Blackout

"We don't believe in aliens in New York."

Writer: Oli Smith
Format: Audio
Released: September 2011
Series: NSA 14

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Amy, Rory

Synopsis

It's November 9th, 1965. New York City is plunged into darkness, a taxi driver has bad dreams, and an invisible spacecraft hovers ominously above the skyline.

As an extra-terrestrial disease sweeps the populace, Amy and Rory must sabotage the city's water supply to slow the spread of infection, and a dying Doctor holds another man's life in his hands.

With the death toll rising, and his companions stalked through the streets by alien businessmen, the Doctor is forced to make a terrible decision...

How far must he go to save his friends?

Verdict

Blackout was an excellent New Series Adventures audio! I thoroughly enjoyed this one from start to finish and even though it was relatively lengthy for a single episode in the format a 77 minutes, it seemed to fly by! It was a really great listen. The way the story started as we were introduced to Clint was very good and I liked how he was immediately talking to the Doctor. The story began at a point in the middle of events which can work really well and this was definitely one of those occasions. I really enjoyed the setting of 1965 New York and although this is set prior to Series 7, I think it is a lot of fun to think of what happened to Amy and Rory in The Angels Take Manhattan and the fact that they would have been in the city when all that occurred here was transpiring and were helpless to do anything about it. They'd have known all abut the contaminated water and how it was resolved which is fun to consider. Clint being a black man was addressed well in line with the racial environment of 1960s America. I was a very big fan of Stuart Milligan's narration and I think it's quite fun that an actor who played Richard Nixon told an American-set Doctor Who story. He was pretty perfect it has to be said. Clint having dreams was an interesting element and I really liked his reaction to the simplicity in which the Doctor uncovered the alien spaceship above the city. Something like that just shouldn't be so easy! Amy and Rory were separated from the Doctor for much of the audio which I think worked well and it was good to have them doing their own investigative work. The water being contaminated was very good as a central problem for the plot and it was obviously going to be connected to the aliens that the Doctor had discovered were sticking around which gave him time to defeat them. I loved the use of Times Square in a story with this name and it was fantastic to have the lights actually used as a loose plot device. The contrast in the audio between heat and ice was excellent and it worked very well to have them complimenting each other. Finding out that Clint was actually not poisoned by the water contamination was intriguing and what came later with the revelation of the alien experiment was superb. I loved how he turned out to be the anomaly needed to control the experiment and the terminology really took me back to my schooldays in chemistry. It was really fun and explained a huge amount. The Doctor wanting to use that knowledge to get the vaccine that it clearly proved they had was terrific and I really liked the characterisation of Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor. The exploration of the woman in Clint's dreams was good and I also enjoyed the excitement of Amy and Rory being chased across New York. The aliens talking telepathically inside the head was very good and they sounded quite creepy but without being threatening. That suited the audio well in my opinion. The image of the Doctor being in a sports car was fantastic and I could just imagine this particular incarnation having the biggest smile on his face. Sports cars are cool! The aliens wanting to leave their experiment despite it failing and leaving humanity to die was an unexpected twist, but the calmness in which it was delivered was terrific. The use of the sports car from the Doctor to drive it through a magnetic field and bring about the vaccine amidst the alien message was a great way to conclude what was an excellent audio! Overall, a brilliant adventure.

Rating: 9/10