You Are the Doctor

"Make the right choices or you will die."

Writer: John Dorney

Format: Audio

Released: December 2015

Series: Monthly Adventures 207a

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Ace

Synopsis

YOU are the Doctor, a mysterious traveller in time and space. Will YOU succeed in foiling the ghastly plans of the horrible Porcians, the most inept invaders in all the cosmos? Or will you get yourself killed, over and over again?

Verdict

You Are the Doctor was not the greatest of stories to kick off the collection of short adventures comprising the two-hundred-and-seventh Monthly Adventures release. I was intrigued by the title and the format prior to listening, but this quickly established itself as not being up my alley. I have something of a love-hate relationship with the Decide Your Destiny novels and this is essentially one of those in audio format. Thankfully, the title is misleading in that we as the listener aren't actually a part of the story and certainly not accompanying the Doctor on his travels, but I would suggest the title actually more so refers to Ace in the companion role. Here she is seen learning how to fly the TARDIS which is actually a story arc I can get on board with. She's clearly established as companion here and has been for a long time, so for her to learn the workings of the TARDIS is a fun idea. Sure, she's bound to get her first try wrong but that's not a big issue. The Doctor wanted to see where exactly she had gone wrong. Was it the location or the when? That was intriguing to explore. What I didn't like much at all was the format of the story. I think that John Dorney is a very talented writer and I do appreciate his effort to innovate and be unique with his style of stories, but this didn't work for me. The format actually seemed to overshadow the actual adventure and that's not a good thing. I didn't like how Chimbly was interrupting the end of each track and it really interfered with the listener experience. By the time he had laid out the choices available to the listener and which time track to choose, I'd almost forgotten what had happened at the end of the last one! It wasn't a fun style and it absolutely destroyed any chance this story had of flowing well. The time tracks were only 1-3 minutes long so the constant interruptions were just a pain in the arse. I felt like things were a real slog by the end. I thought giving the listener power was good on paper but when we were told on more than one occasion that our decision was the wrong one it actually felt like a little bit of a slap in the face! And I absolutely was not going to restart the story from track one when I went the routes that resulted in either the Doctor or Ace dying! I think the concept behind the Resurrectionist was actually pretty decent and I do like the effort in providing an explanation for the choose your adventure format. It just didn't work for me and almost felt like cheating. So without that creature being present the Doctor and Ace could very feasibly have just died? That felt like a bit of a stretch to me. I like the Chimbly is a recurring character from The Fourth Wall and with that being his previous appearance this makes for a good kind of story to follow up with format wise, but I just found him so annoying buy the end with his interference in my listener experience. The penultimate two tracks just being basically nothing to lead into the extended final track was a bit naff and whilst I understand by that point we'd learned that time could be reversed to explain the alternate timelines and the deaths, but it just didn't resonate with me. The creature being freed simply by the Doctor ducking out of the way of a gunshot was a little lazy and didn't exactly feel a rewarding resolution! I think technically you could just listen to this story all in one go without actually choosing different tracks, but it's just messy. I'd much prefer an unabridged version but I doubt I'll get one. Overall, not the best for me despite the brave effort with the format.

Rating: 4/10