Short Trips Audio Tape
I recently received the audio tape of "Short Trips". I haven't seen the book yet, but I thought I'd review the stories and the performance on the tape.
The tape is performed by Nick Courtney and Sophie Aldred. Their performance is one of the reasons why this is so enjoyable to listen to -- just like I could forgive the two Pertwee audio dramas because of hearing the familiar voices. Besides hearing them "play" their normal roles, we also get them both doing Tom Baker impersonations (hysterical!), and Courtney does a Pertwee and Aldred does McCoy. It's a testement to both the writers and the actors that their performance is able to imitate the original characters so well. Fortunately, the stories here are good as well.
Almost every story is a character study of one type or the other; from the delightful "Glass", which has an outsiders view point on the Doctor & Romana show, to Jon's wonderful "Model Train Set", with his definitive character study on the Eighth Doctor, comparing him to other Doctors & also a wonderful piece of SF in its own right. [It is almost a piece of religious fiction as well, in a way.] David McIntee's "Degrees of Truth" is good enough to justify the tape purchase by itself (as it doesn't appear in the print version), a Pertwee story with a strong focus on the Brigadier. "Freedom" -- which takes place at roughly the same time -- has a few interesting points, with its consideration of both the Doctor's exile and the Master's imprisionment after The Daemons. "Stop the Pigeon" is the most "fan wankish" story of the set -- for reasons I'd rather not spoil -- and is helped a great deal by a funny performance. and "Old Flames" is a distinctly different type of fourth Doctor story, but one that works well and makes my look forward to Paul Magrs' full book.
My only major complaint is that we only get half of the Doctors in this book -- and two Pertwee and two Tom Baker stories. I imagine the print version is more diverse, and I'm sure that Courtney's presence was always going to bias it towards Pertwee. This isn't really much more than a nit, but I hope that a future tape includes stories from other Doctors. (A Troughton one read by Debbie Watling, perhaps?)
This gets a solid 8.5 out of 10 for now -- when the book comes out here in America, I'll revisit each stories ranking. The tape is definitely recommended.
I'm looking forward to listening to it again, and if the book is as good as the tape, it'll be the best collection of Doctor Who short fiction to date.