3.1 No Place by James Goss
It’s ‘Haunted Makeovers!’ The home improvement show with a spooky twist.
The Noble family are hoping to cast out a few spirits along with the old bathroom suite. Presenter Justin joins Donna, Wilf, Sylvia and the Doctor for the latest edition of his reality TV series.
Of course, Justin knows that any supernatural phenomena can be faked. Ghosts can’t possibly be real. Can they..?
3.2 One Mile Down by Jenny T Colgan
Donna and the Doctor take a holiday in the beautiful underwater city of Vallarasee.
Things have changed since the Doctor last swam through. Vallarasee is now enclosed in an airdome, with Judoon patrolling historic sites. Now, instead of tourists wearing breathing-helmets, native Fins are forced to adapt.
But leaks are trickling into the dome. The Judoon must be persuaded that disaster is imminent, or thousands will be trapped, as the waters rise…
3.3 The Creeping Death by Roy Gill
London, 1952, and a deadly smog envelops the capital.
But something even more dangerous – and alien – is hiding within the mists.
When the Doctor and Donna get lost in the fog, they find a motley group of Londoners trying to make their way home.
Very soon, the stakes are raised, as death creeps along fume-choked streets, and not everyone will make it out alive…
THE TENTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES: NO PLACE
We’re back with a third set of Tenth Doctor Adventures, this one bringing Catherine Tate back to travel with David Tennant, and bringing Jacqueline King and Bernard Cribbins along for the ride. And the entire Noble clan is there for “No Place,” by James Goss, one of the scariest Doctor Who stories ever released by Big Finish. The plot seems simple on the surface: “Haunted Makeovers” is a home improvement show that takes as clients the owners of haunted houses. The Doctor buys a haunted house, and he and the Nobles pretend to be the resident family for the cameras while finding out exactly what’s causing the haunting. Goss tells the story in the found footage style – all the various scenes are presented as the recorded camera audio. While this style isn’t as effective as in other places – see Goss’s own “Dead Air” for BBC Audio as a superlative example – it still works, and Howard Carter’s sound design turns it into something special. An oppressive soundscape coupled with terrifying effects leads to a frightening atmosphere, something we haven’t really heard since what, “Night Thoughts?” And framing the story through the experiences of Justin (Joel Fry), the skeptic leading the filming, is a great idea, as he’s slowly forced to accept the existence of what he would consider the supernatural. Tennant is in his element, of course, and really makes the final twist work, even if it would be more at home in a McCoy story. Donna is great as always, and it’s fun to have the Nobles around: Sylvia doesn’t get much to do, but Wilf is given some significant, weighty scenes. Overall, “No Place” is excellent: it’s not quite the best Tenth Doctor Adventure but if they’re all this good this will be a fantastic set.
9/10
THE TENTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES: ONE MILE DOWN
“One Mile Down,” by Jenny T. Colgan, is easily the most nostalgic Tenth Doctor Adventure of the first nine. Everything about it seems carefully constructed to evoke the feeling of a Series Four story – and it succeeds admirably in this, as it’s very hard to listen and not enjoy it if you enjoyed the era at all. The underwater city of Vallarasee has been preserved in a massive “airdome,” enabling tourists to visit without wearing dive suits. But the dome is springing leaks, and if it collapses, the thousands of visitors inside will die. The Doctor and Donna are there to save the day, of course, and they’re joined by the Judoon, acting as security for the underwater city. Let’s be frank: there really isn’t much here to capture the imagination. The plot is obvious – even the “twist” about who really sabotaged the globe is predictable from a mile off – and the characters are completely of the era. But the big advantage that “One Mile Down” has over, say, the Fourth Doctor Adventures, is that there aren’t already hundreds of existing Doctor Who stories featuring the Doctor and Donna to watch or hear or read. It still feels refreshing to hear these characters on a new adventure, even if it’s not breaking any new ground. And Colgan knows these characters like the back of her hand, teasing out all the important, appealing elements that made this cast so popular in the first place. Also, the Judoon are fantastic, their literal-mindedness providing a fascinating puzzle for the Doctor to solve. Overall, “One Mile Down” is a success. It doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know, save one or two facts about the Judoon, and it doesn’t push any boundaries, but it’s a fun, entertaining story that could easily slot into early Series 4. Do 100 more of these and I’ll change my tune, but for now this is a solid listen.
7/10
THE TENTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES: THE CREEPING DEATH
“The Creeping Death,” by Roy Gill, is the least interesting of the three stories in this Tenth Doctor Adventures set. It tries to set itself most directly in series 4 – there’s an explicit comparison to “The Fires of Pompeii,” someone tells Donna “there’s something on your back” – but the story itself doesn’t measure up to the quality of the era. It’s 1952 London, and the Great Smog has settled over the city. The smog will kill somewhere around 12,000 people, but the Doctor can’t intervene to stop it – it’s an established part of history, a fixed point in time. Fortunately, we soon learn that microscopic alien organisms are living in the smog, using it to kill even more people – so now the Doctor has something to fight! That part of the story goes about how you’d expect; where Gill tries to distinguish it is in the supporting cast. We have a gay romance between Richard (Kieran Bew) and Terry (Theo Stevenson), something that was illegal and dangerous at the time, but though the script pays lip service to the social and legal stigma, it doesn’t really dig into the issue. No, it’s not that sort of story, but it still felt odd to me. Also, while I know one of Donna’s character traits is obliviousness, I find it very hard to accept that a character born in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s would have absolutely no idea that homosexual behavior was once criminalized in the UK, especially one with a bossy, tactless parent. Otherwise, the characters are largely unmemorable, drawing deeply on cliché. The primary difference between this and “One Mile Down” is that Gill does not quite capture the feel of the Tennant era, doesn’t quite capture the spark of the dialogue. It’s a decent enough story, it’s never boring, but it’s not the kind of thing you’ll remember after listening.
6/10