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8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Storm Warning

Doctor WhoThe Doctor happens upon a recursive disaster in the time vortex – a timeship whose fiery demise is repeating itself over and over again, leaving the vessel helpless to fend off the attack of vortex-dwelling creatures swarming over the wreck. The Doctor impetuously tries to nudge the timeship out of its predicament, putting the TARDIS in danger of joining it in its never-ending fate. The gambit works, but when the Doctor makes a hasty emergency exit of the vortex, vortizores follow the TARDIS to its destination: Earth, 1930, aboard the doomed maiden voyage of British Airship R-101. The Doctor becomes stranded aboard the ship – which history records as having crashed in France on its first flight with all hands lost – when the TARDIS, having landed in one of the ballast tanks, is dumped overboard. He then meets stowaway Charlotte Pollard – “Charley” for short – who boarded the R-101 in the guise of a steward, but has now been found out and is on the run. Lord Tamworth, the Minister of the Air, is also aboard, as is the dirigible’s nervous designer, fearful of the changes that Tamworth made to his specifications. And in Cabin 43, a heavily-sedated passenger is kept in isolation, though someone aboard the craft has made arrangements to return her home…to an alien space vehicle at an altitude of 5,000 feet.

Order this CD written by Alan Barnes
directed by Gary Russell
music by Alistair Lock / theme arrangement by David Arnold

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Gareth Thomas (Lord Tamworth), Nicholas Pegg (Frayling), Barnaby Edwards (Rathbone), Hylton Collins (Chief Steward Weeks), Helen Goldwyn (Triskele)

Timeline: after the 1996 TV movie and before Sword Of Orion

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Sword Of Orion

Doctor Who: The Sword Of OrionIn the wake of the events surrounding the crash of the R-101, the Doctor and Charley take in a stray time vortex-dwelling creature, which Charley names “Ramsay.” But when Ramsay falls ill, the Doctor steers the TARDIS toward the Garazone system, where he hopes to find a cure. But the Doctor’s stopover at Garazone launches him into an even more perilous adventure. The scrap ship Vanguard is preparing to depart under the command of a mysterious new captain, and the Doctor and Charley are forced to stow away when the TARDIS is mistakenly loaded into the Vanguard’s cargo bay. Matters are made worse when the Vanguard makes a bee-line for a hulking derelict spacecraft. The Doctor and Charley watch helplessly as the crew try to board the enormous ship, and then one by one begin falling victim to that ship’s population of Cybermen, who have received a signal to reactive. But a danger greater than Cybermen may be lurking among the Vanguard’s crew – a danger which threatens the future of the entire human race.

Order this CD written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas Briggs

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Michelle Livingstone (Deeva), Bruce Montague (Grash), Helen Goldwyn (Chev), Ian Marr (Ike), Hylton Collins (Vol), Toby Longworth (Kelsey)

Timeline: after Storm Warning and before Stones Of Venice

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Stones Of Venice

Doctor Who: The Stones Of VeniceThe Doctor barely gets Charley out of yet another near-death scrape, and realizes that they both need a vacation. The Doctor decides to take his companion to the lovely city of Venice…but naturally, overshoots the time frame a little bit and winds up taking her to Venice in the 23rd century, on the day before the fabled city sinks under the water once and for all. But Charley is stunned to see that no evacuation is being carried out – quite the contrary, in fact. Mad Duke Orsino is planning one last revel, and the more inebriated, the better as far as he’s concerned. Other Venetians aren’t taking their last day on Earth quite so calmly. Orsino’s court curator, Churchwell, is all but in a panic about the fate of the Duke’s valuable art collection. Pietro, a member of an amphibious race of gondoliers, has his eye on Charley in hopes of using her in a plot to help his people take over the city. The High Priest of an order that worships the Duke’s late wife means to see an ancient prophecy fulfilled, no matter the cost in human lives. And in his madness, the Duke deputizes someone to the throne, someone who may destroy everyone even before the city crumbles at daybreak. This time, the Doctor and Charley won’t be able to escape by dawn.

