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8th Doctor Doctor Who

The Natural History Of Fear

Doctor Who: The Natural History Of FearThe Doctor, Charley and C’rizz arrive in Light City, a self-contained biodome whose citizens happily toil for – and all but worship – the State. State-approved broadcasts outline the approved behavior of a citizen of Light City, but certain ideas are considered thought-crime – and questions are illegal. Naturally, the three travelers are bursting with questions about where they’ve arrived, and they soon learn first-hand of the State’s other means of controlling its populace: those who break the rules are forcibly brainwashed and “revised,” and their original memories are recorded and become part of the broadcasts as a warning to others. The “revised” citizens are implanted with new, productive, docile personalities – and yet problems keep cropping up with the beings who think they were once a trio of time-travelers.

Order this CDwritten by Jim Mortimore
directed by Gary Russell
music by Jim Mortimore

Cast: Paul McGann, India Fisher, Conrad Westmaas, Geoff Serle, Alison Sterling, Sean Carlsen, Wink Taylor, Jane Hills, Ben Summers

Timeline: after Creed Of The Kromon and before The Twilight Kingdom

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

The Twilight Kingdom

Doctor Who: The Twilight KingdomThe Doctor, Charley and C’rizz continue their search for the TARDIS into another “zone,” where they find themselves on a jungle world where a band of freedom fighters is taking refuge from their pursuers. Led by, and fanatically devoted to, the mysterious Major Koth, the guerillas have strange changes in attitude on very little notice. When the Doctor is captured and taken into a nearby cave where the fighters have set up camp, he becomes aware of a powerful telepathic presence, and he suspects that it is influencing everyone else around him – a suspicion confirmed when Charley betrays him during their attempt to escape, and when C’rizz takes up arms to help the freedom fighters. But is Koth the mind manipulating his army, or is he just the first victim?

Order this CDwritten by Will Shindler
directed by Gary Russell
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Michael Keating (Major Koth), Alan Rothwell (Janto), Ann Carus-Wilson (Vayla), Dale Ibbetson (Quillian), Jeremy James (Bryn), Vivien Parry (Tysus), Alison Sterling (Koth’s Wife), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka)

Timeline: after The Natural History Of Fear and before Faith Stealer

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

Faith Stealer

Doctor Who: Faith StealerStill wandering through the Divergent Universe without the safety of the TARDIS, the Doctor, Charley and C’rizz suspiciously follow the Kro’ka to a place called the Multihaven. A melting pot of multiple religious beliefs, the Multihaven tolerates all of them equally, and dozens of churches have been established there. And any safe haven would be a blessing for C’rizz, plagued by memories of fulfilling his mate’s request for a mercy killing in the Kromon biosphere; the memories have taken on a new intensity of late, at times rendering him almost helpless. The Doctor and Charley leave C’rizz in the care of a peaceful sect of monks while they set out to explore the Multihaven, but while they’re gone, C’rizz’s caretakers themselves wind up on the wrong end of a hostile merger with another religion. The 23rd Church of Lucidianism is gaining new recruits at a rapid rate, even converting long-standing members of other established religions in the Multihaven. The Lucidians’ leader, Lan Carder, has more than just charisma on his side – and the Doctor suspects that the object of the Lucidians’ worship may be an alien force with a sinister agenda.

Order this CDwritten by Graham Duff
directed by Gary Russell
music by Russell Stone

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka), Christian Rodska (Laan Carder), Tessa Shaw (The Bordinan), Jenny Coverack (Miraculite), Ifan Huw Dafydd (Bishop Parrash), Helen Kirkpatrick (Jebdal), Neil Bett (Director Garfolt), Chris Walter-Evans (The Bordinan’s Assistant), John Dorney (Bakoan), Jane Hills (L’Da)

