A collection of tales for the first six Doctors, drawn from the World Distributors annuals.

The latest compilation of these sidesteps for Doctor Who highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of the annual offerings – some stories, with a small tweak, could work perfectly well as short stories within the TV series continuity. Others, not so much.

Justice of the Glacians kicks things off – a First Doctor solo tale, read by Jon Culshaw. The Doctor feels oddly nearer the Peter Cushing variant in the writing (not the performance) – an inventor of weird and wonderful gadgets and an inveterate traveller. That’s followed by Mastermind of Space, which apparently features the 2nd Doctor, Jamie and Victoria. There’s a little bit of The Mind Robber about this – and it’s the sort of story that you might imagine someone creating if the Peter Ling script was all he knew about the show. John Leeson does the honours for this.

We move forward to the Jon Pertwee era, and the first of two stories that sees the Doctor being used by the Time Lords, The Time Thief. It features Sarah as the assistant against someone who feels like he could be the Master, but isn’t quite. Terry Molloy is the narrator here.

There are two stories from Tom Baker’s time at the controls – the first, The Planet of Dust that gives the CD its title, is read by Louise Jameson and features Leela. Jameson has provided her Doctor’s voice before and there’s a lovely resonance to it that Dan Starkey echoes in his rendition of  Baker in A Midsummer’s Nightmare (aided by a few lines from Leeson as K9). It’s a contemporary story set in Norway that is probably my favourite from the collection. Both are stories that feel almost but not quite right for their respective eras.

Geoffrey Beevers performs The Creation of Camelot, a 5th Doctor and Tegan story that has some interesting echoes with The King’s Demons with its use of the Master (although no Kamelion to slow down production here). The final story – and by some considerable distance the shortest – is Interface, featuring the 6th Doctor and Peri, read by Terry Molloy. It’s another example of the Doctor apparently being used by the Time Lords – but like the other stories in that annual, it really doesn’t track well with what was on screen.

Throughout, David Darlington’s sound designs are period appropriate – even when the stories aren’t!

Verdict: A fascinating askew look at the Doctor Who universe. 7/10

Paul Simpson

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