Order this CD written by Paul Magrs
directed by Gary Russell
music by Russell Stone

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Michael Sheard (Count Orsino), Nick Scovell (Churchwell), Barnaby Edwards (Pietro), Elaine Ives-Cameron (Ms. Lavish), Mark Gatiss (Vincenzo)

Timeline: after Sword Of Orion and before Minuet In Hell

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Minuet In Hell

Doctor Who: Minuet In HellBrigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Retired) arrives in the newly-formed American state of Malebolgia, where the locals have requested his advice following his participation in the secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom. But the Brigadier is a little suspicious of events in Malebolgia, and he’s not alone – he has actually been assigned to look into rumors of misuse of a mind scanning/recording/reprogramming device at a local mental hospital. Those rumors turn out to be true when the Brigadier encounters a long-haired man in unusual clothes who claims to have arrived out of nowhere only the night before, and also claims to know the Brigadier. But Lethbridge-Stewart takes the man back to the mental hospital, and doesn’t get to hear the man’s claims that he’s a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey – and another patient at the mental hospital is making precisely the same claims. But whoever the Doctor may be, he’s in no position to stop a confluence of demonic influences from overrunning the 51st state – leaving Lethbridge-Stewart and an equally amnesiac Charley to do battle with darkness by themselves.

Order this CD written by Alan W. Lear with Gary Russell
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by William Allen

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Robert Jezek (Brigham Elisha Dashwood), Morgan Deare (Senator Waldo Pickering), Helen Goldwyn (Becky Lee), Maureen Oakeley (Doctor Dale Pargeter), Nicholas Briggs (Gideon Crane)

Timeline: after Stones Of Venice and before Invaders From Mars

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor

Invaders From Mars

Invaders From MarsThe Doctor and Charley arrive in Manhattan just before Halloween, 1938. One of the first things Charley encounters upon her first visit to New York City is the body of a recently murdered private detective. When a woman arrives at the gumshoe’s office to hire him, the Doctor impersonates him and agrees to take on the case of her missing uncle (to Charley’s alarm). But things aren’t as they seem – Charley is kidnapped by mobsters, and even the Doctor’s new client isn’t who she seems. As Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater Players prepare to broadcast their infamous panic-inducing radio adaptation of “The War Of The Worlds”, a very real alien invasion is taking place – and the Doctor hopes to use one to fight the other.

Order this CDwritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Mark Gatiss
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Ian Hallard (Mouse), Mark Benton (Ellis), Jonathan Rigby (John Houseman), David Benson (Orson Welles), Paul Putner (Bix Biro), Simon Pegg (Don Chaney), Jessica Stevenson (Glory Bee), John Arthur (Cosmo Devine)

Timeline: after Minuet In Hell and before The Chimes Of Midnight

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor

The Chimes Of Midnight

The Chimes Of MidnightThe TARDIS lands in the well-stocked larder of what appears to be an Edwardian-era house. As Charley and the Doctor explore the house, they find numerous recent signs of life, but little or no evidence of the occupants. Gradually, Charley hears the voices of the people living in the house – and, for a moment, sees and speaks to one of them. Nothing the time travelers do or move stays permanent. When they’re suddenly able to communicate with the house’s occupants, the clock strikes and one of those occupants turns up horribly murdered. Far from being considered suspects, the Doctor and Charley are instantly “recognized” as London’s greatest amateur sleuths by the servants and staff. Another murder happens when the clock strikes eleven – and the victim of the previous slaying seems to have been erased from the memories of everyone except the Doctor and Charley. And so continues a horrifying, never ending cycle of life and death, a paradoxical cycle which can only end with the death of one of the house’s visitors.

