Audio Review: Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest 2 - The Dead Shoes

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Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest, Part 2 - The Dead Shoes by Paul Magrs


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a bit more like it. The complaints about the sparseness of the sound design and the balance of narration versus dramatization that I made in my review of Hornets' Nest: The Stuff of Nightmares largely still apply to this next installment. However, laying those aside and taking this audio on its own terms, I think it succeeds better than the previous installment for a couple of reasons.

First, though the sound design remains sparse, I thought it was more effective than the previous story. While listening to The Stuff of Nightmares, I was constantly second-guessing the sound design, asking myself why they had chosen to add particular sound effects and not add others, why they hadn't used music at a particular point, and so on. I didn't have any such problem with The Dead Shoes, and thought the use of music in particular was quite effective in conveying atmosphere.

Second, the story is livelier and shows more of the wacky inventiveness that I usually expect from a Paul Magrs story. There are odd museums, old ballet shoes with the owner's feet rather gruesomely still inside them, and numerous clever tricks with the 4th Doctor's famous scarf.

Finally, Tom Baker's performance is more consistently lively and energetic than it was in the first installment. There's been a lot of discussion online about whether Tom Baker's performance in these audios is consistent with his TV persona. I think it is, although it's a performance slanted very much towards the amiable eccentric side of the 4th Doctor.

Actually, when you consider how much of Tom Baker's performance on TV was visual - the way he could transform in an instant from remote alien dignity to being all wide eyes and wider grin - it's possibly a bit amazing that the portrayal works well on audio at all. Possibly what I perceived as a flat performance in The Stuff of Nightmares was simply an attempt to convey the remote and alien side of the 4th Doctor's persona. Maybe that just doesn't work without the visuals to accompany it.

The Dead Shoes is still not an absolute home run of an audio, but it does make for pleasant relaxed listening while curled up with a cup of tea on a cold winter's night.

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