The Ring of Steel

"I thought the whole idea of protesting was that one person can make a difference."

Writer: Stephen Cole
Format: Audio
Released: August 2010
Series: NSA 08

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Amy

Synopsis

When the TARDIS lands on Orkney in the near future, the Doctor and Amy arrive to find a large demonstration in progress over the construction of new electricity pylons. The Doctor tries to break things up peacefully – but suddenly the road splits open without warning and swallows police, security guards, and protestors alike. Separated from the Doctor, Amy takes charge of transporting the wounded to hospital – but the rescue mission becomes a terrifying ride as the pylons come to life and begin to walk and the road rears up, erupting with boiling tarmac...

The Doctor, meanwhile, has even more than metal monsters and rebellious roads to deal with. Who is sucking the life out of the power company's employees – and just what is lurking inside the Astra-Gen headquarters?

Verdict

The Ring of Steel was a very good little audio adventure to continue along my sporadic listening of the Eleventh Doctor Tales from BBC Audio. From a performance standpoint, they are nowhere near the levels of Big Finish with the lack of a cast, but I felt that Arthur Darvill did a good job as this story's narrator. I thought he was a somewhat strange choice for this story as there was no Rory, but I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed his impressions of the Eleventh Doctor and Amy, somehow evoking the likenesses of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan whilst sounding like himself. That's a pretty good trait if you ask me! Stephen Cole is a veteran to the NSA series, usually in the books, but I was glad to be doing another story of his and the mix of reality and sci-fi in this audio was really good. I liked the idea of the setting being Orkney and the initial arrival did fool me. I'm no Scot and I've only ever visited Edinburgh, so I firmly believed that the Doctor was taking Amy on a journey to the planet of the Orkadians. I loved that I was duped, but of course Amy was a resident and proud Scotswoman so she would not fall for the Doctor's trick. I'm not really sure why the adventure was set in roughly 2025 as that didn't seem at all relevant and it could just have easily worked in the present day, but alas there was no real issue there. I liked the idea of a protest in favour of the landscape and the Doctor and Amy not really wanting to get involved and be seen as favouring either side put them in a bit of a difficult position. The guest characters were really good and the fact that they were Scottish gave them a really good and challenging attitude, but having Amy there more than countered that which I thought was excellent. The idea of pylons coming to life and roads rerouting themselves was quite scary and I think for a child, potentially listening on a car journey, this story would have been quite something. I thought the little analogy of going back to Amy's childhood and how she imaginatively would use her finger to take out the pylons as she passed them in a car was terrific and a really poignant moment for me as I was immediately taken back to my days of youth. Thinwood was a superb character and definitely the best of the non-regulars, and he really got on well with the Doctor which was good. His only taking up of protesting to get close to Lizzie was unexpected but the Doctor's reaction was very humorous, especially as he hadn't actually followed up on his feelings very much. The idea of a circuit on the scale that was featured in this adventure was quite something and trying to go from the circuits I remember creating with crocodile clips in chemistry lessons at school to thinking of it in terms of pylons and roads providing the connections was quite extraordinary! The Caskelliac made for good enemies and I thought it was a nice turn to have them not be wholly responsible for their intentions as they were just trying to survive. The ending was good in cleaning things up with the Doctor saying that he'd blown out their regenerative systems so they would have no other choice but to change their ways. Overall, a really good little story!

Rating: 8/10