Order this CDwritten by Robert Shearman
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Russell Stone

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Louise Rolfe (Edith), Lennox Greaves (Mr. Shaughnessy), Sue Wallace (Mrs. Baddeley), Robert Curbishley (Frederick), Juliet Warner (Mary)

Timeline: after Invaders From Mars and before Seasons Of Fear

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor

Seasons Of Fear

Seasons Of FearAfter numerous misadventures, the TARDIS finally brings Charley to Singapore in 1930, right on time to make her appointment with a young man who she had originally stowed away aboard the R-101 to meet. While she is away, the Doctor meets a man named Sebastian Grayle – a man both blessed and cursed with immoirtality, a man who knows that the Doctor is a Time Lord, and a man who claims to have killed him some with the help of his masters at some point in the Doctor’s future. When Charlie returns, the Doctor once against whisks her away, urgently setting out to find out how Grayle came to be immortal, and who he serves who might want the Doctor dead. They travel back in time to the third century A.D. and meet Grayle in his original form: a naive priest who has made a tenuous pact with an alien power beyond his understanding. If the Doctor cannot stop Grayle from gaining immortality, his new nemesis will grow in power and cunning through the centuries until, at least, he does have the means to defeat a Time Lord.

Order this CDwritten by Paul Cornell and Caroline Symcox
directed by Gary Russell
music by Jane Elphinstone

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Stephen Perring (Sebastian Grayle), Stephen Fewell (Marcus), Robert Curbishley (Lucillius / Grayle’s Masters’ voices), Lennox Greaves (Edward), Sue Wallace (Edith), Stephen Fewell (Richard Martin), Justine Mitchell (Lucy Martin), Don Warrington (The Auditor)

Timeline: after The Chimes Of Midnight and before Embrace The Darkness

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor

Embrace The Darkness

Embrace The DarknessA science station on the distant world of Cimmeria IV is plunged into darkness. Its three-person crew can’t see, but they can feel – and what they feel, at the hands of whatever has attacked the station, is intense pain. The Doctor arrives by chance, having always wondered how the sun of the Cimmerian system went dark at some point in the future, but when he and Charley pay a visit, things go horribly wrong, including Charley encountering the science station’s crew…who have been relieved of their eyes. The same fate then befalls Charley when she’s separated from the Doctor – and the Time Lord is getting no help from ROSM, an artificial intelligence whose inflexible thinking may not only doom an entire species inhabiting Cimmeria IV, but may also force the time travelers to be present for the death of the sun.

Order this CDwritten by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas BriggsJim Mortimore

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Nicola Boyce (Orllensa), Lee Moone (Ferras), Mark McDonnell (Haliard), Ian Brooker (ROSM / Solarian / Cimmerian), Nicholas Briggs (Cimmerian Voice)

Timeline: after Seasons Of Fear and before The Time Of The Daleks

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor

The Time Of The Daleks

The Time Of The DaleksJust as happened just before he visited the Cimmerian system, the Doctor’s TARDIS is thrashed by the energy of a time corridor – a corridor which just happens to bring him to a future in which few humans seem to know the historical significance of the works of Shakespeare. Even more alarmingly, time has somehow been altered to a degree that even Charley doesn’t know who Shakespeare is. General Mariah Learman does, however, remember the Bard, and she is intently trying to perfect a time machine of her own to set history to rights. The Doctor is troubled enough by Learman’s mission, but when the Daleks emerge from the time corridor – spouting Shakespearean prose – the Doctor knows something is terribly wrong. Shakespeare has been removed from time altogether, and the Doctor may not be able to put history’s most famous dramatist back where (and when) he belongs.

Order this CDwritten by Justin Richards
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas Briggs

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Dot Smith (General Mariah Learman), Julian Harries (Major Ferdinand), Nicola Boyce (Viola), Jem Bassett (Kitchen Boy), Mark McDonnell (Priestly), Lee Moone (Hart), Ian Brooker (Professor Osric), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voice), Clayton Hickman (Dalek voice / Yokel), Robert Curbishley (Marcus), Ian Potter (Mark Anthony / Army Officer / Tannoy), Don Warrington (Rassilon)

