Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor and River Song

Three unconnected stories, all featuring the titular characters. Obviously, there's some suspension of disbelief required here; it's clear that River hadn't met the Tenth Doctor before Silence in the Library and hard to argue he met her again before The Time of Angels. But, if you can get over that, it's the only pairing of River and a modern Doctor we're likely to get on audio any time soon.

Expiry Dating – The first story deals with the issue of the ‘extra' meetings surprisingly well. It's clearly set not long after Silence in the Library and is structured in such a way that River is as much a mystery to the Doctor at the end of the story as she is beforehand. It's primarily (but not entirely) an epistolary story, following a series of letters exchanged between the two as she tries to get him to take part in a scheme that goes against his principles. There's lot of hopping about between different worlds, elements of humour and general weirdness, and a story that builds on the relationship that River has with the Doctor, but that he hasn't experienced yet. Plus, there's the occasional tie in to the classic series, although not in a way that should be confusing to those who have only seen the modern one. A little different than the usual, and quite fun. 4 stars.

Precious Annihilation – Here, however, the pair are working together as if that's already a normal thing for them. It's loosely based around an obscure, but real, historical event where a 17th-century jeweller's hoard was discovered in the basement of a demolished building in 1912. In this version, the hoard turns out to contain a deadly alien substance that leads the Doctor and River back to its origin in 1633. (Oddly, this keeps being described as “Tudor” and “Elizabethan” when it's a full three decades too late for either of those descriptors). It's a decent story, if stronger on the alien elements than on the historical background, but not much more than that. A weakness is that it doesn't really go anywhere with the Doctor/River relationship and that any regular companion would probably have fit the story just as well. 3.5 stars.

Ghosts – The Doctor meets River on a planet used only as a cemetery and that, perhaps unsurprisingly, has the reputation of being “the most haunted planet in the galaxy”. The Doctor doesn't believe in ghosts, but there's little question that things that certainly appear to be ghosts soon appear. It's a clever story, with apparent oddities in the early parts turning out to be deliberate hints in the later section. While it's probably not going to be any great surprise to anyone to discover what the ghosts are, what they're doing on the planet is less obvious to begin with, as is the nature of the monster that's stalking the living. But it all ties together with a neat twist and a touching conclusion. 5 stars.