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1963 continues to be a busy year for the Doctor in the 2013 Doctor Who audio play 1963: The Assassination Games. The Seventh Doctor proves a natural fit for this entertaining conspiracy espionage thriller.

Neither the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) or Ace (Sophie Aldred) show up for some time, the beginning of the serial featuring a press conference, an assassination, and some government men deciding what to do about it. John F. Kennedy's assassination is constantly referenced but Kennedy's name is never mentioned for some reason. In Britain dealing with this assassination are people from the UNIT predecessor Counter-Measures. The Assassination Games was one of several audios released for Doctor Who's 50th anniversary so it's fitting that it features an organisation introduced in the 25th anniversary television story, Remembrance of the Daleks, and Simon Williams reprises his role as Group Captain Gilmore from that serial.

There's a lot of misdirection and subterfuge which the story carries off well. Ace turns up as a housemaid and the Doctor seems to have become a Member of Parliament. As is so often the case with Seven, it's never completely clear how much he knows about what's going on. Less characteristic of him is some of the grandstanding he does in this story, giving a couple speeches about adventure and his blue police box that would've sounded much more at home coming from Eleven than the typically more mild mannered Seven. But maybe it was part of his politician role.

Mostly this is a good story. It features a direct reference to the inevitable fact that many years must have multiple Doctors visiting at once and there's an amusing moment where Ace nearly has a motorcycle accident.

Following from 2013's Lady of Mercia, a Fifth Doctor audio that barely featured Nyssa, the also 2013 audio play Prisoners of Fate is all about Nyssa. Writer Jonathan Morris satisfyingly ties together several plot elements that had accumulated for the lady from Traken over the course of a variety of audio plays, offering some resolutions along with a starting point for some new ideas in a nice time paradox puzzle story.

When Janet Fielding came back to play Tegan, the makers of the audio plays naturally wanted to assemble the Fifth Doctor's (Peter Davision) best team of companions--Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Tegan, and Turlough (Mark Strickson). The trouble was, any story featuring Turlough before Enlightenment had to include the subplot about him being in league with the Black Guardian, a story arc from Five's second season, and Nyssa had left the show in the story previous to Enlightenment. So in the audio Cobwebs, Nyssa was reunited with the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough after the events of Enlightenment. The makers of the audios also took the opportunity to age up Nyssa to something close to Sarah Sutton's actual age, featuring her decades later in the process of trying to find a cure for a disease called Richter's Syndrome.

The trouble with this was, in an earlier audio play, Winter, the Fifth Doctor had already encountered an older Nyssa who had not met up with him after Terminus. Winter had taken place inside the Fifth Doctor's mind while he was undergoing the regeneration seen in his final television serial, The Caves of Androzani. The Doctor and Nyssa essentially share a dream as part of his visions of previous companions and she tells him about her grown children and her life since she'd left the TARDIS. So when Nyssa rejoins the group in Cobwebs, she realises she can't tell the Doctor about her kids because the regenerating Fifth Doctor she'd encountered already didn't know about them yet.

Then people decided it was no fun having an older Nyssa around--and made things difficult because, since her voice sounded the same, it had to be explained somehow in every story that she looked older. So in The Emerald Tiger she finds a sort of fountain of youth and she's back to familiar television Nyssa, presumably enabling any casual listener to then pick up in the next story without needing to be filled in on why Nyssa's there and Turlough's not working for the Black Guardian.

But Jonathan Morris decided to turn all these convoluted band-aids and plot reroutings into a plus for a deliberately confusing paradox puzzle plot. So the group actually runs into one of Nyssa's kids, as an adult, on a planet where the rulers are able to see the future. To add to the confusion, Nyssa's son is named Adric (Alastair Mackenzie) and when he sees Nyssa on camera he assumes he's seeing her from earlier in her time stream, from before Terminus, before she left the Doctor. In his mind, she disappeared, presumed dead, when she left with the Doctor again in Cobwebs. The audio tries to confront the awkward truth that Nyssa, despite obtaining the cure for Richter's Syndrome, never returned home with it, choosing instead to wander with the Doctor. Both she and the Doctor try to explain this but no explanation ever quite holds water. I'm not sure what Morris could have done but I admire the effort.

Adric II is also working on the cure for Richter's Syndrome his mother never delivered so naturally the issue comes up. Parallel to this tangle is the one involving the oracle that allows the local authority to try criminals before they commit crimes. There's a nice courtroom scene where the Doctor points out the subjectivity in the premonitions the wordless oracle chooses to show--and of course this is borne out later in the story when we see them come true but in contexts that greatly modify the guilt.