Timeline: after Embrace The Darkness and before Neverland

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor

Neverland

Doctor Who: NeverlandIn the time vortex, the Doctor’s TARDIS is surrounded by other Gallifreyan time vehicles – some of them armed for battle. The Doctor manages to escape them, but Charley – growing more aware of the borrowed time on which she’s been living since the Doctor took her away from the doomed R-101 – hits the TARDIS’ fast-return switch, leaving the Doctor and herself at the mercy of the Time Lords. On Gallifrey, the Doctor is briefed: his rescue of Charley has created a paradox which opened an opportune breach in the fabric of space-time, allowing anti-time to spill into the universe of real time. But creatures in the universe of anti-time now want to establish their own foothold in the real time realm, regardless of the disastrous consequences it could have for history across the universe. Romana, still the President of the Time Lords, asks for the Doctor’s help, but is unaware that much of what is happening is the direct result of another Time Lord. Along the way, the Doctor fights the Time Lords’ assertion that Charley must die in order for history to be saved, and an ancient TARDIS is found…one which belonged to Rassilon, but is now being used to lure the guardians of time to their doom.

Order this CDwritten by Alan Barnes
directed by Gary Russell
music by Nicholas Briggs

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Lalla Ward (President Romana), Don Warrington (Rassilon), Anthony Keetch (Coordinator Vansell), Peter Trapani (Kurst), Holly King (Levith), Lee Moone (Under-Cardinal), Mark McDonnell (Rorvan), Nicola Boyce (Taris), Dot Smith (Matrix voice), Jonathan Rigby (Matrix voice), Ian Hallard (Matrix voice)

Timeline: after The Time Of The Daleks and before Zagreus

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

Living Legend

Doctor Who: Living LegendThe Doctor and Charley arrive in Italy as the country celebrates its 1982 World Cup victory. But something more sinister lurks behind the revels: two aliens – Threllips – are scouting the Earth for conquest and colonization. And while the Threllips have the strength of a dozen humans, technology at least on a par with the Sontarans, and the willpower to subjugate the entire human race, they’re also a little short on brainpower. With that in mind, the Doctor and Charley set the pair of invaders up to fail under the weight of their own egos.

written by Scott Gray
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Stephen Perring (Vendorr / Italian Bloke), Conrad Westmaas (Thon)

Timeline: between The Chimes Of Midnight and Seasons Of Fear

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

Zagreus

Doctor Who: ZagreusImbued with the energy of anti-time and possessed by the power-mad Zagreus, the Doctor wrestles for self-control and terrifies Charley into hiding within the TARDIS. A familiar face appears to Charley as she hides – the Brigadier, or, more precisely, a TARDIS-projected simulation of Lethbridge-Stewart intended to help her. Its method of doing so, however, is unorthodox to put it mildly: Charley must divine the true nature of the increasingly disastrous situation from a series of metaphors, ranging from her own childhood to a visit to Gallifrey’s past to an insane amusement park where animatronic cartoon characters are slaughtering one another. The Doctor, too, hears from some familiar voices in his own past, coaxing him to regain control of his own mind. But all too late, the Doctor realizes that his body and soul are not Zagreus’ only battleground, and the real battle for the fate of the entire universe is only now being joined.

Order this CDwritten by Alan Barnes & Gary Russell
directed by Gary Russell
music by Andy Hardwick

Cast: Peter Davison (Reverend Matthew Townsend), Colin Baker (Lord Tepesh), Sylvester McCoy (Walton Winkle), Paul McGann (Zagreus), India Fisher (Charley Pollard), Lalla Ward (Romana), Louise Jameson (Leela), Don Warrington (Rassilon), Nicholas Courtney (The TARDIS / Brigadier), Anneke Wills (Lady Louisa Pollard), Stephen Perring (Receptionist), Elisabeth Sladen (Miss Lime), Conrad Westmaas (The Cat), Mark Strickson (Captain McDonnell), Sarah Sutton (Miss Foster), Nicola Bryant (Stone / Ouida), Caroline Morris (Mary Elson), Maggie Stables (Great Mother), Bonnie Langford (Cassandra / Goldilocks), Robert Jezek (Recorder), Stephen Fewell (Corporal Heron), Sophie Aldred (Captain Duck), Lisa Bowerman (Sergeant Gazelle), Miles Richardson (Cardinal Braxiatel), John Leeson (K9), Jon Pertwee (The Doctor)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

