Dead Air

The Tenth Doctor travels back in time to 1966 in pursuit of an alien weapon called The Hush. The weapon is drawn to sound. The Hush kills, and also cancels all sound...creating areas of absolute silence. He traces the Hush to a pirate radio station, Radio Bravo, broadcasting from a boat. The Doctor and the people running the station (Layla, Tom and Jasper) are all trapped on the boat with the weapon.Years later, in a wreck at the bottom of the sea, a recording of the Doctor's experiences on the boat is found. Unfortinately, they restore the recording and listen to it.

This Doctor Who audiobook is entertaining and exciting! Filled with sound effects and distorted audio to enhance the plot, the story moves along quickly, with suspense. David Tennant is narrating, and does a superb job! I have hearing loss, but was able to perfectly hear and understand him easily, even with all the extra distortions added as part of the story. This is a shorter story than most of them....at just shy of 1 hr 15 minutes, but a lot is packed into that hour . The moments when the characters are unsure if they are speaking to another human or The Hush were all quite creepy. This is definitely another great audiobook presented by BBC Audio.

I'm definitely listening to more in this series. So far, each one has been just outstanding! ( )

Really cool use of the audio book format for this story! ( )

A fantastic story! A marvelous addition to the Doctor Who fandom. Read by David Tennant, this is a "lost tape" detailing an adventure the Doctor never wanted to be heard. Be sure to listen to the end! ( )

Freaking fantastic! Listen at night. In the dark. Possibly on your way home from work. But be careful. It may freak you out a bit. ( )

It was a typical Doctor Who episode : The Doctor shows up someplace (a pirate radio boat) sometime (the 60’s) and something (a sentient noise monster) is trying to destroy Earth. He’s helped by a twenty-something woman (a bubbly radio DJ) who is sort-of-involved with a normal human guy (crush on another DJ), there’s a hint of angst about Gallifrey (the monster’s creators), and of course the usual noble sulking about his companions (he’s traveling alone).

If I sound like I didn’t like it, that’s not true -- it was a quick bite of sci fi fun, and the characters were good -- but it was definitely in the ranks of the mediocre when it comes to Doctor Who.

David Tennant was a pretty good narrator, with different voices/accents for each character. He didn’t make the female character sound like a drag queen (which is disturbingly common in the audiobooks I’ve listened to so far). In fact he gave her enough character that she actually felt like the kind of quirky, plucky young woman the doctor usually hangs out with.

This could have -- and should have -- gone a lot creepier. This is an audiobook about a noise monster who silences people. Come on. That’s another “are you my mummy?” just waiting to happen, but they didn’t use it very well. There was just some static every once in a while, and an ending cribbed from The Ring. The only thing that got even close to being creepy was the random skipping and glitching the CD did... because it was a scratched up library CD. ( )