More tales from a series that almost but not quite resembles Doctor Who…

A few months ago, we got The Doctor Who Audio Annual, a collection of stories drawn from the twenty-year-plus run of Doctor Who annuals produced by World Distributors. The second group is as intriguing as the first, particularly in terms of the characterisation of the Time Lord and his companions by the anonymous creators of the content – sometimes it feels spot-on, other times (a leering Second Doctor), it couldn’t feel more inappropriate.

This annual kicks off with The Equations of Doctor Who, one of the discussion pieces from the Hartnell era. In some ways these “non-fiction” excerpts are the most fascinating of the lot: there’s little that contradicts what was known about the Doctor at the time, but which simply doesn’t fly with everything that we’ve learned subsequently.

The stories themselves are a mixed bag – the first, and longest, comes from the Hartnell era with a version that in some ways feels more like Peter Cushing’s Dr Who than the TV character. The Troughton tale is not so off-kilter as its equivalent in the first volume, but will have you wondering about the Doctor’s pipe.

Sarah Jane Smith turns up in two tales, with each of her regular Doctors, as well as UNIT and Harry Sullivan in the Fourth Doctor version. The Fifth Doctor has a solo tale with Adric that sometimes feels like a story for Baker rather than Davison, while the Sixth Doctor singularly fails to mention a previous encounter with a foe at the central location of The Radio Waves (which oddly the CD cover spoils by revealing who the bad guy is).

There’s a few links across the stories – machines in charge, and things not being what they seem – but they’re basically as motley a selection as you’d have got in the annuals themselves. Peter Purves, Anneke Wills, Geoffrey Beevers, Matthew Waterhouse and Nicola Bryant give renditions of the characters that are often truer to life than the text they’re reading and there’s solid sound design throughout.

Verdict: Another interesting glimpse of a different show. 8/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order The Second Doctor Who Audio Annual from Amazon.co.uk