Doctor Who: The Pirate Loop

by Simon Guerrier

read by Freema Agyeman

(London: BBC Radio, 2008)

MP3 Audiobook, 34.7 MB, 2.5 Hours, Fiction

The Doctor’s been everywhere and everywhen in the whole of the universe and seems to know all the answers.  But ask him what happened to the Starship Brilliant and he hasn’t the first idea.  Did it fall into a sun or black hole?  Was it shot down in the first moments of the galactic war?  And what’s this about a secret experimental drive?  The Doctor is skittish.  But if Martha is so keen to find out he’ll land the TARDIS on the Brilliant, a few days before it vanishes.  Then they can see for themselves.

So, when we ended the last Doctor Who audiobook, my kids immediately wanted to listen to another. My four-year-old daughter put in a request for something with Martha Jones, since Martha is her favorite companion of the Tenth Doctor. So, I dug through my digital archives and found this! The Pirate Loop not only starring Martha but read by Martha. How could I deny my daughter this opportunity?

The answer is … I couldn’t.

While my kids absolutely enjoyed this story, I have to say that it wasn’t exactly my favorite. While Agyeman’s performance/reading is spot on, I found that there were some flaws in the story that didn’t make The Pirate Loop as fun as it could be. Unfortunately, to discuss any of them would be to engage in some serious spoilerage so I’ll keep my tongue but just say that Guerrier employs a plot device that seems both lazy and overwrought, allowing him to do things with the characters that frankly, just aren’t all that fun … especially when you figure it out, which happens pretty early on.

That said though, there is a lot that is fun about this particular outing with the Doctor and Martha, chiefly the pirate characters as well as the Doctor. For the part of the pirates, for some one-off villains, they are surprisingly well-rounded characters that are a lot of fun. I mean, how can you not like six-foot tall anthropomorphic badgers in space suits with gold rings in their ears and Cockney accents?  Plus the image that Guerrier paints of these pirates is really quite vivid, and in a series where it is really easy to create some one-dimensional villains (i.e. the Slitheen, the Abzorbaloff, and the Autons to name just a few) it is nice to see some effort put into menacing the Doctor.

As for the Doctor himself, it never ceases to amaze me that the authors of these books are so able to capture Tennant’s persona as the Tenth Doctor and translate it so well into print, especially since Tennant’s Doctor is such an animated character, full of energy and little quirky movements and looks. So for that to come across in a printed format that is read by another actor is nothing short of amazing, and I am amazed every time an author pulls it off.

My reservations aside, though, my kids absolutely loved it, and I did enjoy myself, it’s hard not to be caught up in the Tenth Doctor’s manic energy, especially when you are experiencing the excitement of your children (who are HUGE fans of the series) listening to a new adventure in the Doctor Who universe.

The Shimmer

by David Morrell

(Philadelphia: Vanguard Press, 2009)

eBook, 352 Pages, 525 KB, Fiction

When police officer Dan Page’s wife disappears, her trail leads to Rostov, a remote Texas town where unexplained phenomena attract hundreds of spectators each night. Not merely curious, these onlookers are compelled to reach this tiny community and gaze at the mysterious Rostov Lights. But more than the faithful are drawn there. A gunman begins shooting at the lights, screaming “Go back to hell where you came from!” then turns his rifle on the innocent bystanders. As more and more people are drawn to the scene of the massacre, the stage is set for even greater bloodshed. To save his wife, Page must solve the mystery of the Rostov Lights. In the process, he uncovers a deadly government secret dating back to the First World War. The lights are more dangerous than anyone ever imagined, but even more deadly are those who try to exploit forces beyond their control.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect when I picked up this book and started reading, but it certainly wasn’t what I got.

I first came across this book when I heard an interview with author David Morrell about The Shimmer and hearing him talk about the Marfa Lights, which served as the inspiration for the story’s MacGuffin, I was intrigued. It sounded like something along the lines of an early episode of The X-Files (like Season One or Two, before they got into the whole alien invasion plot line and the series started going downhill). And that’s I got … for about the first third of the book. Then Morrell added in shadowy government operatives, national security threats, etc., etc. and Morrell lost me.

