Doctor Who and the Three Doctors [Paperback]

Although all three of the Doctors that have lived to this point are in the book, the first Doctor has a pretty token presence. Nonetheless this is an excellent story. The entire universe is in danger from a black hole that is sucking up all its energy. The laws of physics, as always in the Doctor's world, are somewhat different from in ours :) Seems the Doctor is the only one left who can do anything about the situation. In fact his buddies the Time Lords, who had previously banished him to Earth and stripped him of the ability to time travel, call upon his current and previous selves to save everyone. This is another fun one, lots of action and we even get a rare view at the Time Lord's society and a bit of their history and how they cam the be lords of time.

A quick fun read, highly recommended.

To celebrate the tenth year of Doctor Who, the BBC decided to present a story featuring the current (third) incarnation of the Doctor with his predecessors. This novel is Terrance Dicks' adaptation of the anniversary story.

The Doctor is visited by Dr. Tyler, whose cosmic ray research coincides with the vanishment of a game warden, who is seeking help to resolve some mysterious results. But it turns out that he has somehow captured a blob of anti-matter, which is the bridgehead of an assault on our universe from the universe of anti-matter.

Under siege in his nonfunctional TARDIS, the Doctor calls on the Time Lords for help. However, they too are under siege and decide that since they can't help the Doctor, he's have to help himself. And so the Doctor's earlier incarnations arrive to help him.

This story is important in Doctor Who's history, as it reveals more of the history of the Doctor's people, the Time Lords. And it's also quite a lot of fun!

One of the unfortunate aspects of the story is that, sadly, William Hartnell was too ill to fully participate in the story. I'm sure it would have been more enjoyable had he been able to take a larger role, and this adaptation does not increase the Doctor's first incarnation's role in the story.

Please note that this is a review of the audio book of 'Doctor Who: The Three Doctors'.

The plot of The Three Doctors is standard fare - the Jon Pertwee Doctor is being pursued initially by a blob of jelly (and what later can be described as malevolent giant jelly babies), and it appears early on as though the Doc has met his match. He puts out a distress call to Gallifrey, in hopes that they can dispatch assistance - unfortunately, the council is unable to offer assistance, as they are experiencing related issues themselves, and so with no alternative, and recognizing that the Doctor does, indeed, need help, they allow him to help himself - by sending the Troughton Doctor for an assist! Loads of fun, lots of chills, and Terrance Dicks, an old hand at the Doc writing business, pulls it off brilliantly.

Just as brilliant, however, is the production of the audio version of this book. The charming Katy Manning serves as our narrator, performing all of the voices in a spectacular fashion (and with a small bit of electronic help for one of the characters, who needs to sound more imposing than Katy's sweet voice can manage). The sound effects and incidental music are absolutely perfect for the recording, never too intrusive, and always within the context of the story. At times, the music serves as punctuation for the end of a scene, and it's all really well done, and crisp to the ear.

I half-expected to have snippets of audio from the original story as it was aired; that was not the case, but I was not disappointed. This is four hours of cracking entertainment, and well worth picking up!