When I first saw this I thought- Wha-? Hold on! This is the third in the Key to Time stories! Where’s the second one?
Then I remembered that the second tale, The Pirate Planet, was written by a certain Mr D Adams, and thus is one of the stories that has never been adapted into a novel or any other medium. Which is, of course, a crying shame, but not something we should concern ourselves with here.
Here we revisit the Stones of Blood, which is for my money, one of the nuttiest Who stories there is. Trans dimensional spaceships, blood drinking stones and druid magic… now, normally these things would not hang well together in a single story, but somehow David Fisher manages to throw all these disparate things at a wall and make them stick.
I have a soft spot of this story on screen- Baker has arguably never been better than he was during this period, and Mary Tamm oozes cool and class and they sparked off each other wonderfully.
But does this come across in the audio book, being that the narrator here, Susan Engel (who of course starred in the original TV production), is neither Baker or Tamm?
Well, for the most part it does, thanks to the standard of writing and the skill of the reader. There are a few times she sees to miss the beat in a line or pronounces words in an odd way, but nothing that detracts from the listeners enjoyment. And there is also the added bonus of having John Lesson cameo in the role of K-9.
Best of all? The monsters. How so, you say?
Well, as I’m sure you know, on screen the Ogri were… poor. It’s hard to make someone pushing a rock shaped object at an actor look threatening, but the description of them in the book is clever enough to actually make then seem like a credible threat.
So- Good stuff again for AudioGo- when’s the next one!?
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