Tag: Robert Shearman

Doctor Who: Dalek (2021)

Doctor Who: Dalek

by Robert Shearman (Penguin, 2021); audiobook read by Nicholas Briggs (BBC, 2021)

Book cover: “Doctor Who: Dalek” by Robert Shearman (Penguin, 2021); audiobook read by Nicholas Briggs (BBC, 2021)

Lawks, what a slog. Shearman takes his own outstanding script and plumps it up into the most middling of novelisations, diluting the action with a stultifying deluge of minor character backstories. Audiobook bonus: Briggs’s Christopher Eccleston voice sounds like a comedy impersonation.

Doctor Who: Jubilee

Doctor Who: Jubilee

by Robert Shearman (Big Finish, 2003)

Shearman_Jubilee

A rare Dalek story with something to say beyond ‘Exterminate!’. Shearman perhaps tries for too much—his subsequent TV adaptation ‘Dalek’ is cleaner—but the result, though imperfect, remains head and shoulders above the usual dross. Authoritative and at times deeply uncomfortable.

 

 

Doctor Who: Scherzo

Doctor Who: Scherzo

by Robert Shearman (Big Finish, 2003)

Shearman_Scherzo

An experimental, at times very disturbing two-hander played with considerable finesse by Paul McGann and India Fisher. The premise is to be lauded but lacks execution (at both script and production level). Though not incongruous, the unceasing background mosquito whine was ill-advised.

 

 

Derelict Space Sheep