankra]

1-18, the various Derbyshire arrangements, 18-22 Howell, 23 Glynn, 24-26 McCulloch, 27-33 varied Gold versions, 37 onwards the current one from Segun.

 

[Christopher]

1-18, the various Derbyshire arrangements, 18-22 Howell, 23 Glynn, 24-26 McCulloch, 27-33 varied Gold versions, 37 onwards the current one from Segun.

You left out John Debney's movie arrangement. And wasn't there one original to Big Finish?

 

[diankra]

You're right, I did. Though judging by the credits on the CD Debney didn't do much beyond the theme music (the Mussolini mix as a friend described it at the time). David Arnold did a version Big Finish used for a while.

 

[Christopher]

Though judging by the credits on the CD Debney didn't do much beyond the theme music

I found the CD credits on Amazon, and they show that he was a co-writer of more than half the film's cues, along with either Louis Febre or John Sponsler. And as the credited main composer, he probably supervised their work on the other cues, assuming it's a similar arrangement to what Shirley Walker and her supporting composers had on Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, for example.

Besides, it doesn't matter in this context, since we're only talking about different arrangements of the theme itself.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

David Arnold did the theme for the Eighth Doctor stories. Yes, that one.

 

[Christopher]

Two more audios down. I wasn't too impressed by Phantasmagoria; by keeping what was going on a mystery for so long, it ended up feeling rather unfocused and not that engaging. It's a reminder that I haven't been that impressed by Mark Gatiss's writing in general over the years. Also, it didn't help that I wasn't familiar enough with the historical era to visualize it.

Whispers of Terror was excellent, though. A very clever story that made very good use of the audio format, with at least one major twist that would've been impossible on TV. Some nice ambiguity about who the real villain was, and some political commentary that's sadly all too timely today. I felt the Doctor made too great an intuitive leap too early to deduce the nature of the creature, but that's hardly a first for Doctor Who, and it saved time getting to the more interesting parts later on. The banter between the Sixth Doctor and Peri was dead on and snarky fun, though I don't think Nicola Bryant managed to get back into character all that well; she sounded rather bored with the whole thing. But I guess it's better than the whiny voice she had in her first year on the series.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I'm genuinely excited you finally started AudioWho, Christopher. Its a bumpy ride, but more than worth it.

 

[Christopher]

I'm genuinely excited you finally started AudioWho, Christopher. Its a bumpy ride, but more than worth it.

Well, it's not exactly my first time, since I heard a few that were released on the BBC radio website years and years ago. The first ones I heard were several of the early Eight/Charley stories, up through Invaders from Mars, though I think I only heard four of the first five. I also recall hearing a Five/Nyssa audio once, though I don't remember which one. (The next one in the series is Five/Nyssa, though, so it might have been that one.)

For that matter, it occurred to me in retrospect that some aspects of Whispers of Terror seemed familiar, so it's possible I heard it once before, though it could just be deja vu.

I'm only going to be able to listen to one more this week, though, since I'm up to 19 of my 20 allotted Hoopla borrowings for the month.

 

[JD]

You get 20 Hoopla borrows? I only get four per month.

 

[Christopher]

You get 20 Hoopla borrows? I only get four per month.

It was only 10 when I started -- I assumed they increased it to compensate for libraries being closed during the pandemic, or else that it increased over time. I didn't know it was different for different people. Maybe it depends on which library system you're affiliated with.

 

[Christopher]

And that's my last audio for the month, The Land of the Dead. I didn't much care for it -- it was condescending toward indigenous beliefs, and the actors playing the two Koyukon characters did lousy accents -- one a fake American accent with a ton of overcorrected Rs (like "when my farther died"), the other doing a stilted "American Indian" delivery like something out of a bad '60s Western. I guess it was okay otherwise, though, and the Monica character's banter with the Doctor was kind of fun.

 

[Christopher]

It's a new month, so I can borrow from Hoopla again. I just finished The Fearmonger, and it was uncannily timely in its political message. It was also excellent, compellingly written and capturing the approach and characterizations of the Seven/Ace era very well. I've never been more impressed by Ace, who was never really a favorite companion of mine. This seems to be a more mature Ace than we had in the series, one tempered by her years with the Doctor -- although her old friend's line that she'd hardly aged in 15 years suggests that she wasn't much older subjectively than when we last saw her onscreen.

It's also another one that takes good advantage of the audio format, with a lot of it presented through radio broadcasts and an invisible enemy that revealed itself by its sound (although the voice distortion was way too severe, so I could hardly make out the dialogue at some points).

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Really glad you like this one. Its an underrated one. And if you liked how this explored Ace and the Doctor, wait until Colditz and The Rapture.