Doctor Who: The Isos Network

The Early Adventures reach the sixth and final season of the black-and-white era of Doctor Who with Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury (Zoe) taking over narration duties. This is written as a sequel to TV adventure The Invasion and, while it has some good points, it's another underwhelming release in a set that's been weaker than the First Doctor stories that preceded it.

As with the immediately prior release, part of the problem here is the heavy reliance on narration. This would work fine in a standard audiobook and, indeed, would be part of the point, but it's distracting and arguably rather unnecessary in a play with six different voice actors and a full range of sound effects. The main cliffhangers and final dramatic moment also have resolutions that are obvious a mile off, so that, while what's going on with the non-Cyberman monsters is at last somewhat mysterious, the plot is otherwise predictable.

On the plus side, there is some decent atmosphere here, with the TARDIS crew somehow ending up on a devastated colony world shortly after a Cyberman invasion. In an obvious nod to Second Doctor classic The Web of Fear, most of the story takes place in an underground monorail system, and the Cybermen are undeniably the right vintage - including a Cyber Controller similar to that in Tomb of the Cybermen. The incidental music is also very 1960s, giving the story the right feel.

So some good points, certainly, and a fairly strong emulation of the sort of stories we often got in this era of the show's history. But the overuse of narration and a perhaps slightly too slavish adherence to the relevant tropes unfortunately drag it down a little.