77 Years Productions available from 20 November 9 pm here and see below for a special premiere broadcast

Oscar Underhill is having to repeat a year of uni; that’s bad enough but he’s constantly tired… but until the arrival of the Doctor, he really doesn’t know why…

This is the start of a fan-made audio series – there’ll be 12 episodes in all, released in batches of four, with the first set arriving before Christmas, and the rest next year – that kicks off in style. Multi-hyphenate Katherine Wheeler, whose name you may recognise from DWM reviews, co-writes, directs and produces the series with Aeryn Natalia Fox, and even, in true Hitchcock (or is that Briggs) style, makes a vocal appearance.

It’s a contemporary tale, with recognisable characters, that hearkens back to everything from Rose to The Robot Revolution in its grounding of the companion, Oscar, before the arrival of the Doctor – which comes perhaps a little later than you might hope for, but he makes an impact when he does. That’s not to say the opening scenes aren’t engaging, and there’s an immediate payoff for a lot of the threads set up before the episode ends, but the nature of Oscar’s character at this point means the energy has to derive from elsewhere (and as later parts of the episode demonstrate, this is a conscious choice on the part of Wheeler and actor Oliver Smith).

But once the Doctor is on the scene, inevitably things liven up. No time is wasted with working out where this incarnation fits in the canon – Wheeler and Fox adhere to the Terrance Dicks mantra about the central attributes of the character that apply from Hartnell to Gatwa – and Jack Alexander is a commanding version that reminded me a lot, both in personality and vocally, of Richard E. Grant’s Shalka Doctor. The writers also don’t fall into the trap of making the Doctor all-knowing and unable to make a mistake – this incarnation certainly is not a superhero!

Technically, there’s a lot to enjoy about this, and I’m sure the team will be tightening things up further as the series progresses.

Verdict: A promising start. 8/10

Paul Simpson

 

The episode is being broadcast tonight (November 20) at 10 pm UK time on student radio station XPress Radio https://www.mixcloud.com/live/xpressradio/