Some Listening You Might Have Missed: Hunters of Earth

Meredith Burdett is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Doctor Who isn’t on TV tonight. Nor next Saturday. While you might opt for the Horror Channel in the UK, their own screenings of classic Doctor Who are about to come to an end. The result, dear reader, is to embrace some other form of time travelling adventure with the Doctor, such as audiobooks – specifically, the rather wonderful 50th anniversary series opener from Big Finish and AudioGo, Hunters of Earth…

“It’s coming Grandfather… It’s in your future – your destiny – and you can’t escape it.”

So utters Susan Foreman to the First Doctor at the end of this story, setting up what will surely be one of the most epic Doctor Who stories that Big Finish and AudioGo have ever concocted for the Doctor and the TARDIS.

Destiny of the Doctor will, for the next eleven months, offer us one story per month for each Doctor that we know and love. Starting with the First Doctor in Hunters of Earth and culminating in November 2013 with a story for the Eleventh Doctor. How are these stories intertwined? We have to find out one by one!

Hunters of Earth finds the First Doctor and Susan on Earth in Shoreditch 1963, a short time before they flew off in the TARDIS with Ian and Barbara to meet Daleks, Sensorites or Voord. But if you thought that the Doctor was keeping himself out of trouble before the events of An Unearthly Child, then you were dead wrong. Because the people around Coal Hill are acting very strangely indeed, turning quickly from placid, well-meaning individuals into vicious, small minded thugs. And they seem to aiming their vitriol at Susan and the Doctor. What is instigating this horrific change in people? And how exactly is the mysterious School Master at Coal Hill School, Mr Rook, involved?

Form the very start, Hunters of Earth is a pitch perfect recreation of the First Doctor’s era. The sound design, the character backgrounds are all wonderful homages to Doctor Who’s beginnings. Carole Ann Ford acts her socks off in this tale and Tam Williams as her new friend Cedric helps to show not only Susan’s vulnerable side but also her alien one as well.

Nigel Robinson, the story’s author, is no first timer to writing for the First Doctor having written several Target novelizations from televised adventures and also editing the range back in its heyday. Here he manages to take us all the way back to the beginning without missing a step. It also helps that he’s kept the Doctor mysterious in this adventure. No references to Gallifrey or Time Lords, no speaking about two hearts or Susan’s origins. Rather than pandering to a fan audience, he has written a story for anyone who wants to get involved with fiftieth anniversary fever.

One of the best points however in Hunters of Earth, is a very small but very important evolution for Big Finish and perhaps AudioGo as well. You’ll have to find it yourself and listen carefully but there’s a small moment when the Doctor goes shopping and, with one name mentioned, old Doctor Who finally meets new Doctor Who. It’s something that Big Finish has never wanted or needed to do but with this new joint venture with AudioGo, they finally have. As stated, it’s a small, tiny event but the Doctor did once state to a Cyberleader that that is what life can be all about.

Hunters of Earth gets the Destiny of the Doctor series off to a wonderful and fulfilling start with a few odd references that may have deeper meaning as the stories continue.

Destiny of the Doctor: Hunters of Earth is available from www.bigfinish.com now.

The post Some Listening You Might Have Missed: Hunters of Earth appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.