Doctor Who: Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge

A pastiche of the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, this does more than merely recycle the names of his more famous creations, but also borrows directly from the tropes of many of his stories - frozen wastes, cyclopean architecture, pre-human civilisations, and more. In this respect, it's well done, with what appears to be a real love of the originals. The nature of a Doctor Who story means that the more bleaker aspects of Lovecraft's work aren't on display, but this is entirely forgiveable in context.

Consistency, however, is something of a weakness, with the island of the setting seeming remarkably clement for something off the north coast of Alaska in the second half of the story. Some of the earlier scenes are also a little odd in the context of the later ones.

A bigger problem, though, is the performance of the actor playing Doveday, a pulp writer loosely based on Lovecraft himself. His flat delivery comes across very much as ‘a man reading lines off a cue card', and it's hard to know whether he's struggling with the American accent, or whether it's a deliberate effect to emphasise the character's insanity. If it is the latter, it unfortunately comes across as the former, and makes the audio hard to get into.

Since the story itself is actually quite good (Ace gets some particularly good scenes), it feels wrong to deduct too much for all of this, but one can only really take the work as a whole. So, with a good story executed quite poorly in places, we end up with 3 stars. It would probably have worked better as a novel.