Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

The latest set of annual adaptations coming from BBC Audio in December draws once more from the comic strips.

The Vampire Plants and other stories is a quartet of fabulous stories based on vintage comic strips from the Doctor Who Annuals, featuring the Second, Third and Fourth Doctors.

In The Vampire Plants the Doctor and Jamie discover strange goings-on in a Venusian colony, where Dr Vane’s space seedlings appear to be at the heart of the matter.

In Menace of the Molags a huge spaceship fills the sky above London, and inside it the Doctor and Jo meet some familiar looking aliens.

After the Revolution takes Jo and the Doctor to Freedonia, known for its beautiful utopian city. But things have changed for the worse since the Doctor was last there…

Plague World is the destination for the Fourth Doctor, Adric and K9 when they find an Earth colony, abandoned and left to its own devices – with terrible consequences.

Jon Culshaw, Katy Manning and Matthew Waterhouse read this quartet of tales, adapted by Paul Magrs from comic strips first published in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I’ve adored the Doctor Who Annuals all my life – I even wrote a book all about them! (available from obversebooks.co.uk),” Magrs told SFB, “and the strips were some of the best, most audacious stories EVER. I loved writing this – in a similar vein to my earlier ‘Dead on Arrival.'”