Three Doctor Who audios
I've been listening to a few of the BBC cds of stories which are also available on video. Why? Because I have more time for audio than video in my day, and I wanted to see if it made much difference to my enjoyment of the stories. Maybe it's just the way I watch these things, but I found for two out of three of the stories I found my experience of them enhanced in some way.
For The Tenth Planet, there's a unity-of-form issue: because the fourth episode is missing from the archives (am I right in thinking that this is the only story with precisely one missing episode?), the video reconstruction available with episodes 1-3 is, with the best will in the world, jarring. If you have audio only, with the dulcet tones of Anneke Wills providing linking narration, you do get a sense of Hartnell giving it his all, right to the end.
The Gunfighters both gains and loses. On audio, it is much more difficult to remain unaware of the dodgy accents which are the story's biggest problem. But this is after all a story done partly for laughs, and told twice over even in the original version, with the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon recapitulating the action. Here we have a further layer of narrative thanks to Peter Purves' linking narrative, and I found it helped me to follow and appreciate it. The Gunfighters is one of my guilty pleasures.
Nothing can salvage The Dominators, and Wendy Padbury's narration simply helps us concentrate on the emptiness of the plot; also we miss the visuals which are, I now realise, one of the story's high points. The one good thing is an interview with Padbury at the end.
For The Tenth Planet, there's a unity-of-form issue: because the fourth episode is missing from the archives (am I right in thinking that this is the only story with precisely one missing episode?), the video reconstruction available with episodes 1-3 is, with the best will in the world, jarring. If you have audio only, with the dulcet tones of Anneke Wills providing linking narration, you do get a sense of Hartnell giving it his all, right to the end.
The Gunfighters both gains and loses. On audio, it is much more difficult to remain unaware of the dodgy accents which are the story's biggest problem. But this is after all a story done partly for laughs, and told twice over even in the original version, with the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon recapitulating the action. Here we have a further layer of narrative thanks to Peter Purves' linking narrative, and I found it helped me to follow and appreciate it. The Gunfighters is one of my guilty pleasures.
Nothing can salvage The Dominators, and Wendy Padbury's narration simply helps us concentrate on the emptiness of the plot; also we miss the visuals which are, I now realise, one of the story's high points. The one good thing is an interview with Padbury at the end.