4. The Land of the Dead

Nothing about this story works quite as well as it needs to, but nothing about it entirely fails either. The overall effect is generic and forgettable, but it's a solidly mediocre effort. It's got a small selection of strongly realized supporting characters, and the story (though quite conventional) does a nice job of incorporating and developing its themes. Unfortunately, the weakest link is the A-story, which revolves around some absurdly implausible and badly underdeveloped prehistoric monsters. This was never going to be a classic, but at worst its a near-miss.

Stephen Cole continuous the trend of using former Doctor Who novel authors to pen their Audio adventures. Cole delivered the script in a hurry to fill a scheduling gap and I’m afraid it shows. The concept is easy enough. It’s the classic trapped and hunted plotline that has served Doctor Who well in the past. Set in a remote Alaskan house owned by an eccentric millionaire the Doctor and Nyssa are cut off and face an ancient foe, a skeletal creature from before the dinosaurs. Throw in ancient Inuit legends and a whingy vegetarian architect and you have the basics. Carefully crafted it might have worked but alas that is not the case.

The plot is too exposition heavy without any real payoff. The whole spiritual v rational thread is handled crassly and there are too many throw away lines about the exploitation of the wildness for commercial gains. In a good story these would be pebbles in your shoe, but here they simply add to the whole beach of faults in the production. Sarah Sutton tries to make the best of the slim pickings and hers is comfortably the best performance in the 2 hours of plodding progress.

Davidson seems to have posted in his performance, while the supporting cast are at best annoying. Neil Roberts (Tulung)and Andrew Fettes (Gaborik) plays Inuit natives, working for Christopher Scott’s English millionaire (Shaun Brett). It’s hard to tell which is the most irritating. Fettes potentially would have been but he meets a grisly end before the half way point. The also have deeply annoying fake accents which break down throughout the production.

Lucy Campbell (Monica Lewis) has lots of air time. She tries gamely but since this is mainly filled with her character complaining, she only adds to mess. Alaska is an unforgiving land and no one as uncompromisingly whinny would survive long. At the end of the play, she asks for a lift in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Nyssa wisely beat a hasty retreat.

The soundscape is fine enough, but the score is utterly forgettable and offers nothing to the story.

This is not a story you will want to revisit. It is good value at £2.99 but I can in all honesty only recommend this to completests who are building a collection.

This story is not that great, and the main reason has to do with the cast of supporting characters. I could not get past the bad Inuit accents. The Doctor and Nyssa are solid, but it gets boring and the same issues are rehashed repeatedly by some of the supporting characters, which makes it a bit tiresome.

This audio drama was recorded on 24 and 25 July 1999, and the cover image shows an adapted image of Joseph Merrick's skull. When the sleeve of the CD includes a map of the house to help you understand the story then you know you are in trouble. Also from the CD sleeve:

"A combination of unforeseen events and shifting schedules left me with only a week to come up with the scripts". -- Stephen Cole, Author of 'Land of the Dead'.

Set between 'Time-Flight' and 'Arc of Infinity' The Doctor and Nyssa track some unusual energy readings in the TARDIS and land in the Alaskan wilderness of 1964. They encounter a house in location of special significance belonging to the multi-millionaire oil magnet Shaun Brett. Shaun is having renovations done to include a shrine to his dead father. Soon Nyssa has a vision of savage beasts and the house is soon surrounded by wild animals.

Well, it’s slow and dialogue driven for a large part and free from bad performances but it really feels like a chore to get through this. Nick Briggs has called this his least favourite score, probably because the music is so forgettable. Couple all this with the fact the author had to write this in seven days to replace 'Fearmonger' in the schedule as Sylvester McCoy was unavailable and you can see where this is heading. Being such a slow burner it doesn't compliment Davison’s laid back Doctor or the softly spoken Nyssa.

Padded to high hell, it's extremely dull despite nothing really standing out as terribly bad, but quite frankly the downright boring ones that leave you with little to say are often the worst. It boring and icy.