PLOTLINE

It's November 9th, 1965. New York City is plunged into darkness, a taxi driver has bad dreams, and an invisible spacecraft hovers ominously above the skyline. As an extra-terrestrial disease sweeps the populace, Amy and Rory must sabotage the city's water supply to slow the spread of infection, and a dying Doctor holds another man's life in his hands. With death toll rising, and his companions stalked through the streets by alien businessmen, the Doctor is forced to make a terrible decision. How far must he go to save his friends?

Read by Stuart Milligan, and written by Oli Smith.

COMMENT

Overall, the SERIES 6 (and, probably, SERIES 5) tie-in (and exclusive) audio readings have hardly set the world, let alone the universe, alight with excitement and intellectual stimulation. The nearest to a standard of “good” if not verging to “very good” has been the Darren Jones’ DOCTOR WHO - THE EYE OF THE JUNGLE (read by David Troughton) but the rest of the DOCTOR WHO stories have been less “dum da dum do wee” and more “ho hum”.

However, with a singular release AUDIOGO has redeemed itself that will ensure that that future issues will be eagerly awaited, promoting the sound of high-pitched scratching as DOCTOR WHO fan scrape their fingernails down the tempered glass doors at their nearest HMV store.

DOCTOR WHO – BLACKOUT is, like a minor Leonardo pen-and-ink sketch may not be a masterpiece but it demonstrates a clarity of understanding of what the 11 th Doctor’s NEW SERIES stories have to deliver in double-quick time whilst having to manage, like a perennially astute circus ringmaster cajoling a myriad of disparate performers, the modern day double-act that echoes “Romana II & Adric” or “Zoë & Jamie”, Amy & Rory Pond (Williams).

In a rare insistence, this release benefits from back-to-back multiple listening such is the depth of the plotline, the solidity of the characters and the feeling that you could be listening to an audio story that has an intrinsic link to the broadcast television series. Certainly, you start to ask yourself; “the aliens in BLACKOUT must the same aliens in SERIES 6, aren’t they? No, they can’t be, surely.”

I couldn’t possibly say who they are so I will remain completely silent.

Like many examples of NEW SERIES stories, we join the time-space travellers mid-way through their “assignment” in 1960s New York (have we seen the last of the days where TARDIS arrives at the very start of a story with its “crew” becoming involved as the plot thickens? I hope not. But I hope that we have seen the last of the “story arcs”) and whilst the Doctor impersonates a Psychiatrist as he interviews a cab driver who believes that he’s been abducted by aliens, Amy & Rory sabotage the city’s water pumping station at the Doctor’s instruction to stem the flow of a water-spread infection that has been created by the aliens. Ironically, the Doctor has seemingly become infected too, and his life hangs in the balance of the cab driver, and we can only hope that he doesn’t take the Time Lord on a circuitous route that racks up the charge at the cost of his own life.

The characterisation of the 11th. Doctor is ebulliently eccentric with the hint of “aggression” that has been seeping into his televised persona across SERIES 6, whilst Rory is respectfully hapless but brave and Amy continues to be an aural resourceful (and very sharp) Swiss Army Knife with a flowing mane of ginger-red hair.

Whilst the story’s resolution is as rapid as a magician’s air-splicing wand, the reasoning behind it is intelligent with a hint of mystery just as it should be.

Reader, Stuart Milligan delivers an assured performance, drifting from an English Public Schoolmaster version for the 11th. Doctor to the American drawl of the cabbie to the bronchially-challenged low-talking alien businessmen with ease and creativity.

The audio adventure is supported with a complimentary incidental music score and a range of sixties period sound effects & treatment that are as precise & as distinguished as the weave of the Doctor’s Harris Tweed jacket. For an Earth-based historical story, sound effects have to be appropriate or the illusion will be broken, and Simon Power (Meon Sound) has obviously strived to the nth. degree to isolate the type of car that would be rattling over endless loose manhole covers that punctuate the New York streets. Use the wrong care engine sound or the resonating noise of a car horn and your attention wavers but with DOCTOR WHO – BLACKOUT everything is superbly appropriate that you have come to expect from Meon Sound.

In combination, Oli Smith (writer of the highly entertaining, DOCTOR WHO – THE RUNAWAY TRAIN) and Stuart Milligan have delivered a polished, character-led adventure that relates to the televised series so acutely that you, by it’s conclusion, could start asking yourself whether this was a Steven Moffat “rejected” (and that's been positive, by the way) script.

It’s that good, and, yes, believe me, you will listen to DOCTOR WHO - BLACKOUT more than once.