There's the old fashioned, very understated, possibly romantic tension in this one between the Doctor and Nyssa and also between the Doctor and Tegan but it doesn't aspire to anything as blatant as some of the earlier stories. I always had the feeling that Tegan, on television, was sort of meant to be the possible romantic partner that never came close to coming off due to the number of companions Five usually had at once. The audios where it's just him and Nyssa travelling go a long way to take Five out of his "older brother" image into something like romantic chemistry, though it's never quite as overt as Four and Romana or Ten and all his companions. Maybe once all paradoxes are cleared away, then there'll be time for love.

Twitter Sonnet #1108

Horizons crowd with plastic figment trees.
The outer edge of hardened clouds condensed.
A question writ on stationed eyes was seized.
The song of tangled trumpets soon commenced.
A sturdy figure hauled the cable up.
A row of stars descends across the board.
Acclaimed in blue, at times we lately sup.
At silent docks the hulks are always moored.
An artist claims succeeding slides of brooks.
A creek could glitter red for peppers near.
The lamps along the bank were casting looks.
A darkened knot became the birch's deer.
At last, a synthesized recorder played.
The old electric bed was never made.

I've written more than once about the scarcity of Irish actors or characters on Doctor Who but this year Saint Patrick's Day has fallen on Saturday, the day I usually write about Doctor Who, so I listened to the first Dark Eyes audio anthology from 2012. A collection of Eighth Doctor stories, it features the Doctor's only Irish companion in any medium, Molly O'Sullivan, portrayed by Irish actress Ruth Bradley. And I was glad to find Dark Eyes is a good series, especially surprising since it was written by Nicholas Briggs, whose scripts I've generally not enjoyed in the past. He loads up a few too many Irish-isms in Molly's dialogue but mostly she's a good character in a good set of stories. I like how she mockingly insists on calling the Doctor "The Doctor."

Comprised of four stories, each just under an hour, the first, "The Great War", finds the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) arriving on Earth in the midst of a mustard gas attack during World War I. The Seventh Doctor had a few World War I adventures, too, and with the recent Christmas special featuring the Twelfth Doctor in a World War I setting, I wonder how many Doctors are roaming about No Man's Land.

Molly is a Voluntary Aid Detachment nursing assistant--not a nurse, she continually reminds everyone. The medical staff angle is another thing that makes this reminiscent of the Seventh Doctor story, No Man's Land. But "The Great War" does a better job establishing the lives of the average participants, with Molly being a wiser, more experienced hand hastily advising another woman on how to treat and behave around men brought in from the battlefield.

The second story, "Fugitives", gets more into the underlying story that bridges the four, and features more heavily two guest characters played by Peter Egan and Toby Jones. Whether or not they're villains isn't quite clear but in the concluding chapter, "X and the Daleks", Briggs makes good use of them, coming up with a really cool way to use Time Lord regeneration I can't remember seeing or hearing in another story.

The third story, "Tangled Web", features the Doctor and Molly coming across a community of peaceful Daleks. It's a story that plays with the Doctor's acquired hatred for the species in much the way the new television series has done from time to time; giving us the innocence of his companion's eyes, wanting to give a whole species the benefit of the doubt, confounded by the normally open minded Doctor unable to accept the possibility of peaceful Daleks. This one has some interesting moments, I particularly liked how in the climax it gets to the point where the Doctor feels like he's going mad for being the only one who holds what he can't help feeling is a perfectly reasonable point of view.

Briggs, as he does on the new show, also voices the Daleks and is good at creating an impression of several individuals. McGann is good as always and has good chemistry with Bradley. She's effective in the role though I don't like how she calls the TARDIS a "Tardy box".

Twitter Sonnet #1094

The water turned above to different roofs.
The circuitry of scuba scars appeared.
A warning dripped from restless, turquoise hoofs.
The worried land observed the endless weird.
The face beside the ears divulged a sound.
As pieces ranged a board became a day.
A cushion took the seconds from the ground.
As grasses pass the ivy shows the way.
Surprising kings beneath the hills were hid.
A dot was glowing green before the snakes.
A clover star would burst to quadrant grid.
Remembered drinks were debts beneath the lakes.
The ling'ring wolf returned to save the slain.
A wailing shade perplexed the sullen train.

Those looking to finally hear about how the Sixth Doctor met his companion Mel will kind of get what they want with the 2013 audio play The Wrong Doctors. I admire writer Matt Fitton's decision to make a confusing and weird moment from the television series even more confusing and weird instead of tidying it up. It's mainly an enjoyable story though Bonnie Langford makes things even more confusing by getting her lines wrong from time to time.

