Little Doctors

"You should see it on the inside..."

Writer: Phillip Lawrence 

Format: Audio

Released: February 2015

Series: Short Trips 5.02

Featuring: Second Doctor, Jamie, Zoe

Synopsis 

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to a sophisticated Earth colony. Olympos is a world of hi-tech cities, where the lives of the populace are controlled by an all-seeing, all-knowing super computer: Zeus. When the Doctor sees how the human inhabitants have been robbed of the more simple pleasures, he sets out to bring real life back to the colony. But his mental connection to Zeus has some unexpected consequences...

Verdict 

Little Doctors was a very good little Short Trips audio! I must say that for this story being under the Short Trips banner, I thought the increase in length was brilliantly beneficial. Many times in the past when I've blogged stories from the first four series of Short Trips, writing about stories that are only twelve or thirteen minutes long can prove difficult but with this story going over the half hour mark, it's not hard at all to be honest! It's up there with the lengths of Last of the Titans and The Ratings War which are dubbed bonus stories and that's exactly what I consider this range. At £2.99 the value is excellent and I would definitely recommend the series to any Doctor Who fan! They're all Who stories at heart no matter the format or who is narrating. Speaking of which, I thought Frazier Hines was absolutely magnificent narrating the story. He really was. Based on the Companion Chronicle audios I've done in the past I didn't think it was surprising and I didn't really expect anything less, but it was just so lovely to hear. He absolutely nailed Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor so well that you could be forgiven for thinking it was the late great actor himself! When narrating it didn't sound as though it was the actor who played the companion we all know and love in Jamie McCrimmon but when he needed to voice the part of a character he's now been playing for the best part of five decades, he stepped back into the role sublimely. When you've got a narrator as good as this, it makes the story so much more enjoyable. The story itself had a decent plot and I loved the name a lot more after listening. The thought of loads of little baby Patrick Troughton Second Doctor's was marvellous. What a sight that would be! The humour that came through with this story was really great. I found the reference to The Wheel in Space in regards to Zoe very intriguing and judging by some of the dialogue within the audio that this was Zoe's first journey since arriving on the TARDIS following her encounter with the Cybermen. I'm not sure where chronology officially stands on that point but I can see it as more than feasible. Olympos was a good setting and I loved how it served as a futuristic Ancient Greece. Zeus was interesting to say the least but I found the society accepting pre-planned birth in such a way quite disturbing. What happened to traditional intercourse? Anyway, I won't go into that. Lev and Drex were fantastic characters despite my thoughts on the way they were going to conceive a baby. They got on well with the Doctor and co which was good. I loved their reaction to the TARDIS arriving but I thought the Time Lord's response was even better. I really did love that. The resolution to the numerous little Doctors running around the place was decent and I liked how it tied things up nicely. This TARDIS trio is a great one and they were presented fantastically well with some phenomenal characterisation. A good plot, superb characters and a phenomenal narrator. Overall, despite its relative shortness, this was a really great little story. I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Rating: 8/10