Nicholas ([info]nwhyte) wrote,
@ 2007-07-15 10:11:00
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Entry tags:doctor who, doctor who: 04, doctor who: audio, doctor who: sarah jane

The Fourth Doctor audios
The first ever commercially produced Doctor Who audio was the 1976 Argo Records production, Doctor Who and the Pescatons, starring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen as the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. To be honest, it is not fantastic. The plot is ripped off by writer Victor Pemberton from his Second Doctor series Fury from the Deep; there are only three actors (someone playing the villainous leader of the alien Pescatons), and so Baker switches from dialogue to linking narration rather jerkily; too much plot happens off-stage, as it were; and the solution, as he kills off the aliens and destroys their planet, is rather un-Doctor-ish. One for completists like me, but most of you can skip it.

Even more so the much shorter Exploration Earth, also from 1976, an educational radio programme which just has the Doctor and Sarah travelling through time and observing the gradual geological development of the planet Earth, with a chrome alien attempting to disrupt things, who is despatched rather casually at the end.



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A lazy question
[info]londonkds
2007-07-15 10:20 am UTC (link)
Had SJS already been written out of the TV show at the time these stories were made? I'm wondering if The Infinite Quest is actually the first cross-media spin-off to feature the contemporary Doctor/companion team, as I saw claimed in a newspaper.

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Re: A lazy question
[info]nwhyte
2007-07-15 10:26 am UTC (link)
While the decision to write her out had certainly been made, Exploration earth was broadcast on 3 October 1976 and Doctor Who and the Pescatons went on sale in July, in both cases before her last episode had been shown on 23 October, and both of them were recorded before she finished filming in July. So the claim for The Infinite Quest is not accurate.

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[info]alex_wilcock
2007-07-16 04:18 am UTC (link)
Although it’s now available on shiny silver disc, when I was a boy a friend had the almost unbearably exciting LP… Fortunately, back then what it actually sounded like barely mattered!

Though I’ve never found the CD exciting (and the book is worse), a little of the old rush returned at a recent signing when a gentleman in front of me produced a battered but much-loved LP sleeve for Tom Baker, who roared with delight as he autographed it. Nick Courtney, next to him, was baffled, prompting an extended riff from Tom about the Pescatons, a popular beat combo of which he was lead singer…

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