Distant Voices

"Every castle has a ghost story."

Writer: Lizbeth Myles

Format: Audio

Released: February 2020

Series: Twelfth Doctor Chronicles 1.03

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor

Synopsis

Cameron is haunted by strange voices. As she gets on with her job conducting tours around Rochester Castle, she hopes that they'll just go away.

Fortunately for Cameron, the Doctor has joined her tour. He hears the voices too, and he knows what they mean. Time itself is starting to fracture...

Verdict

Distant Voices was an excellent audio adventure to continue the Twelfth Doctor Chronicles! It was definitely the best episode in the boxset thus far and I think for me the primary setting of Rochester Castle might have had a lot to do with that. I'm a big fan of castles and whilst I have never visited the particular castle this adventure was centred around, I could easily appreciate the historical connotations of the surroundings. Cameron was a really good character and getting introduced to her working a tour around the castle was terrific stuff. It was a lot of fun to have the Doctor joining the guided tour and I can just imagine the Twelfth Doctor in particular not having the greatest patience when it came to walking around the site. There was more to Cameron though with the voices she could hear and bringing her together with the Doctor after his TARDIS issues that drew him in was very good. His correcting of some of the information Cameron put forward was magnificent and just terrific characterisation for what I would expect of this incarnation. His ability to see that she wasn't sleeping well was intriguing and his request for knowledge of the castle's ghosts was brilliant. The Doctor also hearing the voices was really good and I thought Cameron's reaction to knowing she wasn't alone in what she could hear was lovely. Cameron was certainly what the voices were focused on and being taken back in time to 1215 was an unexpected delight. Time was fracturing and it all centred around the locale and a young tour guide. Jacob Dudman continues to impress me with his Peter Capaldi impression which really is stellar. It was outstanding here and this really did feel like a genuine Twelfth Doctor tale which is obviously what we would want. Alex as the castle shop assistant was a decent character and his ridiculing the events to just being reenactments when it came to canon fire was a lot of fun. The Doctor and Cameron seeing King John was fantastic and I'd have loved a bit more of a reference to The King's Demons. The pair weren't quite in 1215 or 2015 but both time zones of Rochester Castle were trying to occupy the same place and the temporal explosion threat this provided was excellent. Cameron's humour when in 1215 of threatening to reveal historical events was magnificent and the Doctor's reaction was very fun indeed. The story then moving into 2815 was another unexpected development that I liked and the way Cameron handled a futuristic rifle with ease showed the Doctor that she was lying, but to herself. She wasn't really from 2015 which I thought was very well done. The fact that she was hearing echoes of a woman she knew from childhood was very good and the revelation that the Lord Protector had to be assassinated after overthrowing the Earth President was certainly interesting! There was a lot going on across three time zones which had the potential to be a cluster, but it all worked out tremendously well. Cameron being part of a future resistance suited well and the Doctor's lack of remorse for her fellow fighters having fallen seemed to fit in well for the Doctor of Series 8. There weren't really any hints of where this fitted in for the Twelfth Doctor so we'll just go with that. The use of mist worked really well for the story and I thought the atmosphere of the audio as a whole was very impressive and added a lot. The Doctor explaining how the Cameron of the 29th century was the true version was a big moment and his fixing of the time machine to return her back to the 21st century where the life she led was what she preferred was very nice. Her wanting to stay in this timezone but not be a coward of the future was a powerful thought that I really did like as a way to conclude. The Doctor revealing to her that the Lord Protector fell to his demise in a similar timeframe to King John was a terrific way to tie everything up and bring things full circle. Overall, an excellent adventure!

Rating: 9/10