Water Worlds: The Tides of the Moon

"The heavens don't need my help."

Writer: Joshua Pruett

Format: Audio

Released: May 2022

Series: Sixth Doctor Adventures 1.02

Featuring: Sixth Doctor, Mel, Hebe

Synopsis

For Hebe's first trip in the TARDIS, the Doctor and Mel take her to the nearest available 'water world' – the Moon, two billion years in the past! Its advanced humanoid inhabitants, the Gilleans, are terrorised each night by their monstrous enemies, the Sheega. Even more worrying is that in a matter of hours, this ocean world will be laid waste by the gravitational interference of the blue-green planet next door...

Verdict

The Tides of the Moon was an excellent audio to continue my way through the Water Worlds first series of Sixth Doctor Adventures! I am absolutely loving this new TARDIS trio and I really am impressed with the start they've had. It would take some doing to follow the outstanding opener of The Rotting Deep, but this did a stellar job for Hebe's first trip in the TARDIS. She had quite the destination outing visiting the Moon over two billion years in the past! I loved the uniqueness of the setting and I thought Hebe was a lot of fun as we heard everything new through her. The idea of there being ramps in the TARDIS was a lovely touch and I thought it was great that the Doctor implied that they weren't present before Hebe's arrival with it being a suggestion that the ship liked her. I thought that was really nice and just hearing her reaction to the TARDIS materialisation sound was wonderful. That was so simple but it was a stark reminder of her newness and it really is a beautiful sound so why wouldn't she react to it? Hebe's reaction to seeing a totally new and alien planetoid and species was intriguing and her marine biologist background came in brilliant use. She quickly inspected the local plant life and realised that it wasn't always out of water, meaning something like a tide would be due soon. The foghorn sounding was pretty booming and the waves that came were crashing in a big way. The threat that posed to Hebe given her wheelchair using was added and I liked how she was audibly scared and quickly gave permission to be held. It was also nice that she was able to use her stick and walk on an alien surface. Wulk was a good character and the importance he provided in Hebe just going up to him and prodding him because he had gills was superb. She straight away realised how awful that was and how she felt when people treated her differently because she was in a wheelchair. I thought that was really important and did a stellar job in introducing her to life in the TARDIS. The Gilleans as a whole were an interesting race and I was a little surprised that they didn't originate on the Moon, but it all tied in well with the threat of the Sheega that the foghorn warned about every night. Except the warnings were getting closer now. The Doctor realising that the threat was all a myth by the lack of bodies was brilliantly simple and the fact that he allowed the Sheega to eat his coat, and then have a Gillean regurgitate it was a horrific image but one that was so effective. The Gilleans and the Sheega actually being one and the same was great and the gravitational pull of the Earth being the cause of their transformation was good. The entire city actually being a ship was something else I didn't see coming so I enjoyed that, and the use of touch to tell the ship what was needed in order to escape back home and away from the gravitational pull was terrific. Hebe was a little saddened that history would not remember the Gilleans, but she would know and now the Moon would become what she knew in her day. It was a little easy to say time heals all in regards to the Earth not getting too close, but as a whole this was another brilliant tale!

Rating: 9/10