‘REVENGE OF THE PHANTOMS’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

Phantoms with the Third Doctor and Jo

This ‘Doctor Who’ short story was originally featured in the 1975 ‘Doctor Who Annual’. It features the Third Doctor and Jo, and is read by Katy Manning in ‘The Cloud Exiles & Other Stories’ audiobook. It’s nice to hear Katy Manning read another ‘Doctor Who’ story.

Mind you, I don’t know if it’s me, but it’s been a while since I heard Katy Manning perform as Jo in a ‘Doctor Who’ audio production, and I wonder if her voice has gotten older lately. She’s still very enthusiastic when reading the story and doing voices for the characters. 🙂

This, of course, includes doing voices for Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor as well as for her character Jo Grant. It was also fun to hear her do voices for the Phantoms featured in this story once they taunt Jo, as she and the Doctor explore this strange alien planet they’re on.

There’s not much in terms of details as to what this alien planet the Doctor and Jo are on in the story. Not even a name is given to the planet. The Doctor and Jo don’t even know the name of the alien they encounter in this story as well as what species it belongs to. 😐

The Doctor describes the alien as being a ‘warlock’, which is unusual, since wouldn’t that require the story to have some magical elements to it? Also, the Doctor tends to be referred as ‘Dr. Who’ a few times. This puzzled me, as he was called ‘the Doctor’ earlier in the tale.

I like that scene where Jo seemed to be under the alien’s influence and it was prompting her to kill the Doctor. The Doctor does all he can to break through the trance and prevent Jo from killing him. Thankfully, Jo is made of strong stuff, and she doesn’t kill her friend. 🙂

‘Revenge of the Phantoms’ rating – 7/10