It’s basically idiots lantern but with voices being stolen instead of faces I love it

The Silent Scream finds the 4th Doctor, Romana and K9 in 1930s Hollywood and I’ll be honest – it isn’t the best fit.

As with many of the two-episode 4th Doctor adventures, the listener is thrown straight into the story with the TARDIS team already wandering around Hollywoodland apparently on a mission to meet a faded film star, Loretta Waldorf (played by Doctor Who legend, Pamela Salem).

Elsewhere, film stars are losing their voices – literally having them stolen.

The Doctor has his voice stolen and after a bit of jiggery-pokery with the sonic screwdriver all is well again.

That summary may be doing the story a bit of a disservice but that is the impression I came away with. There is a villain – Dr Julius – but he made very little impact on me whilst listening. There’s also a ‘monster’ – celluloid based lifeforms. These, and Dr Julius, are explained as being products of the 22nd century and Julius has time travelled back to gather merchandise from the era of the silver screen – I think. I confess to losing interest around the time the script decided to dump some explanations into the story.

But why do I think it isn’t the best fit for this team of regulars? I had wondered if it was just me and I hadn’t got into the vibe or atmosphere of this story (which is only exacerbated by it’s brevity) but I thought I’d check out the review from Doc Oho of nearby parts to see what he thought and straight off from the bat he was saying exactly what I had been feeling.

This story is supposedly set during Season 18 but Tom Baker isn’t playing that version, the sombre, time-weary one, of the 4th Doctor. He’s playing the overly-eccentric 4th Doctor that tends to tip over into Tom Baker’s own – tiresome – ‘wacky’ persona. I’ve probably mentioned before how his ‘real life’ personality grates on me and made listening to the Nest Cottage audios quite an ordeal. This performance isn’t as bad as those but it is teetering on the brink.

But it isn’t only that. In an era, even back in Season 17, that was all about exotic alien planets and futuristic spacecraft – with only the odd trip here and there to modern-day Earth, a story set in 1930s Hollywood seems oddly out of place.

But in a programme like Doctor Who where the TARDIS can land anywhere and anywhen, why should this be a problem? And bearing in mind the last story in my marathon also featured the same TARDIS team having adventures in 1930, why did it bother me here?

In The English Way of Death, is set in 1930 but it is also set in England. The eccentric 4th Doctor, the glamorous and intelligent Romana and even the quirky robot dog, K9, fit into that world far more comfortably than they do here. Romana hooking up with a blustering ex-military man and the Doctor romping around with novelists and Bertie Wooster types just fits their style.

From the first scene featuring the Doctor in The Silent Scream, I didn’t buy it. He’s tracked down a former film star, Loretta, and is apparently her biggest fan. This is often done in Who – the 9th Doctor being a Dickens’ fan for example – but it’s usually done with a figure familiar to the audience; a real person. Here, Loretta is fictional and so I found if difficult to believe in the Doctor’s enthusiasm for her or her films. Baker also overplays their first meeting something chronic and it all just sounds very very silly.

Romana’s role in the story is fairly perfunctory and she doesn’t do a huge amount aside from take a cab ride and explore Julius’ surgery. The image of Romana and K9 hailing a cab also feels out of place for some reason and the idea that a 1930s cab driver would accept K9 as some sort of mechanical Sat Nav just didn’t work for me.

I spent a lot of the audio feeling like the script and setting better suited a different TARDIS team – the 6th Doctor and Peri or the 8th Doctor and Charley for example. I think the character beats and situations given to the Doctor and Romana would have suited both of those Doctor/companion pairings far more – can you imagine the 6th Doctor losing his voice, for example. It seems more in tune with that incarnation’s verbosity.

The plot, what there is of it, is wrapped up with a quick wave of the sonic screwdriver and the interview extras betray a difference of opinion where the leads are concerned. Tom Baker opens by praising the complexity of the script whereas Lalla Ward refers to this as a simple tale harking back to her time on TV. I don’t think either is completely correct but it’s harder to agree with Baker’s assertion of it’s complexity than Ward’s description of its simplicity.