Scherzo

Doctor Who: ScherzoIn the Divergent dimension, the TARDIS is barely able to maintain its shape, dimensions and function, struggling to keep itself intact in a pocket universe where the normal physical laws do not apply. It brings the Doctor and Charley – who stowed away aboard the TARDIS after the Doctor’s harrowing battle with Zagreus – to what seems to be a dark void. The Doctor and Charley finds themselves battered by deafening, disjointed repetitions of their own words in their own voices, and the Doctor surmises that they’re dealing with a creature made of pure sound. But Charley, preoccupied with her unrequited feelings for the Doctor, isn’t as fascinated by the experience. And before either of them knows it, they’re trapped, together alone at the whim of an unseen, and yet incomprehensibly heard, tormentor.

Order this CDwritten by Rob Shearman
directed by Gary Russell

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley)

Note: There is no musical score in this story.

Timeline: after Zagreus and before Creed Of The Kromon

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Shada

Doctor WhoThe Doctor lands his TARDIS just outside the office of the President of the Time Lords, and whisks President Romana and her K-9 unit away to Earth to see to unfinished business. At St. Cedd’s College, Cambridge, an elderly Time Lord refugee going by the name of Professor Chronotis has summoned the Doctor to help him return a book, “The Ancient and Worshipful Law of Ancient Gallifrey”, to the Time Lords themsevlves. His plan to have the Doctor do this for him, this preserving his anonymity, has one major snag: Chronotis appears to have accidentally loaned the book out to one of his students, Chris Parsons. Before the Doctor can locate the book, Parsons and his friend Clare Keightly have already figured out that there’s something strange and perhaps even dangerous about the book. And something dangerous is certainly on the trail of the book – a megalomanical criminal named Skagra, using his mind-draining sphere, will stop at nothing to find Chronotis and the book. He hopes to use the book to find the well-hidden Time Lord prison planet, Shada – and once there, he hopes to drain the mind of the Time Lords’ most dangerous criminal, Salyavin, using his knowledge to take over every sentient mind in the universe.

Order this CDwritten by Douglas Adams
adapted for audio by Gary Russell
directed by Nicholas Pegg
music by Russell Stone

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Lalla Ward (Romana), John Leeson (K-9), James Fox (Professor Chronotis), Andrew Sachs (Skagra), Sean Biggerstaff (Chris Parsons), Susannah Harker (Clare Keightly), Melvyn Hayes (Wilkin), Hannah Gordon (The Ship), Barnaby Edwards (Caldera), Stuart Crossman (Constable), Nicholas Pegg (Think Tank Voice)

Timeline: after Doctor Who and before Storm Warning

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

The Creed Of The Kromon

Doctor Who: The Creed Of The KromonStill trapped in the divergent universe without the TARDIS, the Doctor and Charley encounter what seems to be an impenetrable barrier, guarded by a being known as the Kro’Ka. After assessing what both of the travelers fear, the Kro’Ka lets them pass through to a neighboring zone, where the native humanoid population has been enslaved by the insectoid Kromon. The Doctor and Charley meet C’rizz, a refugee from the Kromon biodomes in a suicidal mood since he lost his mate. The Doctor offers to help, and the three make their way into the nearest Kromon dome, which is also where the Doctor hopes to find the TARDIS. Once inside, however, they become prisoners of the Kromon. The insectoid creatures, following the creed set down by a long-vanished Company, intend to mine the Doctor’s knowledge of space travel and enslave C’rizz once more. And they have something else in mind for Charley – a fate worse than death in the Kromon breeding chambers.

Order this CDwritten by Philip Martin
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Brian Cobby (The Oroog), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka / Kromon voices), Jane Hills (L’da), Daniel Hogarth (Kromon voices)

Timeline: after Scherzo and before The Natural History Of Fear

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green