So, I haven't managed to get through a whole audio every night, but at least part of one.
When last I posted, I'd started on the trilogy of Klein/Seventh Doctor stories. The Seventh Doctor does seem to get himself into stories that wouldn't happen with other Doctors. Which is a good thing. We don't need a lot of interchangeable Doctors and adventures.
In Survival of the Fittest, the Doctor and Klein find themselves on a planet populated by strange aliens being killed off by unscrupulous humans, and Klein seems to be learning the lessons the Doctor is trying to teach her, becoming a better person. But no. In The Architects of History, time is wrong, due to Klein stealing the Doctor’s Tardis and trying to remake the universe as a Nazi dream. But it’s not a big time-spanning story, it’s mainly set on a moonbase attacked by the sharklike Selachians. Over the course of the three stories, we’re sometimes led to think there’s hope for Klein. But a Nazi is a Nazi. As for the Selachians, as much as their creator Steve Lyons loves them, has anyone else written about them? Once you get past the novelty of sentient evil sharks, which doesn't take long, considering he's used them in novels and audios, there's not much to do that can't be done with other villains.
The next trilogy features Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor. In City of Spires, the Doctor finds himself in a distorted version of Highlands Scotland. He encounters Jamie McCrimmon, whose memories of the Doctor were wiped by the Time Lords after The War Games. He’s a few decades older but still fighting the British and their strange monstrous assistants, who are drilling for oil and building a big city to refine it and do sinister things. But there are people there from different decades, and Scotland is not recognizable because of the mysterious villain’s activities. The Wreck of the Titan brings a lot of nautical adventure, with the Doctor and Jamie finding themselves on the sinking Titan, then the sinking Titanic, and then on Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, and the listener figures out where the Doctor is before he seems to. In Legend of the Cybermen, the Doctor, realizing he’s been in the Land of Fiction through all of this, finds himself in a war with Cybermen determined to convert everyone in the Land of Fiction, and with help from Jamie, Zoe, and some of the land’s picturesque inhabitants, he has to find the Land’s Mistress. The thing is, once it’s clear they’re in the Land of Fiction, the story’s stakes seem a lot lower. There are good stretches of the story that are a lot of fun but they’re generally in the first two parts.
Next up: the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough, and an older Nyssa in what turns into a Mara trilogy. In Cobwebs, the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough find themselves in an abandoned base — literally, as the skeletons in a medical suite are theirs. And they find Nyssa, who’s left Terminus and is researching a deadly disease. And there’s some jumping between the same place in two times. It’s a bit twisty and suspenseful. In The Whispering Forest, the gang find themselves on a planet with a small human colony living a low tech existence and obsessed with cleanliness and with the mysterious Takers, who kidnap their people but are never seen, and Shades, insubstantial whispering things in the woods. Yes, there’s a long ago crashed spaceship and the ship’s robots and a hidden medical facility and other complications. As for The Cradle of the Snake, well, a change of setting to a big city on a futuristic alien planet that isn't actually a hell of a lot different from anywhere on Earth in 2010 has some fun elements with all the media stuff. Passing the Mara on to the Doctor means less possessed Tegan, which seems like a good thing. I'm not all that much of a fan, though she occasionally has her moments.
(Skipping the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Hex stories that follow for now.)
Next up, a bit of an oddity. Instead of a trilogy of full length audios, it's The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories, four short individual Fifth Doctor stories. Which turns out to be a pleasant change of pace. The title story starts out as a nicely spooky historical then turns into a science fiction chiller. Nicely atmospheric. The second story is a cautionary tale about the evils of progressive rock, though that's not quite what it set out to do. The third is another "Doctor in prison" story, not too memorable, though I enjoyed it well enough while listening. And it ends with a good, fun story told as the audio track of a special feature from a DVD. Conceptually interesting, but carried out well, too. None of the short stories overstay their welcome, though it's easy to imagine the first three rewritten slightly as Short Trips. The fourth works best as is.
Then we get a Sixth Doctor trilogy with Thomas Brewster. I haven't heard his earlier adventures because in order to make sure I pay attention while listening, I'm currently limiting myself to episodes I have the scripts for, and reading along as I listen. And Brewster is not all that exciting a character, a young Dickensian rogue. A trilogy feels like enough. I liked the modern day cop story feel (with occasional interruptions) of The Crimes of Thomas Brewster, along with Brewster's masquerading as the Doctor. The Feast of Axos, as a space adventure with a returning villain, engaged me at the time but hasn't really stuck with me. Industrial Evolution seemed more memorable, with Brewster in his own time, and a science fictional threat that works pretty well. The plain old industrial revolution was disruptive enough without alien interference. With the number of characters in these stories, though, it doesn't always feel like we're getting enough of Evelyn Smythe. She's got Thomas Brewster, DI Menzies, Flip, and several other characters to share time with.
Then another Fifth Doctor trilogy with Tegan, Turlough, and older Nyssa. Heroes of Sontar, Kiss of Death, and Rat Trap all have a fairly small cast of characters in a relatively confined environment. They're all entertaining enough, but ask me about them next year and I'm not sure I'll remember much. Kiss of Death has some character moments for Turlough, which is good, and Rat Trap is a bit more gruesome than we might expect to see on TV. Not on par with James Herbert's The Rats, necessarily, but just as much not recommended for people who really don't like rats.
Next up is Robophobia, with the Seventh Doctor meeting future companion Liv Chenka in a sequel to The Robots of Death. I've heard several Eighth Doctor audios with Liv, so this should be interesting.
I have to admit that sometimes this feels more like homework than fun. But I'm not getting any younger and I've bought a lot of stuff that I haven't listened to yet. I may have to take a break and listen to some recent Torchwoods (I didn't fall behind on those until I started teleworking), even though I don't have scripts. But the average Torchwood main range audio has generally seemed more enjoyable than the average Doctor Who main range audio. Being shorter helps, I guess.
