Audiobook

Doctor Who: The Scent of Blood
written by Andrew Lane, read by Dan Starkey

For the Eighth Doctor's entry in my 60th anniversary celebratory marathon, the obvious choice might've been a Big Finish audio drama — that's arguably where his era really exists, given his TV time is limited to one TV movie (which I've watched repeatedly as the Eighth Doctor contribution to marathons such as this in the past, so it certainly didn't fit my "something new" rule) and a minisode (also previously seen, of course). Other reasonable choices to represent "his era" would've included the DWM comic strip or one of the many BBC novels — but, as I've said before, I didn't want to do too many novels (plus I read quite a lot of them at the time, so would've had to pick a random later one), and I'd already ticked off the DWM strip (I was trying to avoid repeating too many types of media). But what else is there?

Well, for quite a few years now, Big Finish haven't been the only ones producing original Doctor Who audio — the BBC themselves have stuck their oar in from time to time. They do a lot of audiobook readings of existing print books, of course, but they also do audio originals. As they've recently done a trilogy of these for the Eighth Doctor, all of which I've bought through Audible, I thought now would be a good excuse to start them. I don't think they were planned as a trilogy — they seem to keep going back to the same writer, reader, and guest lead character (de facto companion, I guess), and they've done it three times now, rather than it consciously being "a trilogy" — so I've only picked the first for this entry (in contrast to what I've chosen for another Doctor, but more on that soon... well, in a couple of weeks...)