📝2/10 = VERY UNENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

THE RONETTES DID IT BETTER!

I struggle with audios that feature confused or muddled beginnings, and The Sandman is just that. It’s a mess of strange sound effects and editing that make it very difficult to grasp what is going on. The only takeaway of Part 1 is that Sixie and Evelyn arrive in a world where the Doctor is believed to be the mythical, child-murdering Sandman. This puts the Doctor in a unique position among the aliens he comes across: they fear and loathe him, forcing the Doctor to use this status to slowly uncover the hidden secrets of the Clutch.

Part 2 doesn’t help much in terms of making sense of things—we still get strange sound effects, voice-modulated performances, and a plot that is all over the palace yet nowhere at all simultaneously. This audio flies way over your head, and Simon A. Forward clearly doesn’t grasp how to write an interesting Doctor Who story. You could say that he gets it all backwards!

This story is so dull and full of itself that I have completely zoned out by the time we hit the second half of it. I couldn't tell you a single thing about what is going on in it, and that's never a good sign. And what's worse is that the climax in Part 4 is a lengthy scene of incomprehensible bugger.

It's always a joy to hear Sixie and Evelyn together, but this time around Colin Baker and Maggie Stables don’t inject a lot of energy into the story. Stables drown under all the confusing stuff.

This audio goes all in with the supporting cast, mostly consisting of the lizard-like Galyari, all with weird voices. Anneke Wills, best known for playing companion Polly alongside William Hartnell’s and Patrick Troughton’s Doctors, is part of the cast but completely wasted in a performance you don’t even notice.