Doctor Who: You Are The Doctor

Writer: John Dorney
Director: Ken Bentley
Script Editor: Alan Barnes
Cover Illustration: Joseph Bell
Music & Sound Design: Steve Foxon
Producer: David Richardson

Starring Sylvester McCoy & Sophie Aldred
Released December 2015

Opening a quartet of stories starring Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred as the seventh Doctor and Ace, You Are The Doctor is an entertaining, if not outstanding, way to fill 25 minutes. Any innovation it exhibits is in its novel presentation, the plot itself being as rote as they come. The 'decide your destiny'-style narrative and the accompanying commentary at each fork in the road are used to good effect and fill the run time well enough without pushing any boundaries.

It could be said that You Are The Doctor is somewhat obvious, but then that does seem to be the point. The pig-like Porcians return from author John Dorney's own The Fourth Wall, a full-length main range story featuring Colin Baker and Lisa Greenwood. This time it appears the Doctor's old adversary Chimbly and his wife Keith have actually, against all odds, managed to invade and take over a planet, so the Time Lord's suspicions are immediately aroused.

What follows is an inoffensive jaunt through their spaceship, punctuated by the Doctor and Ace's numerous deaths, after which the listener is instructed to return the beginning of the story. The most successful element of presenting the story in this decision-based framework is that the track numbers on the CD or in the digital album do actually correspond to the options Chimbly gives, so you could actually play along if you wanted. This is arguably unnecessary given almost all listeners will, on first pass at least, play the entire story, but this kind of attention to detail elevates the episode.

This is well-directed but it's notable how McCoy, in particular, and Aldred are able to sound so ill-prepared 30 years into playing their characters. Kim Wall returns as Chimbly and the performance suits the role though the listener could be forgiven for mistaking Wall for Nick Briggs. It really is uncanny. And try as the cast might, the Porcians still aren't as funny as the script seems to think they are. The sound design and music do a good job of setting up the narrative structure and providing extra tics to denote sections such that the listener knows what's going on before any dialogue is spoken.

You Are The Doctor was perhaps inevitable. It's pleasant enough, and sets its sights no higher than that, which is fine. While this is refreshingly unconvoluted for a Big Finish McCoy episode, we've done this story now, so hopefully the second instalment in this release will prove more substantial.