The Night, the Snow and the Wolf

I am approaching the end of my 13th week in lockdown. This is the longest period I've spent out of my workplace in seventeen years. Of course, I've been setting and marking assignments and uploading videos on Teams and I was in the building on Tuesday to clear my desk for the new "pods" and teachers "parachuting in" from August 11th. But it's an unprecedented time. The days strobe past, as they do for Rod Taylor in The Time Machine.



I saw the sad news yesterday of the passing of Denny O'Neil, the comics writer who revolutionised Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Green Lantern in the early Seventies. While I'm contemplating how I might write about the impact of O'Neil on me, as a reader, here are some brief reviews of the audio dramas to which I listened in May. As usual, they are ranked out of five, adopting the Talmar currency of Pluto from Dr. Who and the Sun Makers (1978)



Tales from New Earth: This is a 2018 quadrology set in the exotic world created by Russell T. Davies and picking the adventures of Senator Hame ( Anna Hope) after Gridlock. Hame acquires her own companion, Devon Pryce (Kieran Hodgson- who also provides an astounding impression of Tennant's Tenth Doctor: up there with Purves and Frazer Hines' renditions of their Doctors). The pair are pitted against the sinister Lumen, a pharonic religious order with designs of conquest, from New New York to New Cairo. I was reminded of Kirby's Kamandi at times, with the bizarre, satirical environments.
I really enjoyed this boxset and recommended if you enjoyed Emily Cook's Dr. Who Lockdown tweet-alongs. I would particularly like to see David Bradley's First Doctor materialise among the Termitons and Solar Bears. (5/5 Talmars).

Gallifrey Time War 1 is a 2018 companion series to the War Doctor and Eighth Doctor: Time War ranges. It utilises characters from BF's long-running Gallifrey series, one with which I'm not hugely familiar. It has some ties also to Tennant's tv finale, The End of Time.
While Romana attempts to regain the presidency, war hero Valerian becomes the vessel for a resurrected Rassilon. Meanwhile, Romana's agents ( Ace, Leela, the War Master and the Doctor's brother, Braxiatel) are dispatched on missions of infiltration and interrogation. I didn't dislike it but the machinations and jostling for political power were less engaging than the missions of the agents. Derek Jacobi's first audio performance of the Master is included her, preceding Only The Good. (3/5 Talmars)


Dracula's Guests is a 2020 prequel to the excellent Big Finish adaptation of Dracula, which I first heard four or five years ago, when I lived along the street at No. 13, aptly enough. It's all about physical and psychological corruption and stories within stories and is both atmospheric and horrific ( the nailing of the Turkish ambassador's turban to his head is appalling on audio). Mark Gatiss is magisterial and there is a nod to Hammer films- a pathologist named Klove. The third part of the trilogy, Dracula's War, is eagerly anticipated in the autumn. (5/5 Talmars)

Like Gallifrey, Big Finish's extensive Torchwood range is one I have little exposure: only 2008's Lost Souls, which was broadcast to commemorate the switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider and  The House of the Dead,  a Radio 4 play in July 2011 ( I walked to Lossiemouth, listening to it near Ramsay MacDonald's birthplace). 
 The Victorian Age features Captain Jack and the eponymous Empress of India, hunting an alien that drains and ages humans. Rowena Cooper plays a sprightly and likeable Victoria but it's a slight piece. (2/5 Talmars)


I was much more enthusiastic about 2018's Torchwood One: Machines. This is  both a prequel to Dr. Who's Army of Ghosts and a sequel to a favourite 1960s Dr Who serial, The War Machines. It stars Tracy-Ann Oberman and Gareth David-Lloyd, who also wrote the middle episode of the three.

Daniel Anthony ( Clyde in The Sarah Jane Adventures) plays the hacker who reactivates the megalomaniac computer WOTAN- still barely intelligible in whispered reverb. We learn how Ianto Jones was recruited and Niky Wardley plays a tragic temp, with a story to rival Donna Noble. It's a damning indictment of London life and admin sector jobs in the mid 2000s. I really like Gareth's Welsh accent and he draws upon his own service industry experience in his script, which is poignant and pacy. A really enjoyable deep dive into London 1966. (5/5 Talmars)

Now that Big Finish's warehouse is reopening with the easing of lockdown measures in England, I'll be posting about new releases for the Third Doctor and Susan Foreman, later in the summer. 
In other upcoming posts: Tigra the Were-Woman, Star Trek and the Sabre graphic novel.

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