Timeline: between The Twilight Kingdom and The Last

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

The Last

Doctor Who: The LastOn the planet Bortresoye, a global nuclear war has laid waste to the surface and the planet’s entire population is wiped out. The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz arrive here, driven thorugh the interzone by the Kro’Ka, who delays the Time Lord briefly to haunt him with memories of fallen companions. They seek shelter in a bombed-out building, but it collapses underneath and on top of them, leaving Charley paralyzed from the neck down and the Doctor buried under the rubble. C’rizz goes to get help, but can find only a strangely circumspect being who calls himself Requiem. The Doctor and Charley are found by a survey team and brought to a well-protected underground bunker where the planet’s only survivors are barely managing to stay alive – and earthquake damage to their bunker is slowly whittling down even that population. The ruler of one of Bortresoye’s warring nations, the Lady Excelsior, terrifies her two surviving cabinet ministers with her ability to remain blissfully deluded about the outcome of the war, and her insistence on consorting with a mysterious man named Landscar.

Order this CDwritten by Gary Hopkins
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka), Carolyn Jones (Excelsior), Ian Brooker (Minister Voss), Robert Hines (Minister Tralfinial), Richard Derrington (Landscar), Tom Eastwood (Requiem), Jane Hills (Nurse), John Dorney (Make-Up Assistant)

Notes: Kro’Ka tortures the Doctor with visions of two of his fallen comrades. Katarina, a slave girl who joined the first Doctor in the 1965 TV story The Myth Makers, died trying to save the Doctor and Steven in her second story, The Daleks’ Masterplan. Adric was the young mathematical genius who stowed away on the TARDIS when the fourth Doctor, Romana and K-9 visited his home planet of Alzarius in Full Circle, and, after seeing the Doctor through his regeneration, died in an attempt to avert a Cybermen strike on Earth in Earthshock. They are two of the only three companions to have died in the original television series (the third, Sara Kingdom, joined and left the series within the 12 episodes of The Daleks’ Masterplan). Roz Forrester, a companion from the New Adventures novels, also met an untimely end in the book “So Vile A Sin”, but was not mentioned here.

Timeline: between Faith Stealer and Caerdroia

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

Caerdroia

Doctor Who: CaerdroiaThe Doctor is asleep in the interzone between worlds, and the Kro’Ka appears to torment him – only to find that it must put up with Charley and C’rizz, who quickly become aware that the Kro’Ka seems to be powerless while the Time Lord is unconscious. Once awakened, the Doctor is subjected to a kind of mind-probing technique by the Kro’Ka, but he quickly gains the upper hand on the interzone guardian, forcing it to tell him, at least in general terms, where the TARDIS is located. The Doctor follows the trail to a place called Caerdroia, a surreal world where verdant hills populated by seemingly normal cows and rabbits lead to a circular maze. But that’s not the most surreal thing about Caerdroia – topping that list is the fact that the Doctor has emerged from the interzone in what seems like three aspects of his character: one rational, one inquisitive and easily distracted, and one dark and quick to anger. Charley and C’rizz can only tag along with the three Doctors as they look for a way out of the maze – and a way to find out who’s holding the Kro’Ka’s leash.

Order this CDwritten by Lloyd Rose
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka), Don Warrington (Rassilon)

Doctor Who: Caerdroia - Tenth Planet alternate cover artNotes: Caerdroia is a Welsh word for a labyrinth. This audio adventure received an early release – with alternate cover art (seen here) – at a Doctor Who convention in November 2004; the limited edition alternate cover version was also sold by the internet vendor Tenth Planet.

