Hunters of Earth

"We want your kind out of here."

Writer: Nigel Robinson
Format: Audio
Released: January 2013
Series: Destiny of the Doctor 01

Featuring: First Doctor, Susan

Synopsis

Shoreditch, London, 1963. The Beatles have beaten John Smith and the Common Men to No. 1 and satellites are being launched in outer space. Back down on Earth, strange goings-on are occurring: the normally placid teenagers of Coal Hill are running riot and a master thief is stealing highly specialised equipment.

Schoolgirl Susan Foreman just wants an easy life for herself and her grandfather, the mysterious Doctor. She wants to be liked and accepted by Cedric and all the other pupils at Coal Hill School. But there's trouble in the streets and bombsites around Totter's Lane.

The teenagers are becoming dangerous... Their mission: to hunt down anyone different, or alien... Susan's quiet life is about to spiral out of control. Having inadvertently started drawing attention to herself, she finds herself in a desperate situation. Suddenly, the chase is on and she and her grandfather are now the hunted.

Verdict

Hunters of Earth was an excellent audio adventure and a great start to the Destiny of the Doctor series! It has been a long time coming for me to begin this set of stories and whilst I won't be committing to doing all eleven in consecutive days, I am very excited to see an adventure with each Doctor all tied together to celebrate Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary. I have to say, I thought Carole Ann Ford was superb as the narrator and her performance, along with the writing, easily captured the era of the First Doctor which was a huge plus. This story is hugely unique in that it's set prior to An Unearthly Child which is always exciting. What made it more exciting was the fact that it was very close in proximity to the television series debut as the Doctor and Susan were on Earth in 1963 but Ian and Barbara weren't quite suspicious of the latter just yet. It was terrific to hear Susan in Coal Hill School and trying to fit in and whilst she was obviously standing out a little bit, it wasn't as alien as I thought she'd appear. The little nod to The Idiot's Lantern with the Doctor purchasing his materials from Magpie Electricals was excellent. I thought Ford's impression of William Hartnell was very good throughout and you really did get the feel of the First Doctor. Rook was a very good character and initial enemy and I also thought Cedric's relationship with Susan was great. The revelation that he had been spying on her as he suspected she was alien was actually quite a shock but I really loved how she thought he was referring to the modern definition. Cedric and Rook were not hunting alines in the extraterrestrial sense but rather in the foreign. This was a time of Cold War and Rook wanting help in the war against their enemies was very good. They simply wanted the intelligence they thought came from other countries, not other planets. The story really changed from that point when they were suspected of being foreigners and that wasn't a bad thing at all. The way the Doctor and Susan worked together to deduce just what was happening with them being hunted and aggressively told they weren't wanted was excellent. I really loved hearing them work together and it was great to see their relationship at a stage where it was just the pair of them travelling. The TARDIS needing repairs was a lovely little backstory and I did like how authoritative the Doctor was when it came to his granddaughter. The conclusion was nicely done with the radio link capturing the 1963 setting very nicely. Overall, this was a terrific insight into the lives of the Doctor and Susan before the TV series started and it was a fantastic story to go with it.

Rating: 9/10