The final season of the television series to star the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) aired in 1986, comprised of four stories that were all tied together in a season long arch called The Trial of a Time Lord. Each individual story featured a framing story where the Doctor was on trial on Gallifrey and the various tales were shown to him and the court as evidence of whether or not he'd been a good Time Lord. In the third story, Terror of the Vervoids, an adventure from the Doctor's future was shown, featuring a companion, Mel (Bonnie Langford), the Doctor had not yet met. When the season's story arc resolved, the Doctor from earlier in the time stream, the one on trial, went off with Mel as a companion, not quite mentioning the trouble this caused since she came from further ahead in his time stream. Essentially, the Doctor started travelling with Mel because she came from a future where she was travelling with the Doctor. In the following season she became a companion to the Seventh Doctor, denying the writers any opportunity to explore the paradox, if they even intended to. The somewhat chaotic situation with the writing staff at the time, and Colin Baker's sudden departure, prevented the show from following up on the topic. According to Wikipedia, writers from the show at the time, Pip and Jane Baker, addressed the issue in their novelisation of The Ultimate Foe, the final story in Trial of a Time Lord. But the paradox is my favourite thing about that otherwise really annoying companion with the squeaky voice.

The Wrong Doctors picks up with the Doctor sad and alone after the departure of the excellent audio companion Evelyn Smythe--the actress who played her, Maggie Stables, had retired due to illness that caused her death a year later. So Six decides its finally time to meet Mel for the "first" time. The story cuts between this and scenes where the Sixth Doctor, earlier in his time stream, is dropping Mel off at her home in the town of Pease Pottage so he can have the opportunity to meet her for the first time properly. Everything goes wrong when both Sixth Doctors meet after their TARDISes are stolen; there are inexplicably two Mels, one of whom doesn't seem to be as smart as the other; and there are dinosaurs and Victorians roaming the streets.

Age has improved Langford's squeaky voice somewhat, it's not quite as grating, so I don't mind that it doesn't make sense that she sounds older than she's supposed to be in the story. The two versions of Six are played off against each other under the theory that the audio plays have softened Six a little bit from the obnoxious, arrogant personality fans dislike about him on the television series, but the difference is really too subtle to justify how the characters remark on it in the audio play. But the plot which explains the strange goings on is delivered nicely enough by entertaining dialogue between the characters, though it still never manages quite to give us a picture of how the Doctor and Mel met. But maybe that's for the best.

Twitter Sonnet #1087

In styrofoam a face awaits the flame.
In cases gilt the chairs await the kings.
On circuits hid electrics tell the name.
On lobby desks within the metal rings.
'Twas bread surrounded lettuce late at night.
For sandwich worsts the only quiet dog.
Unspeaking parts attest to clamour right.
Alas for cymbals shining through the fog.
The clashing oats revealed a winning meal.
In time a pottage placed a building gruel.
In faceless porridge breakfast grains'll deal.
A field of post at dawn is much the rule.
A blue return on countless stones emerged.
The plastic pushed where thoughts and dreams converged.

The trilogy of Doctor Who audio plays that began with the Fifth Doctor story, The Burning Prince, and continued with the Sixth Doctor story, The Acheron Pulse, concludes with a Seventh Doctor story called The Shadow Heart. The story of Prince Kylo (James Wilby) and his doomed love for the Princess Aliona concludes here though the audio play spends less time with that than it does with a very clever and amusing time travel plot.

It begins with the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) stumbling into a bar with a massive gunshot in his chest, seeking the assistance of a couple "snailers"--scavengers who pilot a large space snail through debris fields looking for valuable salvage. We learn the Doctor is being pursued by The Wrath, a dangerous robotic civilisation that the Sixth Doctor reprogrammed in the previous story to devote all their energies to justice. Unfortunately, this has led the Wrath on a campaign to kill everyone because, as the older and wiser Seventh Doctor realises, deep down, "Everyone's guilty of something." I would have liked a greater exploration of this contrast between Six and Seven--it makes a lot of sense. I always thought the darker, more mysterious personality of the Seventh Doctor was related to Six's final story being The Trial of a Time Lord--with the confrontation with the Valeyard teaching the Doctor the dangers of a simplistic, zero tolerance morality. But maybe there's something like that in an audio play I haven't listened to yet.

Since Seven seems to know everyone and even what's going to happen, it becomes clear that he's folded back on his own timeline. I wondered if we were going to get the second half, from the Doctor's perspective, of the story first and the first part second but writer Jonathan Morris has something even more complicated in mind. There are one or two places where I thought Morris lost track of what he was doing but mostly it's a pretty solid construction of . . . well, it's like, Doctor B remembers what Doctor A did who followed from Doctor C, who was instructed by Doctor B, operating on instructions A gave to his cohorts . . . Anyway, it's really good. Mostly the story follows the perspective of the supporting characters, one of whom is an American bounty hunter played by Deep Space Nine's Chase Masterson. Keeping it from the perspective of the supporting characters adds to the feeling that the Doctor is executing an extremely complicated plan though, as he admits, he loses track himself now and then.

