Doctor Who Review: ‘The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Dead London’ Audio
By James Aggas
The Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller are separated. Both are in the city of London, but in different time zones. Season Two of ‘The Eighth Doctor Adventures’ kicks off with ‘Dead London’!
Dead London kicks off the second season of The Eighth Doctor Adventures with a nice, easy opener. A lot of Doctor Who stories begin with the Doctor and his companion getting into trouble. But Dead London is different. This time, as the episode (and season) begins, the Eighth Doctor is in trouble already! It begins with something as small as a parking offense. Then events begin to escalate very, very quickly…
Writer Pat Mills presents a great vision of London, in which several versions of London co-exist with one another. For example, some areas of the city are firmly in 21st century London. But other areas are in World War One, or even the 17th century.
The how and why of it is answered along the way. But it’s a great way of instantly presenting the audience with some rather cool visuals to imagine. It’s not surprising that Pat Mills provides such clear visuals for the audience.
As a veteran writer of comics, and even the creator of popular British comic 2000AD, he has a large amount of experience of giving the audience some great, instant visuals that still require their imagination, but not too much of it. It’s fantastic to know that such a skill has transferred from the page to the medium of audio so easily.
Mills has even written a few Fourth Doctor comics for Doctor Who Weekly. So Dead London is far from his first trip into the Doctor Who universe.
Very memorable characters
Some rather colorful characters are introduced along the way. While the Doctor is separated from Lucie, he finds himself temporarily partnered up with “Springheeled Sophie”. A young cockney woman who’s talented at both gymnastics and pick-pocketing, she’s a great match for the Eighth Doctor. Not surprising, considering that in some ways, she shares a few things in common with Lucie.
The most interesting character though is one who is several. Rupert Vansittart (who appeared in Ninth Doctor episodes Aliens of London/World War Three) plays Sepulchre. Because Sepulchre has different disguises and roles in all of the different time zones, this gives Vansittart a variety of characters to play. Vansittart clearly has a lot of fun playing all of these different versions of Sepulchre, so he’s a joy to listen to.
The character of Sepulchre also allows Pat Mills to include a very anti-authoritarian angle in Dead London. Stories that explore anti-fascism and revolutions are common themes in a lot of Mills’ writing. Unsurprisingly, this can give his stories a rather dark tone. But Dead London was overall considerably light-hearted and rather fun.
Dead London was a great way to open the second season of The Eighth Doctor Adventures. Like many of the TV series’ opening episodes, it’s a very light story that still presents plenty of interesting ideas, colorful characters and cool concepts. It’s also a Doctor Who story that you can just dive straight into. A very enjoyable story indeed.
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