Previously … Frostfire …

The second of Big Finish‘s Companion Chronicles range is Fear of the Daleks, a 2nd Doctor story narrated by Zoe (Wendy Padbury).  Like the first offering, the story is told from the point of view of modern/older Zoe.  In this instance, she’s bothered by memories of an adventure she shouldn’t have had with a mysterious man known as the Doctor.

The story involves Daleks, a race that Zoe doesn’t recall having any dealings with.  She was left on the Wheel in Space, wasn’t she? She didn’t travel with the Doctor.

The adventure Zoe remembers involves her, the Doctor, and Jamie involve in the attempted disruption of a peace process between two worlds.  With technology that can transport the essence of a person to far locations, via the creation of an avatar, Zoe is forced into a mission to assassinate one of the world’s presidents, which will blame the other.

The resulting breakdown of peace talks will serve … the Daleks!

Thoughts

What we have here is quite a lot of Zoe trying to resist the mind control, the Doctor adding to her efforts, and the Daleks deciding they can probably do it better themselves anyway.  As for Jamie … Jamie who?  You wouldn’t know he was even in this story.

Like the previous Companion Chronicle offering, this one gives heavy bias towards the character played by the narrator.  That’s probably only to be expected, otherwise the actress wouldn’t be interested in narrating the story in the first place.  However, this presents the adventure with an off-kilter bias that doesn’t reflect the series at the time.  If you like the companion that’s doing the reading, you’ll probably enjoy this bias.  If you prefer the way the original series was made, you probably won’t.

On the whole, it’s not a bad adventure.  It has the Daleks, a “monster” that Zoe didn’t encounter in the TV series.  It has a cliff-hanger at the midpoint.  But, it doesn’t really go anywhere.  It has a decent underlying plot, in that the “avatar technology” would later be used for infiltration rather than assassination, but that’s not part of this story beyond being one person’s motive.  The adventure is still just a fleeting memory that Zoe is trying to recollect.

As with the previous adventure, Fear of the Daleks is presented as an enhanced audiobook.  One voice (plus Dalek voices by Nicholas Briggs) narrating the adventure with some sound effects.  Although this makes it easy to follow what’s going on, any attempts at anyone’s voice other than Zoe’s is less than convincing.

Next time … The Blue Tooth …