September 2012 saw the release of an exceptionally good Doctor Who audio play, a Fifth Doctor story called The Burning Prince. Writer John Dorney shows exceptional skill for the medium, delivering action naturally through dialogue, and a lot of exposition in ways that engage and keep the listener's attention. Peter Davison gives a fine performance in this shipwreck adventure about interstellar politics.

I was reminded of Star Wars in two ways--one, because the titular prince is named Kylo (George Rainsford) (apparently no relation to Ren), and two, because it hits the ground running with its big crashing ship. This is what makes the beginning of Revenge of the Sith work so well--the tension of the space battle and then the ship going down makes everything that's said and done on the ship work even better, because we're compelled to listen extra carefully to any crucial information. Dorney may have been influenced by Alien with a genetically modified beast that breaks loose, precipitating the crash.

Meanwhile, of course, the Doctor's haplessly materialised aboard in his TARDIS. Suspicion immediately falls upon him when it's learned there was probably a saboteur, a situation the Doctor finds all too familiar, which he actually jokes about. Davison is another reason all the rapid exposition about two warring families and a political marriage sticks. A lot of actors might deliver every urgent piece of information the same way but Davison layers in some slight embarrassment in his observation about two reuinited lovers kissing and gives the right amount of cautious indignation when someone needlessly uses a gun on its kill setting.

The political stuff is interesting in itself, Dorney nicely setting up a situation that compels you to examine each character to discover who's a spy, who's a saboteur. Dorney plays fair, too--when the Doctor starts to explain things, all the evidence he brings forth were clues that had been given in the story. The climax is a satisfying but surprisingly melancholy observation on the difficulties inherent in heading off a war when mistrust is so deeply entrenched.

The blue TARDIS returns at last in the 2012 Doctor Who audio play Black and White. Several previous Seventh Doctor audios had featured a TARDIS that mysteriously looked like a black police box while other audios featured a white one. This audio play finally gives us an explanation, the explanation being much more interesting than the main feature of the story, an encounter with Beowulf.

It turns out that stories I thought had taken place later in the Doctor's (Sylvester McCoy) timeline, after he'd parted from Ace (Sophie Aldred), were actually occurring at the same time because the Doctor had split the TARDIS into two. In one TARDIS, the white one, he was adventuring with Ace and Hex (Philip Oliver), while in the other, the black one, he was travelling with Aristedes (Maggie O'Neill) and Sally (Amy Pemberton). It's like one of those people who has two families in different parts of town who don't know about each other. I don't know if Matt Fitton, the writer of this audio play, came up with the idea but I really liked it. It was a good concept to show how a Time Lord's mind can easily function in different parts of a time stream and it was a particularly good idea for the Seventh Doctor, who's much cagier than the other incarnations.

Aristedes was introduced in the 2010 audio play Project Destiny while Sally first appeared in the very nice 2011 audio play House of Blue Fire. Sadly, she has a less to do in this one aside from falling for Hex and being mistaken for a Valkyrie by Hrothgar. The Beowulf stuff might have been really fun but Fitton seems to have no instinct for the period setting. Weohstan (John Banks) deciding that Hex isn't an Aesir like Ace or Sally because he bleeds suggests Fitton is unaware of just how much bleeding and dismemberment goes on in Norse mythology. Every one talks more like characters in a standard science fiction serial than like people from the Dark Ages. Grendel (Stuart Milligan) as a cheesy American alien is also not nearly as much of a riot as he seems meant to have been.

But Black and White had its good points. I look forward to hearing more of Sally as a companion.

Twitter Sonnet #1062

Inspi'ring spinach spires up the stair.
Gargoyles clasp the stony cord in chrome.
A fuel for bluer flame eclipsed the glare.
Impert'nent bulbs'll break on engine's dome.
A line of ghosts in tiny hats await.
A strange and empty suit aligns the dish.
A tempered dough arose to clog the gate.
Behind the foil flame's a turnip wish.
A brick would not explain the harbour bruise.
Enlarged beyond bouquets, the painted weed.
Successive taps of steel relayed the news.
A parliament of glowing eyes proceed.
They kept the books at bay behind the end.
Across the floor the room began to bend.

