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The Doctor and Charley land in Manhattan, 1938, where they
stumble upon a dead private detective. Playing gumshoe, the
Doctor becomes embroiled in a hunt for a missing Russian scientist.
Meanwhile, Orson Welles prepares for his legendary War
of the Worlds radio broadcast. Could there be a grain of
truth in this Hallowe'en jape about alien invasion...?
This
play could have been called Invaders from Spaced, featuring
as it does the vocal talents of two stars from that esteemed
sitcom. Simon Pegg plays gangster Don Chaney, while Jessica
Stevenson plays femme fatale Glory Bee, although both
are difficult to recognise through their adopted accents.
It's
ironic that, just like in his previous audio adventure, Minuet
in Hell, McGann is again surrounded by dodgy American
accents, but at least this time the intention of the piece
is clearly light-hearted. Writer/director Mark Gatiss (who
is, of course, now best known for his comedy work as one of
The League of Gentlemen) confesses in the sleeve notes
that his story gets "a bit silly". Thus we are offered bizarre
names such as Glory Bee and Bix Biro (Welles' radio boss,
played by Paul Putner, who appeared alongside Gatiss in one
of the sketches for BBC2's Doctor Who Night in 1999).
There's also a ranting alien who sounds like a cross between
Davros and Sil (Putner again, who played a similarly Davros-like
role in Lee and Herring's Good Morning with Richard Not
Judy).
The
highlight of this tale is the involvement of Orson Welles,
who is convincingly impersonated by David Benson. As with
the fake newsreel heard at the beginning of Storm Warning,
the opening to last year's "season" of Eighth Doctor audio
adventures, the re-creation of a period broadcast really helps
to set the scene.
McGann
is also good fun as the Doctor plays, rather amateurishly,
at being a "private dick".
The
cliffhangers aren't as exciting as we've got used to from
Big Finish, but this adventure certainly provides a stylistic
start to McGann's "second season".
Richard
McGinlay
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