I absolutely adored this one. I'm really into the noir detective setting in stories and this one did not disappoint. It meshes the typical femme fatale trope with a mob story, but the protagonist is a shape shifting penguin that works as a private eye so I'm all set.

The voice over with Frobisher is great, plus the music is amazing in terms of setting the ambiance. The plot twist at the end is okay, and the resolution, although simple, is cool as a worker's rights message.

Robert Sherman is one of the greatest writers in Doctor Who.

i do enjoy a good private eye parody, and this certainly is one of those. did not expect it to end with a reference to casablanca though

Doctor Who does a Cartoon Noir Parody!
At first this sounds kinda odd of a idea, but if we learned anything from Who… Weird Ideas often turn out as some of its most interesting Entries in the Whoniverse. And while it’s far away from being an amazing Parody, it’s still quite enjoyable! I think the Parody Part was done quite solid, you get your usual Tropes from the Noir Genre (Femme Fatal, a loner Detective etc) and while this Release does nothing new with the very much formulaic Idea of a Genre Parody, it still executes it quite well. Especially the Dialogue is absolutely enjoyable here. It’s a shame we didn’t get much more from Frobisher on Audio (I still need to get around to the Holy Terror) but going from this one, the Character works quite well on Audio. For a Sherman Script, it’s more on the lighter Side (which could be surprising for some), but I think he still delivered a quite fun Story here. I’d think it needs to be said that this might very well be the weakest Shearman Story that I got to listen/read/watch so far.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Project: Twilight

This story is silly and absurd in all the right ways. It's fitting for one of the most absurd companions, a shapeshifting penguin private eye. He's a perfect parody of the cynical film noir detective and the brilliant narration by Robert Jezek really brings this homage to that era of detective fiction together. While the Doctor isn't present for a good chunk of this, Colin Baker very much is as Frobisher takes on the Doctor's form as a disguise in his investigation. As a brit, I can't speak too much on the quality of Colin Baker's accent, but it was very funny and I personally thought it was quite good. This story feels like it could be a precursor to the companion chronicles.

The plot was simple but enjoyable. It was very meta, with Frobisher mentioning the tropes of sci-fi and "private eye" stories. Even the MacGuffin of the story was meta with all the characters only referring to it as a "something". I really liked the character of Josiah W. Dogbolter, he was fun as a generic mob boss/gangster character and was performed quite well by Toby Longworth.

Overall, a fun little story. It's a shame this was the last appearance of Frobisher on audio.

Next Story: The Holy Terror

I just loved The Maltese Penguin. While nothing overly substantial in terms of story, it was a pitch perfect homage to film noir. Frobisher is also just such a fun idea for a character, too. I wish we got more of him or other weird aliens travelling with the doctor, especially in alternative media from television where this sort of thing can be explored more in the future.

I really liked how the lady turned out to be Francine, Frobisher's ex-wife. That was a funny little part of the mystery, and I liked all the characters in this story. The idea of this world being hostile to an original idea and the whole economy collapses in the face of it was entertaining, too. There's just enough details and ideas here to make it easy to follow the audio from start to finish. Robert Shearman remains a rock-solid writer in just about anything with his name attached to it that I come across.