The Fifth Doctor influences the future of the Fourth Doctor by going to the future to take part in the past of the villainous Magnus Greel in The Butcher of Brisbane. A 2012 audio play that serves as a prequel/sequel to the great Fourth Doctor television story The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Butcher of Brisbane never matches the effective fun and menace of that serial but it is pretty good.

According to the TARDIS wiki, Greel is referred to as "The Butcher of Brisbane" in Talons of Weng-Chiang--it's been a while since I watched it so I'll take its word for it. But it provides a neat connexion to the Fifth Doctor's (Peter Davison) companion Tegan (Janet Fielding) as the Doctor makes yet another unsuccessful attempt to bring her home. The TARDIS arrives in Brisbane true enough but in a distant post apocalyptic future where Australia is covered with ice and snow.

Played now by Angus Wright, taking over from Michael Spice on the show, Magnus Greel is here presented in what would be his former glory as Supreme Minister of Justice of the Supreme Alliance of Eastern States in Beijing. He presides over a system that punishes criminals with hard labour--Turlough (Mark Strickson) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) quickly discover that a secret part of this punishment involves time travel.

The story features some effective, complicated time travel hijinks mixed with complicated politics. There's also a surprisingly effective romantic subplot between Nyssa and Magnus. Peter Davison is in fine form in this one, writer Marc Platt making him come across as brilliant and mysterious in ways that recall the Seventh Doctor. Five plays cards close to his chest, having to dance around the fact that his previous incarnation is currently serving in the Filipino army and avoiding giving any hint to Magnus that he's aware of the villain's future. Davison delivers all this with nuance that suggest the layers of necessary secrecy and anxiety.

The works of Rudyard Kipling and William Blake find their way into the 2012 Doctor Who audio play The Emerald Tiger, an entertaining adventure for the Fifth Doctor. Most of the twists are pretty obvious but the usual good chemistry between Five and his three companions pairs well with peril in 1920s India.

The audio play features Cherie Lunghi, whom many might remember as Guinevere in John Boorman's Excalibur, here playing Lady Adela who's caught up in some terrible trouble involving tigers who can talk. She and Peter Davison are really good together and I wouldn't have minded hearing her brought on as a regular companion.

Later in the audio play there's a kid who grew up in the woods having learned English from Kipling's The Jungle Book. Despite the obvious fondness the audio play's writer, Barnaby Edwards, has for Kipling, he has the Doctor criticise the arrogance of British colonialism in the person of a Major Haggard played by Neil Stacy, an actor with a deep voice, always nice in a villain.

The Doctor was once again pitted against the absurdities of his own show in the 2012 Sixth Doctor audio play The Fourth Wall. The audios have done this a few times with stories like The One Doctor--also a Sixth Doctor audio--though The Fourth Wall ostensibly sets its sights a little wider, satirising space opera serials in general. It's funny, has some surprisingly effective drama, and is the third to feature Six's companion Flip who continues to be an enormous delight.

A whole artificial planet called Transmission has been made for the purposes of creating a television series called Laser about a hero named Jack Laser (Hywel Morgan) and his companion, Jancey (Tilly Gaunt), who battle the evil Lord Krarn (Martin Hutson). Due to some kind of mix up while the Doctor (Colin Baker) tries watching a cricket match on a special television on the TARDIS, Flip (Lisa Greenwood) is transported onto the planet into the fictional scenario. The actors apparently perform scenes and in a place in time slightly out of phase with the present the characters become real and "improvise". And that's where Flip finds herself.

The stuff with Laser is pretty much the standard superhero parody you might see on The Tick--the big, dumb, improbably lucky hero armed with corny quips--though Jancey's tendency to scream when there's trouble clearly seems aimed at Doctor Who. My favourite part, though, is Lord Krarn who perfectly satirises everything I hated about the Master in 1980s Doctor Who. He says he wants to take over the universe and he's going to wipe out the human race and Flip finally asks the questions no-one ever thinks to ask the Master in the 80s--why the hell would you want to control the universe and how does destroying the human race help you accomplish that? To which Lord Krarn becomes flustered and can't answer. One of the reasons Missy is my favourite incarnation of the Master is that Steven Moffat actually does a pretty good job explaining the Master's behaviour as a repressed affection for the Doctor--something that's set up in the Third Doctor era with a few lines about how he and the Doctor used to be friends but the idea wasn't really explored until recently.

The Fourth Wall, written by John Dorney, also has some nice stuff about how one shouldn't underestimate the affection fans have for even poorly written fantasies. Krarn encountering his creator almost recalls Roy encountering Tyrell in Blade Runner--Krarn is understandably angry that his wife was killed off just to give him a motive to be evil. It must be quite a shock to discover one day that one has been badly written, I don't really blame him for wanting revenge.