Timeline: between The Last and The Next Life

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

The Next Life

Doctor Who: The Next LifeA planet appears in the path of the TARDIS, moving so fast that a collision is unavoidable. Charley and C’rizz each awaken in a virtual reality of their past lives, but they each quickly figure out that the Kro’Ka is behind the illusions and are freed. When they awaken, they find not only the Kro’Ka, but Rassilon as well, who claims that he has nursed them back to health after the destruction of the TARDIS. But he shows them that the Doctor has survived as well, and he appears to have found company – a woman who has found him wandering through the jungle of the planet’s sole land mass. Charley and C’rizz both demand to be set free, but before he releases them Rassilon tries to put doubts in their minds about the Doctor – and each other. He’s at least partially successful, as the two TARDIS travelers go their own way in the jungle.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has been captured by a feisty woman who calls herself Perfection, the wife of wealthy, self-proclaimed missionary Daqar Keep. Keep is an egomaniac on a hunt for some lost relic in the same jungle, and he barely tolerates – and is barely tolerated by – one of C’rizz’s people, a leader of the Church of the Foundation known simply as Guidance. He also happens to be C’rizz’s father. The accidental death of one of Keep’s porters leads Keep to blame the Doctor, which entitles the rest of the locals in Keep’s employ to hunt the Doctor down. Perfection, who seems to tolerate her own husband even less than Guidance does, protests and finds herself added to the quarry of the hunt. The Doctor and Perfection soon find Charley, and together they find Charley in a bit of a bind. Soon the Doctor and all of his friends are reunited – but Keep, Guidance, the Kro’Ka and Rassilon soon follow. The end of the Divergents’ universe is drawing near, the TARDIS is the only way back to the universe as the Doctor and Charley know it, and not everyone will be aboard for its next trip. The beginning of the Divergents’ universe will follow, and none will survive it.

Order this CDwritten by Alan Barnes and Gary Russell
directed by Gary Russell
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Don Warrington (Rassilon), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka), Stephane Cornicard (Daqar Keep), Daphne Ashbrook (Perfection), Paul Darrow (Guidance), Jane Hills (L’Da), Anneke Wills (Lady Louisa Pollard), Stephen Mansfield (Simon Murchford), Jane Goddard (Mother of Jembere-Bud), Terry Molloy (Davros)

Timeline: after Caerdroia and before Terror Firma

Original Title: Rassilon

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

Terror Firma

Doctor Who: Terror FirmaGreeted by Davros and the Daleks after their escape from the Divergent universe, the Doctor, Charley and C’rizz are separated from each other. Davros is suffering from a split personality as he begins to lose himself in the identity of the Emperor Dalek. Charley and C’rizz flee the Daleks with members of a local resistance cell, but they too are separated from each other; Charley joins up with a woman who talks frequently about how her daughter was killed by the Daleks, while C’rizz ends up on the run from the Daleks with a young woman who could very well be that daughter. But the Doctor discovers that she could also be a former TARDIS traveler – even though he has no memory of her. And worse yet, Charley finds out that this planet, the new Dalek homeworld, is also known as Earth – and that its resistance movement is run by the Daleks themselves.

Order this CD written by Joseph Lidster
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Terry Molloy (Davros), Julia Deakin (Harriet Griffin), Lee Ingleby (Samson Griffin), Lizzie Hopley (Gemma Griffin), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voices)

Timeline: after The Next Life and before Scaredy Cat

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

Scaredy Cat

Doctor Who: Scaredy CatWhen C’rizz expresses a desire to see an unspoiled planet in its primacy, the Doctor brings the TARDIS to the twin worlds of Caludaar and Endarra. After nearly destroying themselves in a war, the people of Caludaar pledged to leave Endarra untouched – but the TARDIS detects a distinct energy reading from Endarra. The Doctor discovers that a small party from Caludaar has broken the promise, and worse yet, they’re experimenting on the native life forms of Endarra. The Doctor and his friends try to set things right, but quickly find that those performing the experiments will do anything to continue them. What the Doctor hasn’t taken into account is that Endarra itself may step in and correct the balance of good and evil.

Order this CD written by Will Shindler
directed by Nigel Fairs
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley Pollard), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Michael Chance (Flood), Arthur Bostrom (Arken), Spencer McLaren (Bronik), Rosalind Blessed (Niah), Ellis Pike (Eldrin), Linda Bartram (Galayana)

