Doctor Who and the Pescatons (audio story)
Doctor Who and the Pescatons was the first original, officially licensed audio drama based upon Doctor Who. Originally released by Argo Records, the story featured Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen, as the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. It was divided into two episodes, complete with opening and closing themes, simulating the televised series.
Discounting a couple of radio appearances and an LP version of Genesis of the Daleks with added narration, The Pescatons was the last time Baker participated in an original Doctor Who audio drama until the Hornets' Nest arc in 2009.
The story was unusual because of its first-person perspective. Though first-person narratives weren't entirely without precedent — the earlier Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks had been written from Ian Chesterton's point of view — this was the first time a story had been told from the Doctor's perspective, similar to Big Finish Productions' Companion Chronicles series. Until 2010's Dead Air, it remained the only original story narrated by the Doctor himself.
It was also unusual for its depiction of a genocide devised and led by Sarah and the Doctor, without either character displaying even a tinge of remorse.
Publisher's summary
The Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane battle against some of the most heinous foes to emerge from the outer universe: The Pescatons. The Doctor finds himself in the capital city of London, where the population is bewildered and trembling beneath the violent onslaught of a merciless invader.
Who or what is the mighty Zor, whose green slanting luminous eyes glare out from the dark of night like giant emeralds? What is the powerful alien force that is bringing Earth's civilisation to a standstill, threatening to annihilate everything in its path?
This is the story of a dying Planet, of a Deadly Weed, and the merciless Creatures themselves. It is a Challenge to the Doctor -- a frightening race against time...
Plot
to be added
Cast
References
- The Doctor sings "Hello, Dolly!".
Notes
- Doctor Who and the Pescatons was released to capitalise on the success of the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.
- Bill Mitchell (Zor) filmed a scene for TV: Frontier in Space in which he played a 26th century newscaster. While the scene was cut from the televised version of the story, it was included in the novelisation PROSE: Doctor Who and the Space War.
Continuity
- The plot hinges on the Fourth Doctor playing the piccolo "whenever he's nervous". This notion has no basis in any other licensed story. It may have been writer Victor Pemberton's attempt to build a kind of continuity between the Fourth Doctor and the recorder-playing Second Doctor, since he was one of the architects of the Troughton era.
- A scene which once may have played as a "Tom Baker-ism" now has retroactive continuity with A Good Man Goes to War and Closing Time. At one point, the Doctor and Sarah-Jane encounter an abandoned baby on the streets of London. The Doctor attempts to talk to him, but flatly says that "he won't talk". Sarah corrects him, saying that "he can't talk". Since modern listeners know that the Eleventh Doctor claims to be able to speak "Baby", the scene now plays as though the Doctor's statement is probably more accurate than Sarah's.
- Unusually, the Doctor here calls the Pescatons "evil" on many occasions. This characterisation of another species is atypical for the Doctor. Indeed, it lays the foundation for another extraordinary feature of the story: the Doctor and Sarah devise and participate in the remorseless genocide of the Pescatons.
- The Doctor asks Sarah Jane, "What do you take me for, the Pied Piper of Hamelin?" During his first incarnation, the Doctor, John and Gillian arrived in Hamelin in 1284 were able to free the children of the town from the Pied Piper's realm. (COMIC: Challenge of the Piper) Sarah Jane would later encounter the Pied Piper herself in London in October 2009. At this time, she learned that he was an energy entity from the Jeggorabax Cluster who had crashed to Earth, a region known to house beings which feed on emotions, in the Weserbergland Mountains in Lower Saxony in 1283. With the assistance of Clyde Langer and Rani Chandra, she was able to trap him in a fragment of the Weserbergland Meteorite, a piece of rock to which he was bound. She then placed the fragment in an alien box from which nothing could escape. (TV: The Day of the Clown)
Novelisation
- Main article: The Pescatons (novelisation)
- Novelised as The Pescatons by Victor Pemberton and released in 1991 by Target Books. To date it remains the only Doctor Who audio drama (as opposed to radio play) to be adapted as a novel.
Home media releases
This story has been released several times on both cassette and audio CD.
Record release
Argo record release: 1976.
Cassette releases
Audio CD releases
Silva Screen 1991 release
