The Silent Scream

"Tonight's the night they come to steal my voice."

Writer: James Goss

Format: Audio

Released: March 2017

Series: FDA 6.03

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Romana II, K9

Synopsis

On the set of a busy Hollywood movie in the late 1920s, a damsel is in distress! As cameras roll, she opens her mouth to scream and... nothing comes out. Nothing at all. It's happened again.

The Doctor, Romana and K9 have arrived in a terrified Tinseltown. A new film is being made and several stars of the silent screen are viewing it as a potential comeback... but it may prove a poisoned chalice. Actors are vanishing and strange creatures stalk the streets.

Something evil is lurking behind the scenery. Can the Doctor stop it when he doesn't have a voice?

It's time for his close-up.

Verdict

The Silent Scream was a very good Fourth Doctor Adventures audio! It's always an enjoyable listen with the Fourth Doctor, Romana II and K9 teaming up and a trip to 1920s Hollywood was definitely a good ingredient for an audio story. This was a lot of fun and the setting really did work well with the movie business in the locale starting to boom. Throwing the Fourth Doctor into that was magnificent and the way he revered Waldorf was terrific. He really was like a fanboy meeting his favourite celebrity and that's always a lot of fun. Tom Baker was on top form. Incorporating the movie business of this period into a story worked superbly and I liked the idea of a curse surrounding a certain role on Fires of Fate. That was a really good plot idea and the threat of voices being taken away was excellent. For a Hollywood adventure, that was a wonderful plot. It ended up turning into an audio version of The Idiot's Lantern in a way with voices being taken instead of faces, but with the unique setting and different era along with the change of main characters this still felt different enough that things weren't repetitive. But the similarities were clearly there and that was absolutely fine. I really liked how the setting was described in the adventure and the mentions of the Hollywood Land sign really showed the era. I was lucky enough to visit Los Angeles in 2018 and although I wasn't overly impressed with the city, the Hollywood sign was the site of one of my favourite pictures from the Griffith Observatory. I can't imagine it having an extra word, but now that the image is in my head I'd love to have seen that in person. It was also good to highlight that Romana was a Time Lady with her lack of knowledge on Hollywood movies and actors was terrific stuff. She was a little frustrated by that which was nice to see and it was intriguing to find that she was potentially jealous of the Doctor's knowledge of the time and place. One element of the audio that I didn't quite like was all of the grunting. For an audio story, sound is obviously so important but at times I felt that it was a little overbearing during some instances which was a shame. I can understand why it was there but as a personal preference it was a bit too much. Dr Julius was a very good villainous character and his coming from the future was really good. I liked that element and his scheme to steal voices along with the potential of them being authenticated was a lot of fun. I also liked how he was played and he was able to shift from serious to humour which is what you always want from a villain. I liked the celluloids a lot and they really did remind me of the Kasaavin from Spyfall. There were clear similarities there and I do wonder if Chris Chibnall had listened to this audio shortly before writing that Series 12 opener. The Doctor ending up having his voice taken was magnificent and his complete lack of worry when he was uploaded to the sound cloud (essentially) was marvellous. It just allowed him to get closer to Julius and he revelled in that which was lovely to hear. I thought the use of the sonic to basically transfer the Doctor's voice back to his body and upload Julius to his own cloud was good, efficient but perhaps a little too much reliance on the trusty sonic. The emphasis on the 'sonic' of the screwdriver was really good though. I thought the moment at the end when Waldorf stated she hadn't seen any good special effects after the Doctor and Romana's cover story being they were in special effects was wonderful, because the anticipation of the Doctor dematerialising the TARDIS to hear her reaction was brilliant. A really lovely way to end what was a very good audio adventure!

Rating: 8/10