Doctor Who: The Black Hole

With this release, we reach the fifth season of the original TV show, with Victoria (Deborah Watling) as companion alongside Jamie, in what was almost her last acting role. While I've often mentioned before that some of the older DW actors no longer sound like their younger selves, Watling is, unfortunately, one of the most extreme examples and, in her late sixties sounds nothing at all like she did as a teenager. That's unavoidable but also very distracting in an audio play.

The story is also heavily narrated in places, something that has been avoided in some other releases in the series. This matters in part because neither of the main actors was suitable for narration duties (Hines, for example, already playing two different roles) which means that we get David Warner. Now, Warner is good, and has a great voice for this kind of thing, but the use of an external narrator is different from previous releases, enhancing the contrast with them and making this closer to a regular audiobook.

There's also the issue that this doesn't feel much like a Second Doctor adventure. There are sound plot reasons why the Doctor is able to do things here that he couldn't in the TV series of the time. But these explanations are obviously wedged into the story as an afterthought, forcing the use of an obvious reset button at the end. This blunts the effectiveness of the subplot, since we know that one of the guest characters can't possibly succeed. Of course, that's true to an extent with all of these stories, since the Doctor and his companions can't die, but it's perhaps more obvious here than usual.

Take all of that out and what we're left with is actually quite good. There's some timey-wimeyness and a plot that's often quite intelligent, if not entirely in line with modern physics. There are some nice touches in the setting that enhance the '60s feel, a plot twist that echoes the modern series, and an alternative explanation from the usual fan theory as to what exactly was going on at the beginning of The Two Doctors. But, in the end, the story might have worked better with a different Doctor.