Timeline: after Terror Firma and before Other Lives

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

Other Lives

Doctor Who: Other LivesThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, C’rizz and Charley to Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851, but when the blue box in the Crystal Palace begins to attract too much attention, C’rizz and Charley leave it unattended so they can find the Doctor and make their escape again. What they don’t count on is the pair of French diplomats who stumble into the time machine and accidentally activate it, leaving the time travelers stranded. The Doctor finds a woman latching onto him in the mistaken belief that he is her missing explorer husband, while C’rizz falls afoul of the owner of a freakshow. Charley tries to seek the help of the Duke of Wellington, only to find that he needs her help to impersonate one of the missing French diplomats…and possible avert a war in the process! And while the time travelers each assume these new and unlikely roles, they wonder if the TARDIS will make its way back to Hyde Park in their lifetimes…

Order this CD written by Gary Hopkins
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley Pollard), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Ron Moody (The Duke of Wellington), Michael Hobbs (Mr. Fazackerly), Mike Holloway (Jacob Crackles), Peter Howe (Maxi), Francesca Hunt (Georgina Marlow), Maitland Chandler (Rufus Dimplesqueeze)

Timeline: after Scaredy Cat and before Time Works

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Time Works

Doctor Who: Time WorksThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, Charley and C’rizz to a world where time is frozen – and faces are frozen in fear of some unknown force. The Doctor suddenly orders his friends back to the TARDIS, but when they reach it, not only are they unable to open it, but the Doctor is nowhere to be found. Time resumes its normal course around the Time Lord, and he finds himself an hour in the past, in a society where everyone lives in fear of the Clockwork Men, who strike if anyone is idle when they should be working toward the goal of Completion. As he has no duties other than to ask questions, the Doctor soon becomes such a target, and has an unpleasant audience with the local monarch. In the clock tower at the center of this kingdom, Charley and C’rizz find time is still frozen around them – including the scene of Doctor’s own execution by beheading, mere minutes into his future…

Order this CD written by Steve Lyons
directed by Edward Salt
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Ronald Pickup (King Kestorian), racey Childs (The Figurehead), Beth Vyse (Vannet), Adrian Schiller (Prince Zanith), Philip Edgerley (Collis), Merryn Owen (Revnon)

Timeline: after Other Lives and before Something Inside

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Something Inside

Doctor Who: Something InsideThe Doctor, Charley and C’rizz find themselves trapped in a maze-like prison whose occupants call it the Cube. The Doctor and the TARDIS are snatched away, leaving Charley and C’rizz to hide in the darkness with a trio of desperate prisoners. Once recruited to by psychically augmented to help their world win a war, the “prisoners” have now been banished to a Cube, as their recruiters can’t find a way to deactivate or control their psychic powers. Something called the brain worm stalks the Cube, killing its victims after burning out their minds. The prisoners insist that the Doctor vanished because he was the brain worm’s last victim. Charley refuses to believe it – and then C’rizz disappears, leaving her at the mercy of her fellow prisoners. The Doctor, however, isn’t in the clutches of the brain worm. He’s held prisoner, tortured and interrogated to Rawden, the man who operates the Cube and keeps the prisoners captive. And Rawden is just as worried about the brain worm as his prisoners are…

Order this CD written by Trevor Baxendale
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Joseph Fox

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Steven Elder (Rawden), Ian Brooker (Mr. Twyst), Liz Crowther (Tessa), John Killoran (Gordon Latch), Louise Collins (Jane)

Timeline: after Time Works and before Memory Lane

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Memory Lane

Doctor Who: Memory LaneThe TARDIS lands in the middle of a suburban living room, but the woman whose home has just been invaded by a time machine seems unperturbed by the sudden appearance of a Police Box, or the three people who walk out of it. The Doctor tries to take things in his stride, until he notices that the television snooker tournament is being interrupted repeatedly by the same series of scenes taking place aboard a spaceship with two astronauts. Even more incongruous is the fact that the woman who lives in this house has a grandson who she insists is 10 years old, but her “grandson” is quite clearly one of the two astronauts seen on TV. C’rizz runs afoul of a woman who would appear to be the other surviving astronaut, and the Doctor is alarmed to find that the street this house is on has no beginning and no end – and worse yet, the TARDIS is being stolen on the back of the ice cream truck. But how can the ice cream truck escape from this street if no one else can, and why is one of the astronauts acting like a child, building Lego models of his abandoned spacecraft?

