HEAR MY DOCTOR WHO/BLAIR WITCH MASH-UP FREE

My Doctor Who audio story The Demons Of Red Lodge aired on BBC Radio 4 Extra this weekend, and you can still hear it via BBC iPlayer for the next five days.

This was the title-story of Big Finish's 2010 anthology, starring Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor and Sarah Sutton as Nyssa.  It was also my attempt to bring a little Blair Witch Project atmosphere to Doctor Who's world.

I wanted to see what would happen if I dropped the Fifth Doctor – the most fragile and vulnerable of them all – into Blair Witch territory, complete with scary woods, no compass, no short-term memory and no TARDIS. What if he woke up in darkness, in the middle of nowhere, alongside a similarly petrified Nyssa? Without even a Blair Witch-esque legend to focus his imagination on, the Doctor would have no idea of the nature or magnitude of the threat he’s facing or even a recollection of where or when he is.

That’s the initial premise of The Demons Of Red Lodge. The Doctor, afraid in the dark, without even knowing why he’s afraid.  He and Nyssa have nothing to fear but fear itself.  Or do they?  While attending the story's recording, I was happy to see how Peter and Sarah seized the script and made it all look so effortless, aided and abetted by director Ken Bentley.  Susan Kyd is great in two roles here and it was also lovely to have a contribution from Duncan Wisbey - a great voice artist who starred in one of the sketches I wrote for Radio 4's Laurence & Gus: Hearts & Minds a while back.

On the day of recording, Peter had something of a gravelly throat from shoutingalot in the West End's Spamalot.  This almost certainly helped him lend the Doctor's voice a nicely raw edge during the Demons sessions.  I was delighted with the results and proud to be a part of such a consistent release, which seems to have gone down quite well with fans.

You can hear The Demons Of Red Lodge on BBC iPlayer here, for the next five days.  Looks like the anthology's other stories - The Entropy Composition (Rick Briggs), Doing Time (William Gallagher) and Special Features (John Dorney) - are set to follow on BBC Radio 4 Extra on a weekly basis.

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