Doctor Who: The Age of Endurance

Having reached the end of the black-and-white era with the previous release, the Early Adventures returns to the beginning, with another story set during the TV show's first season, with William Russell (Ian) and Carole Anne Ford (Susan) sharing the narration duties. This time round, the role of Barbara is recast, rather than her lines being delivered by the narrators. While this would have allowed her to take more of a part in proceedings, it's not an opportunity taken in this release, and she spends almost the entire story unconscious.

The Doctor is also absent for at least half of the run time, putting Susan and Ian centre-stage and leaving them to solve the central problem themselves. Which, honestly, Susan does very little of, spending more time running from the monsters than doing anything particularly useful. Barbara has so few lines that it's hard to judge the new actor's performance of the role, but it's also the case that Russell now sounds so little like his 30-year old self (and who of us will, 50 years on?) that suspension of disbelief tends to falter with him as well.

These weaknesses are, of course, entirely unavoidable given the format of this audio series. It's hard to be too critical of them, but it doesn't help that the story is an unremarkable one. The TARDIS arrives on an abandoned spaceship and becomes embroiled with some former slaves trying to escape their masters. There is some nuance to this, with the slaves being far from blameless themselves and a nice evocation of a vaguely steampunk starship combined with other retro technology. (The science is complete nonsense, but the TV show has done much worse, so I can't hold that against them).

So, some good points in there, but not quite enough to do it for me. For some reason, the limitations of the format are really starting to show themselves with this particular release.