I really enjoyed the lead-up with the disappearance of Page’s wife, the mystery of the Rostov Lights, the history of the Lights, the mythology that Morrell creates around the Lights … it’s all very fascinating and Morrell spins a great tale. Then the military shows up and all the mystery and supernaturalistic elements go right out the window and The Shimmer goes from an episode of The X-Files to a novel by Tom Clancy and it just destroyed the spell that Morrell had been weaving.

That’s not to say that The Shimmer is a bad book, it’s not. It’s actually pretty enjoyable, it just switched gears on me so fast that I wasn’t sure what to do about it and it ended up slowing down what would have otherwise been a good ending by miring it in techno-speak and wrapping up the story arcs of characters that just weren’t that interesting to begin with and who I didn’t care about, taking valuable page time away from the Pages and Morrell’s mythology of the Lights, and in the end, that is what is most fascinating about this story, the Lights and what they may or may not be and the effect that they have on people, and unfortunately that all gets obscured by military jargon and military operations and the wonder and mythology is lost.

Doctor Who: The Day of the Troll

by Simon Messingham

read by David Tennant

(London: BBC Audio, 2010)

MP3 Audiobook, 63.3 MB, 2.2 Hours, Fiction

When the Doctor arrives on Earth in the far future, he is horrified to find the planet beset by famine and starvation.  England is a barren wasteland, and scientists are desperately seeding the ground to make the crops grow again.  But now it seems that something even worse is happening.  Karl Baring, the owner of the research facility The Grange, has been snatched away in the middle of the night.  His sister Katy was with him when he vanished, but is now in catatonic shock—so it is up to the Doctor, with the help of the scientists at The Grange, to investigate.  What is lurking under the old bridge, and why is it preying on people?  The Doctor must find out before it strikes again…

Since finishing my Master’s degree and not having an hour and a half bus ride Monday to Friday I haven’t had much need to fill time with an audiobook. In fact, I have been falling behind on my podcasts as well without that time. I know, I know … First World problems, right? Anyway, because I am now a stay-at-home dad I have had a lot of time in the car shuttling back and forth with the kids. I’ve “forced” them to listen to my podcasts but I wanted to also make the car rides a little more fun, rather than just us listening to local newscasts or political gabfests and whatnot. Then I remembered that I have a bunch of Doctor Who audio books stashed away, so I dug those out, uploaded one to my iPod and WHAM! Instant hit.

Luckily the kids are as big Whovians as my wife and I are, it also helps that this particular audiobook is read by David Tennant, the kids’ favorite doctor.

I’ve listened to some of these audiobooks in the past and they are fun, but I cannot tell you how much fun they are when I was listening to them with the kids. Everyone, especially my son, was totally in to them, and were very much caught up in the storyline and couldn’t wait to get back in the car to find out what happened next.

Now, I call that a ringing endorsement, but just in case you need something more, I will tell you that this is a consummate Doctor Who story with the Doctor appearing out of nowhere in a mysterious situation that has gotten overly weird and has a slightly supernatural aspect (in this case, a troll under a bridge) that you know that because this is a Doctor Who story (and not say, Supernatural or Dark Shadows) that there is an alien explanation, but you have no idea what it is, or how it will manifest itself. I must also say that The Day of the Troll is one of the most sufficiently creepy DW audiobooks that I have had the pleasure to listen to, and my kids loved that part of it too. In fact, my six-year-old son played at being a troll during the whole time we were listening to the story and well beyond that.

David Tennant’s reading is stellar, as if there could have been any doubts. His portrayal of the Doctor, while tinged heavily with emotion and loss on the show, still had more than its fair share of boyish eagerness and childlike enthusiasm, and that all carries over into Tennant’s performance here. It is a real treat to listen to Tennant, not only because he was the Tenth Doctor, but also because you can tell that he genuinely enjoys entering this world and having fun in it, inhabiting it fully. It is a lot of fun, and makes listening to The Day of the Troll an unadulterated pleasure.