Kicking off the latest Sixth Doctor audio boxset is “The Story Demon”, which promises a Dalek telling kids stories, which is a weird concept but also a fun idea. A lot of the rest of the story feels appropriately straight for a popular children’s book, with a few more grizzly exceptions, overall leading to a pleasant hour’s listen. Let’s take a look…
The Doctor (Colin Baker) and Constance (Miranda Raison) arrive on an unnamed forest planet (or a forest on an unnamed planet, I guess) and soon encounter a deer-like creature oddly with the very Earth-exclusive WREN sign on its fir. They soon hear a roar and a girl called Birch (Carly Day) arrives and leads them all into a settlement made entirely out of crashed spaceships where Birch’s father (or father figure at least) Hoekstra (Cameron Johnson) chastises her for being out in the woods when the Birnamen are about. We find out that every time one of these creatures attacks the walls it doesn’t get in and yet someone within the walls mysteriously dies. To make matters more confusing (and worrying) The Doctor soon finds out that one of the crashed ships was a Dalek ship and the children all gather around an admittedly empty Dalek casing to hear Earth children’s stories from the “Story Demon”. One of these children was Wyatt (Dominic Vulliamy) and he is particularly upset when The Doctor decrees it too dangerous, though his big sister (or big sister figure at least…) Birch manages to calm him down.
As the mystery deepens and the Birnamen begin to attack uncharacteristically more frequently The Doctor decides to head back out into the forest with Birch to find the answers, though the answer may actually be within the settlement itself…
It’s a perfectly serviceable short story. The guest cast played their understandably basic characters well and there were a few twists that were fun. A good start to the set.
The Continuity:
The overall boxset cover, which at least has an actual title rather than just taking one of the story titles, that’s… something!
The only real continuity is obviously the presence of a Dalek, but I’m not about to write about every Dalek story, even every Sixth Doctor Dalek story would take ages at this point! I will mention though that Constance recognises the Daleks from “Order of the Daleks”, the fact this audio-only pairing has already had a Dalek story kind of proves my point…
Overall Thoughts:
“The Story Demon” is a good little story, with some fun twists and turns, which is a good way to overcome the short length. Not perfect, a lot of the characters are one-note for example, but a fun way to kick off the set.
The Doctor discovers that due to the weird set up on the planet every person who lived there also has a Birnaman spiritually attached to them, that includes himself and Constance (the deer-like creature with the WREN symbol was her Birnaman in an infant state as they’d only just arrived) and the reason they “attack” and then someone dies is because they were trying to get in to stop their spirit-person from being killed. As The Doctor finds this out inside the settlement we find the culprit: the Dalek mutant that had belonged in the “Story Demon” casing was alive and choking people to death for a bit of a laugh. He uses Wyatt’s love of the story demon (and the fact he hid inside it when he was scared) to essentially force him to gun down Hoekstra while in the Dalek shell, his pleading being “translated” into generic Dalek speak outwardly.
The Doctor and Birch arrive in time to save Constance and talk Wyatt out of the Dalek casing, leading to the Birnamen to invade the settlement and take out the Dalek. The Doctor and Constance leave as the humans and their respective Birnamen learn to work together, knowing that their own Birnamen will cease to exist as soon as they go…
Hogan Reviews 