Order this CD written by Eddie Robson
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley Pollard), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Nina Baden-Sempter (Mrs Braudy), Sara Carver (Kim Kronotska), Finlay Glen (Mawvik), Neil Reidman (Tom Braudy), Charlie Ross (Lest), Neville Watchurst (Argot), Anneke Wills (Lady Louisa Pollard)

Notes: The Doctor’s sudden urge for a Sky Ray Ice Lolly (and the accompanying trading cards) is an in-joke for long-term Doctor Who fans; that brand of frozen confectionery was famous for its Doctor Who promotion in the 1960s and ’70s, which offered free Doctor Who trading cards. An example of a TV advertisement for this promotion can be found on the video of the 1993 documentary More Than 30 Years In The TARDIS.

Timeline: after Something Inside and before Absolution

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Blood Of The Daleks, Part 1

Doctor Who: Blood Of The Daleks Part 1The Doctor finds himself unexpectedly saddled with a new companion, the aacerbic Lucie Miller, who’s not too happy to be with the Doctor, either. Unable to return her to her own time, the two mismatched companions find themselves on the planet Red Rocket Rising, where a natural catastrophe has pretty much destroyed the society. But hope seems to arrive in the form of friendly aliens called the Daleks, who ally themselves with Acting President Klint. The Doctor tries to stop the Daleks, but when they realize he is on Red Rocket Rising, they set a price for their cooperation: the Doctor.

Order this CDwritten by Steve Lyons
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Anita Dobson (Eileen Klint), Hayley Atwell (Asha), Kenneth Cranham (Tom Cardwell), Nicholas Briggs (Daleks)

Notes: Producer/Director Nicholas Briggs has also voiced the Daleks in previous Big Finish productions, as well as the current BBC series.

Timeline: after The Girl Who Never Was and before Blood Of The Daleks Part 2

LogBook entry & review by Philip R. Frey

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Blood Of The Daleks, Part 2

Doctor Who: Blood Of The Daleks Part 2The Daleks begin to show their true colors while the mad scientist Martez (in the body of his assistant Asha) has revealed his own version of the Daleks, built from salvaged technology. The Doctor realizes that it is these “new” Daleks that are the reason the “true” Daleks have come to Red Rocket Rising. As an all-out war breaks out between the two factions, the Doctor finds himself with little choice but to choose sides in the battle, in the hopes that the lesser of the two evils wins out in the end.

Order this CDwritten by Steve Lyons
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Anita Dobson (Eileen Klint), Hayley Atwell (Asha), Kenneth Cranham (Tom Cardwell), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Nicholas Briggs (Daleks)

Timeline: after Blood Of The Daleks Part 1 and before The Horror Of Glam Rock

LogBook entry & review by Philip R. Frey

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Horror Of Glam Rock

Doctor Who: The Horror Of Glam RockThe Doctor tries to get Lucie back to her own time, but lands in 1974 in the middle of the Glam Rock fad. On a wintery night, they find themselves holed up in a diner with a variety of music-business types, including a manager and his up-and-coming young brother/sister act, Trisha and Tommy Tomorrow. But there’s also a never-was ex-singer with an odd connection to Lucie. And who are “The Only Ones”? And what do they want from Tommy Tomorrow?

Order this CDwritten by Paul Magrs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Tim Sutton

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Bernard Cribbins (Arnold Korns), Una Stubbs (Flo), Stephen Gately (Tommy Tomorrow), Clare Buckfield (Trisha Tomorrow), Lindsay Hardwick (Pat), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter)

Notes: Bernard Cribbins previously portrayed Tom Campbell, the storyline replacement for Ian Chesterton, in the second Doctor Who theatrical film, Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD. The title of this story is a play on The Horror Of Fang Rock, a popular Fourth Doctor story.

Timeline: after Blood Of The Daleks Part 2 and before Immortal Beloved

LogBook entry & review by Philip R. Frey