The soundtrack of a ‘lost’ television adventure, now with digitally remastered soundtrack and a linking narration by Colin Baker. The Doctor, Ben and Polly visit a human colony whose inhabitants turn out to have been brainwashed by giant crab-like creatures – the Macra.
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Good story crawls out of BBC’s vaults The BBC, in the days before home video, decided that some of its programs were no longer required in its archives. In a somewhat unsystematic purging, many classics were consigned to the flames, including several Doctor Who stories. Fortunately, some fans of the series had made their own audio recordings, and these (following a thorough re-mastering by the BBC) are being released.
Giant space crabs of death “The Macra Terror”, by Ian Stuart Black, is one of those adventures that probably benefits from being presented in audio format. Why? Because, in visual terms, the Macra themselves have a reputation for being utterly rubbish. Doctor Who seldom did well at representing non-humanoid monsters, and the Macra are no exception.As it is, however, we get a decently paced adventure with clear audio quality and intelligible audio narration. “The Macra Terror”, however, departs from the format of the rest of the missing story audio CDs, reusing the narration from the earlier audio cassette release of the story, which is in the past tense and is read by actor Colin Baker rather than one of the TV companions contemporary to the story (the latter being the norm for the Audio CD releases). The past tense narration doesn’t work as well as the present tense narration to which CD listeners are accustomed.The crab-like Macra have relatively little direct involvement with the story. Instead, the Doctor and companions Ben, Polly and Jamie are pitted against a society of brainwashed humans. Some use is made of the traditional capture-escape-capture motif of early Doctor Who, but not exclusively so. The holiday camp colony is a bizarre image, accentuated by the grating 1960s incidental and in-scene music, but plays a background role in much of the proceedings. In general the story is decently constructed and reasonably diverse, and Troughton and company are on good form. “The Macra Terror” is unremarkable, perhaps, but has a few original ideas and has earned its place in the Doctor Who canon.
Fantastic ! Back in the early 1980’s, the only way to experience vintage Dr Who was through the medium of fan circulated audio tapes (usually pretty dire sound quality) containing soundtracks of the various stories. I well remember the magic of sitting over my tape recorder listening through the static as these stories unfolded. The tricky bit was visualising what was happening during periods without dialogue. The story reviews in Dr Who Monthly and the Target novelisations were invaluable for this. Now of course we have these wonderful clear recordings, complete with linking narration and what a treat they are. Nothing can completely compensate for the criminal loss of these stories on video, but these CD releases are superb, bring some classic Dr Who back to life and transport me straight back to my childhood. Highly recommended !