Hogan Reviews

I was unsure how to cover these stories as one review for all 11 would be far too long and individually would eat up far too many days of the this already lengthy catch up marathon so I compromised in the middle (and therefore had to make a new template for them…) Basically these are Companion Chronicles, one hour audiobooks read by a companion with one extra actor performing a new guest role, with one for each Doctor up to 11 (a.k.a. all of them at the time it was written) but with a linking thread through all the stories of the Eleventh Doctor communicating with his past selves in various ways due to something happening in the final part. It was a fun idea and gave me an extra story to listen to each month leading up to the 50^th but ten years later and listening to them in closer proximity is quite a different experience… Let’s take a look! (at the first three…)

The First Doctor story, “Hunters of Earth”, is set before An Unearthly Child and sees Susan (Carole Ann Ford) living a normal school life while The Doctor is becoming increasingly nervous about settling in one area and time. Susan is having a hard time fitting in but has made friends, specifically Cedric (Tam Williams), who invites her out with other friends to a local café but while they’re there the radio cuts in with static and one of her friends turns extremely violent towards her. The Doctor arrives and he and Susan hear a radio call out to them giving them a hint as to what’s going on (from the Eleventh Doctor) but it doesn’t really help as The Doctor is attacked by some proper 60s greasers while Susan is targeted by an army of students in a construction company, even Cedric couldn’t resist this time. While all this is going on Coal Hill’s newest teacher Colonel Rook has been stalking the two Time Lords, and is clearly hiding something himself…

The Second Doctor story is “Shadow of Death”, a classic base under siege but the enemy sieging are shadow creatures (but not Vashta Nerada, despite sharing a few similarities) The Doctor, Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe arrive at a scientific research base on a planet orbiting a pulsar, which is giving out time-altering waves of gravity. They meet the surviving researchers, including Dr Sophie Topolovic (Evie Downay, just thought I’d get the only other voice in this recap!) and play corridor run a few times as well as a fun scene where they see other people in space suits frozen in place on the surface and find that due to the pulsar’s effects time passes differently there and to the people walking it seems normal but to the people inside they seem frozen, barely moving for months at a time. It’s a fun concept. The shadows kill on touch and eventually Jamie, Zoe and Sophie have to run across the surface of the planet while The Doctor distracts the shadows, which goes well but he suddenly gets a physic message from his Eleventh self saying that he has to go back in and make sure the research is safe for him to use in the future. Despite the obvious danger The Doctor sees no other choice while his friends struggle to make it away from the encroaching shadows…

I do like a good matching set of covers, and the little countdown on the right-hand side just made it more exciting at the time!

“Vengeance of the Stones” is the Third Doctor story and it’s actually quite important as it shows how Mike Yates came to join UNIT. When two RAF jets go missing over the Scottish highlands The Doctor and The Brigadier arrive due to the mysterious circumstances in which they vanished and there they meet lieutenant Yates (Richard Franklin) who is the local soldier who is assigned to help UNIT in the area. A surviving pilot wanders up to a nearby stone circle and gets zapped to death by mysterious energy so The Doctor ends up going up in a plane and following their flight path (which the RAF are okay with, somehow) and sure enough his plane is hit by mysterious energy pouring out of all the stone circles in the area. The Doctor survives but during the confusion Yates and a team had been near one of the stones and vanished. He was captured by Garlin Munn (Trevor Littledale) and his fellow Armidians, an alien race have been left sleeping on Earth for thousands of years that can manipulate stone to gather the energy of planets via a special artefact known as Tharon Stone. They see humans as aggressors against them as they lost several of their number to primitive humans way back when and still want “revenge”, something the soon-arriving Doctor criticises. Things soon break down, shots are fired (on both sides) and the Armidians escape, promising to use the power of the Tharon Stone to wipe out humanity…

All three stories are perfectly fine, but “Hunters” delves somewhat heavy-handedly into racism and nationalism and it doesn’t quite work, and “Shadow” is quite plain which isn’t good when it’s a narrated audiobook as its easier for your attention to drift. “Stones” I just enjoyed, it’s definitely the better of the three.

