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Tuesday 24 May 2011

Doctor Who: The Hounds of Artemis review


This is another in the range of adventures from AudioGo featuring the eleventh Doctor.
This one sees the welcome return of Matt Smith, as he partly narrates this adventure. I say ‘partly’, as this story has a clever structure. It begins with the discovery of the diary of Amy Pond, which is being read by the daughter of one of the main characters from the story. This part is ably played by Clare Corbett, who throws herself into the various roles with great gusto. She does a very good reading of both the Doctor and Amy.
Because this tale flips back and forth between Amy’s first person point of view in the diary and Smith narrating, we are able to see various scenes from different angles.
As for Smith, he is- of course- brilliant. He inhabits the role of Doctor- possibly like no actor has since the days of Tom Baker.
And that is all very well, but means nothing if the story itself is not up to scratch.
Well, luckily it is. In fact, this is perhaps the best AudioGo Who I have heard so far. It has a well constructed narrative and the characters are great. It is easy to imagine both Smith and Gillan speaking the lines James Goss has given them here.
The story starts with a great scene that just screams New Who (Oh how I hate that expression!) and manages to drop the listener into the middle of the story perfectly. There is also a nice little nod in there to The Pyramids of Mars, which this story is very much a direct descendant of.
There is little or no hint of the more sinister side of Smith’s Doctor in this story- it is basically a good old fashioned adventure romp very much in the Indian Jones style, with the prerequisite scares and laughs along the way that you’d expect from such a tale.
Listen to this!



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