1. Doctor Who and the Iron Legion adapted by Alan Barnes
1979 AD! Led by the terrible General Ironicus, the mighty Iron Legion – robot veterans of the Eternal War – have come, seen and conquered the English village of Stockbridge!
Caught up in the mayhem, the Doctor pursues the Legion back through the great Dimension Duct to their place of origin – an alternative Earth where Rome never fell…
But can he survive the horrors of the gladiatorial Hyp-Arena long enough to uncover the terrifying secret at the heart of the Galactic Roman Empire?
2. Doctor Who and the Star Beast adapted by Alan Barnes
1980 AD! In Yorkshire, the authorities have dismissed reports that an Unidentified Flying Object was seen plummeting towards the ground… moments before the explosion that destroyed the Blackcastle Steel Mills. After all, Blackcastle is the last place on Earth aliens would ever want to visit…
Local teenagers Sharon and Fudge know better. ’Cos they’ve found an actual space alien hiding in the allotments. He’s their alien. Their secret. And his name is… The Meep.
He’s not the only alien in Blackcastle, though. His pursuers, the terrible Wrarth Warriors, are on his trail, along with their unwitting accomplice: The Doctor!
COMIC STRIP ADAPTATIONS: DOCTOR WHO AND THE IRON LEGION
For a time, Big Finish featured a Doctor Who Novel Adaptations line, audio adaptations of classic Doctor Who novels from the Virgin era. Despite the consistently high quality of this range, it apparently didn’t sell, based as it was on twenty-year-old spinoff novels with a relatively low readership. But now we have a new range of adaptations: forty-year-old Doctor Who Magazine comic strips! I’m not sure what’ll make this range successful, but let’s jump in with the first story, “Doctor Who and the Iron Legion,” originally by Pat Mills and John Wagner and adapted to audio by Alan Barnes.
Adapting a comic strip is a radically different task than adapting a novel. A novel contains a massive amount of prose, both description and dialogue, and must be reduced significantly to fit in a two-hour running time. A comic strip, on the other hand, contains a ton of visual information over a relatively short amount of space – in this case, 32 pages – and thus must be expanded and adapted to the dialogue-heavy audio format. Based on this, you would think Alan Barnes would be the perfect writer for the job: he wrote several acclaimed DWM comics and has also written and edited Doctor Who audios for 20 years. The problem is that Barnes, even after all this time, still thinks like a comic book writer and still struggles to write convincing audio dialogue. The same old issue rears its head in this story: characters describing everything they’re seeing in excruciating detail. No matter what’s happening, a character will be along to describe in great detail exactly what they see, even if they’re talking to someone who can see the same things. Barnes thinks in terms of impressive visuals but has never figured out how to put them across in an audio script – and it still ruins my enjoyment, every single time.
Which is a shame, because otherwise this story is a ridiculously good time. It’s full-on, unhinged season 17 Tom Baker, bellowing and laughing his way through the story with a massive grin on his face – and Barnes pairs it well with over-the-top comic book worldbuilding. I also like the structure of the story, the scale of which grows with each passing episode. Nothing about it feels realistic at all, which works quite well: the over-the-top dialogue and kitschy atmosphere are really quite entertaining, like watching a gloriously unashamed B-movie. Barnes adds two characters – the bickering Stockbridge couple Doug (Steve Hansell) and Viv (Esther Hill) – who give the plot an extra anchor and fit well with the tone of the piece. Much credit should also go to the production – Alistair Lock’s sound design and music are both excellent, matching both the epic nature and the humor of the script. Overall, “The Iron Legion” is a solid, fun adaptation let down by its continued reliance on awkward descriptive dialogue. It’s not the best story I’ve heard but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.
7/10
COMIC STRIP ADAPTATIONS: DOCTOR WHO AND THE STAR BEAST
The second and final adaptation in the set is of “Doctor Who and the Star Beast,” also originally by Pat Mills and John Wagner and also adapted by Alan Barnes. This story is famous for two reasons: introducing Sharon, the first black Doctor Who companion, and the memorable villain Beep the Meep. Beep has appeared on audio before, way back in the Doctor Who Magazine special release “The Ratings War,” but this is the first audio dramatization of his first comics appearance.
The word that keeps coming to mind to describe this story is “juvenile.” There’s no complexity whatsoever to the plot: Beep’s ship crashes in Yorkshire, he evades capture by his pursuers by hiding with a local family, and he eventually returns to his ship, tries to escape, and fails, thanks to the Doctor and two local kids. This is all the plot you need for a 30-page comic story, where so much is described through the visuals, but a two-hour audio drama requires some sort of subplot so it doesn’t feel stagnant. Unfortunately, Barnes’ adaptation decisions are largely cosmetic and the story really drags. Fortunately, Barnes’ habit of having his characters describe every last thing in front of their eyes is somewhat kept in check during the story, but it’s not in service of anything greater.
The entire appeal of Beep the Meep is that he’s a fuzzy, adorable little alien creature who’s actually a murderous, megalomaniacal killer out to slaughter whole planets and species. He plays up his cuteness to distract those around him from his evil plots. He also has a fun little song that he sings that actually contains homicidal intent. “Beep’s Song” was first put to audio in “The Ratings War” and we have callbacks to it here that amply reward long-time listeners. But there’s nothing particularly interesting about Beep, especially once you get past the revelation that everyone knows is coming. Bethan Dixon Bate plays the Meep, and while the constant cries of “Meep! Meep!” are meant to be ingratiating I found them irritating.
Look, I know “The Star Beast” is incredibly nostalgic for Doctor Who fans who read it when it came out. And there’s stuff to like here: Sharon and Fudge are incredibly appealing characters, Beep is a villain you can’t help but notice, and the sound design is once again quite good. But it simply doesn’t appeal to me: it’s simplistic, it’s childish, and it deals almost entirely in juvenile themes. If the DWM comic had never been published, and “The Star Beast” was first heard as a random Big Finish monthly release, I very much doubt anyone would have noticed it. But if the comic resonates with you and you really want to hear what it sounds like on audio, you’ll probably love this to death. Sadly, I do not.
5/10