The Continuity:

Funny how “Shadow of Death” is among the most generic titles I’ve ever heard yet given in this story it’s literally a shadow of death makes it quite a fun title… if not still extremely generic.

Obviously ignoring the connections to the other Destiny of the Doctor stories…

“Hunters of Earth” there isn’t much beyond being set a month or so before the very first Doctor Who story “An Unearthly Child”, though The Doctor does visit a Magpie Electrics shop, which first appeared in the Tenth Doctor TV story “The Idiot’s Lantern”.

“Shadow of Death” doesn’t really have anything either, beyond connections to the Vashta Nerada, who have appeared many times now but first appeared in Tenth Doctor TV double bill “Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead”. I will say the recently released Second Doctor audio story “The Shroud” also features a deadly shadow and misunderstood aliens, oddly enough.

“Vengeance of the Stones” is much the same in that it doesn’t really connect to anything beyond obviously being set before Yates is an established UNIT member in “Terror of the Autons”, though it has to be said that the books had already created a story of Yates becoming Captain from within UNIT rather than transferring across, but ah well. It was the Time War etc.

Overall Thoughts:

Whether you enjoy these three stories, and indeed “Destiny of the Doctor” as a whole, will really come down to whether you like short one-hour audiobooks because I don’t mind the format but I do find if a story isn’t great or the narrator isn’t on-par its far easier for an average story to feel more boring in this format. This was part of the issue with “Hunters of Earth” and “Shadow of Death” as they were fine but I struggled to stay interested, though one was overly ambitious with the theming while the other was under ambitious, so that didn’t help either. “Vengeance of the Stones” was good though!

“Hunters of Earth” and “Shadow of Death”:

“Vengeance of the Stones”:

“Hunters of Earth” comes to a close as The Doctor, Susan and Cedric arrive at Colonel Rook’s warehouse to find out he works for a government agency that’s looking into alien activity and have sussed The Doctor and Susan out, and to make matters worse Cedric is Rook’s son and had only befriended her as part of the mission (though in classic fashion legitimately befriended her in the process) As a massive group of people amass outside demanding the “aliens” be destroyed The Doctor and Susan put some info together with the Eleventh Doctor’s hint and realise an old piece of alien tech fell in the nearby construction yard and is giving out a signal that’s turning everyone aggressive. The Doctor makes a machine that cancels out the signal just before Susan and Cedric are attacked, and soon the duo leave Rook and Cedric behind, them both agreeing not to let their secret out (though Rook is disappointed The Doctor won’t join his cause…) Oh and Susan gets a vision of the future that The Doctor is heading towards a destiny he can’t escape from, which was super-cheesy and on-the-nose, but there you go.

“Shadow of Death” is pretty simple actually as just as it looks like the shadows will get Jamie, Zoe and Sophie on the surface they stop and The Doctor arrives, telling everyone that the native shadow creatures were disturbed by the human equipment being too loud and that was all that they were trying to convey, the deaths were accidental. The Doctor reduced the sounds their equipment makes and so they’re all sorted going forward. Jamie and Zoe are shocked to find out that to them running on the surface it was a few minutes but to The Doctor it was a few years, but The Doctor waves it off due to the whole Time Lord lifespan thing.

Funny how “Vengeance of the Stones” isn’t a generic title at all yet sounds really naff. Okay, it’s not that funny.

“Vengeance of the Stones” sees plans being drawn up to assault the stone circles and destroy the Tharon Stone but The Doctor receives a phone call from his future self instructing him to make sure the Tharon Stone is kept intact and is handed over to a specific scientist. UNIT splits into three groups to each tackle a specific stone circle and two of the Armidians fall but Garlin, complete with Tharon Stone, is still willing to take down as many humans as he can but thanks to The Doctor and Yates using wire fencing to ground the planetary energy back into the Earth it fails and Garlin himself is killed, the stone remaining intact. Due to his actions The Brigadier recommends Yates joins UNIT and that he’d get a promotion to Captain to boot should he accept, which he promptly does.