Doctor Who: The Time Vampire
by Nigel Fairs (Big Finish, 2010)
Two episodes of untethered timey-wimeyness, deliberately written to be explicable only in retrospect. All very clever, but it doesn’t make for a great listen. Louise Jameson narrates as Leela, and she and John Leeson play all the parts (including a sketchy Doctor).
Doctor Who: The Stuntman
(Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions)
by Lizie Hopley (Big Finish, 2022)
A fast-paced mess with running about galore and great dollops of exposition. The pairing of David Tennant and Sarah Sutton will warm fans’ hearts, but Dr Gommen is a bog-standard evil scientist (and mostly absent). John Leeson enjoys a rare non-K9 outing.
Doctor Who: Warriors’ Gate
by Stephen Gallagher, writing as John Lydecker
restored from the original extended manuscript (1981); audiobook read by Jon Culshaw (with John Leeson as K9) (BBC Audio, 2019)
Even in heavily expurgated form, the version of Warriors’ Gate published in 1982 outshone all but a few of the original Target novelisations. The 2019 audiobook restores Gallagher’s original manuscript, revealing a dreamlike SF classic with exceptional depth of story and characterisation.
Doctor Who: The Ribos Operation
by Ian Marter (Target, 1979); audiobook read by John Leeson (Chivers, 2011)
As a TV serial ‘The Ribos Operation’ is respected for its production values, script and performances. As a novelisation it becomes saggy and tedious. Wholehearted writer Ian Marter assiduously seizes every conceivable opportunity to unerringly inject knee-hammer adjectives and slavishly conceived adverbs.