I think another issue is that I didn’t really get any sense of time or place. The scenes in the deserted studio where the Doctor and guest character Lulu Hammerstein are threatened by the celluloid monsters is probably the best but beyond that I didn’t have a sense of 1930s Hollywoodland which is a real shame as maybe with a longer story and a larger cast this would have been communicated more effectively.

Although it’s fun to imagine the Doctor, Romana and K9 loitered in England at the end of The English Way of Death and then popped over to Los Angeles after watching one of Loretta’s films at the cinema to seek her out, this was a disappointing visit to this era of history.

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

Previous Story: The Eternal Battle

A very fun and fairly unique story. There's a rich atmosphere in this and all the characters really help bring this to life. I like how this story explores Hollywood in the 1930s which is a setting I think should feature in Doctor Who a lot more.

The main monsters of the story, the living shadows, are very good and while not as scary as other shadow-based villains they still have a strong element of fear. The main villain is an evil time-traveller. I found his motivation a tiny bit ridiculous but his actions are horrifying and the scenes of him operating on someone who can't scream because their voice was stolen was extremely uncomfortable.

There are a lot of meta-jokes in this one about the main characters being actors and other funny gags like K9 providing directions like a GPS. Overall it's a very good story with a solid theme. It balances horror and comedy quite well. I think this story would fit marvelously in current Doctor Who, possibly even classic if they got the effects right.

As a side note, the cover is absolutely fantastic and captures the feel of the story brilliantly.

Next Story: Dethras

A very bizarre story, with the audio format not fitting too well with a historical about silent cinema. It's a bit of fun, but not particularly good.

The Doctor goes on a fanboyish rampage, meeting the different stars of 20s cinema. Tom Baker does a good enough job, and is definitely the best actor in this story, but the way he's written feels a little off. It feels like the more toned-down, serious character in Season 18 doesn't match with his persona in this story. It's also a little disappointing that he gets about two scenes with his companion - they haven't had too many interactions in the season so far, and he even just gets someone else to talk to instead, which is really strange. I presume it's because it's rather difficult to record when Tom and Lalla aren't on good terms, so they have to be separate. Speaking of Lalla, Romana doesn't really get too much to do in this story, except for just tag along with the real companion of the story - Miss Waldorf. There's a nice little scene between her and K-9, where they discuss cinema, but it seems a little unnecessary. I really liked the idea that K-9 can't fight the monsters off via his conventional methods because the celluloids are attracted to light, which his laser gives off.

The villain is a decent concept, sort of poking fun at the fans who collect rare memorabilia, but, as I'm saying far too much with this range, the execution flops poorly, and he ends up being just a bit pantomime. Also, he was defeated in the stupidest way possible - "I used the sonic screwdriver to switch our voices around, so now you're in the radio!" What on earth? Sonic ex machina, and it doesn't even make sense. The Celluloids are obviously just Vashta Nerada knockoffs, but worse.

We get quite a bit of time to settle into this historical setting, which is good - You can tell Goss is a big fan of this period and the cinematic developments, as he shows a lot of aspects of Hollywood in the 20s, with the studios and the creepy clinics. They do spend a bit of time delving into it, but I think you can't really enjoy it properly without knowing the context of actors in the 20s, which they discuss a little in the interview.

What is it with Big Finish and American accents? Just hire American actors already - Jane Slavin, Pamela Salem - they all do terrible accents! It really gets on my nerves and makes the story a little bit annoying to listen to. Aside from that, Lulu and Miss Waldorf are likeable and fun, and we get to see more of the different sides of cinema with them.

It's nothing special - bit of cheesy fun, but not in a good way. If you like the 20s, you can listen to it if you want, but there's nothing else to add to it apart from that. Also just rips off a lot of other, better stories and doesn't fit too well into the timeline.