Hallowe’en 1938.

A month after a mysterious meteorite lit up the skies of New York State; Martian invaders laid waste to the nation. At least, according to the soon-to-infamous Orson Welles they did. But what if some of the panicked listeners to the legendary War of the Worlds broadcast weren’t just imagining things?

Attempting to deliver Charley to her rendezvous in Singapore 1930, the Doctor overshoots a little, arriving in Manhattan just in time to find a dead private detective. Indulging his gumshoe fantasies, the Doctor is soon embroiled in the hunt for a missing Russian scientist whilst Charley finds herself at the mercy of a very dubious Fifth Columnist.

With some genuinely out of this world ‘merchandise’ at stake the TARDIS crew are forced into an alliance with a sultry dame called Glory Bee, Orson Welles himself and a mobster with half a nose known as THE PHANTOM.

And slowly and surely, something is drawing plans against them. Just not very good ones...

COMMENT  Spoliers ahead

Stylistically, we’re in Saward and Holmes country.

Snappy dialogue, double acts and pastiche written large. With that said, in no way does this transcend the Light Entertainment (LE) glitter-covered stake hammered remorselessly into the programme’s chest by John Nathan-Turner.

Still, should it? It depends what you want from DOCTOR WHO.

This audio presentation is reminiscent of something that could have been churned out during the Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy years. Think REVELATION OF THE DALEKS or THE HAPPINESS PATROL. The arch performances are competent, lowest common-dominator LE standard fare and this is not necessarily a bad thing either; it depends whether you expect WHO programmes to be ‘high drama’ (which they never were, of course) or ‘high camp’. It is indicative that I cannot clearly delineate between McGann’s Doctor characterisation and Davison’s’.

The central concept is a admirable one. Placing the Doctor at the heart of the Welles Martian scare in New York while adopting a 1930s pulp fiction tone is an expedient jumping off point. David Benson impersonates the young Welles (famous for his impressively accurate one-man show, My Life With Kenneth Williams) to amusing effect. Remember the voice of The Brain in PINKY AND THE BRAIN? That’s what you get here.

John Houseman turns up (a respected multi-talent in the US remembered for the old geezer who tells the ghost story at the start of John Carpenter’s THE FOG) but the voice interpretation is way off the mar; far too English.

With the exception of the aliens, the stereotypical ‘he’s behind you’ baddie is Cosmo Devine, a smug, sneeringly oily retch who sounds as trustworthy as Winona Ryder is in a Hollywood fashion boutique. However, Pegg’s Don Chaney gangster is immediately recognisable as sub-Holmes pastiche. A character called Mouse sounds like a whingeing Woody Allen. The ‘real’ aliens are nicely performed and Sawardesque: one, articulate and relatively thoughtful if a little slow, the other, a wild ranting beast. See? All very familiar stuff. That’s pastiche for you.

I liked INVADERS FROM MARS despite it being hamstrung by the show’s cognitive coding, like the majority of WHO fiction (God bless Tulloch and Alvarado!); it is an eclectic hybrid of familiar-yet-modern DOCTOR WHO. Certainly, it has ‘thoroughbred’ fan credentials and backing: Mark Gatiss, Jessica Stevenson and Simon Pegg have a built-in ‘cult’ factor appeal given their respective LEAGUE OF …" and SPACED connections.

Naturally, there are some fine grin-provoking moments but my favourite was McGann’s parting advice to Orson Welles regarding THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (which as he quickly points out, Welles had not created yet).

And it may be just me, but the line "Keep your eyes peeled for Charley" sounds like a quip made on a street corner in Walthamstow.