Scratchman

Contains spoilers.

Scratchman was written by Tom Baker. The audiobook is read by him, and as the great majority of the story is told by the Doctor in the first person, there is nobody more suited to do so in the whole universe.

It is so wonderful to hear Tom Baker read the story, and so easy to imagine his Doctor (as he was on TV in the 1970s) acting out the part as described - especially the many occasions when the Doctor is described as smiling or grinning broadly. Just as he proved when he returned for his cameo in Day of the Doctor, Tom will always be able to return to be the Doctor whenever he chooses to. Here he even manages to recapture the style of his early period, circa seasons 12-13, although the humour on display is occasionally more reminiscent of a later era, perhaps seasons 16 or 17 when Douglas Adams wrote for the series.

Appropriately enough for something evoking the early Tom Baker era, the Doctor's Companions are Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan. While he doesn't exactly do impressions of them, Tom manages to capture their mannerisms perfectly - Harry is characterised broadly, but then he was drawn like that on TV too! In many ways the best thing about this story is the portrayal of and interplay between the three heroes, which keeps it always terrific fun.

The basic plot is obviously based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. After a first act where the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry save the Earth from a genetically engineered virus that converts mannys into "scarecrow"-like proto-cybermannys, Harry and Sarah Jane are infected and taken away to another dimension that is the home of an alien called "Scratchman" who claims to be the devil.

The Doctor goes after them in the TARDIS to rescue them and defeat Scratchman, who wants to take over the universe in order to nom it, as he has nearly finished noming his own dimension. Scratchman forces the three of them to play deadly games, which has some similarity to The Celestial Toymaker. Scratchman does this because he gets noms from their emotions, especially fear. He wants to know what the Doctor is afraid of, but the Doctor resists him, and eventually turns the tables on Scratchman.

There is also a framing device where the Time Lords have put the Doctor on trial for his life for interfering, but, despite this having been done before, it works here because it is simply an excuse for the Doctor to tell the main story from his point of view, and so you can, if you like, imagine the Doctor as an unreliable narrator telling a shaggy doge story. And, because it's Tom doing it, this only adds to the fun.

Unusually for an audiobook in my experience, Tom plays all the parts bar one - the Cyberleader is voiced by Nicholas Briggs, with the same voice he uses to play them in the new series on TV. It's a pity that they couldn't have made him sound like the Cyberleader from Revenge of the Cybermannys, to help complete the season 12 feeling. There are a few other moments where the influence of the new series makes itself felt, such as referring to the TARDIS as a "blue box" instead of a "police box," or emphasising the Doctor's role as saviour of the universe rather than someone who gets involved in most of his adventures by mistaik. None of these would be bad in isolation, but the presence of the new series Cybervoices calls attention to them. I can only assume that Tom is a fan, or else his editor is.

The only serious strike against Scratchman is the length. Maybe it is not so noticeable if you are reading the book yourself, but as an audiobook it is 8 hours and 40 minutes long, over 8 CDs, which makes it about 2 hours longer than Trial of a Time Lord. If this had been a TV story or even a Big Finish audio play instead of a novel, it would be considered to be the most padded story of all time - even more so than Frontier in Space! Then again, padding is only really padding when it is boring, and it is such fun to be in Tom's company here that it is hard to hold this against the story, although it may make it harder to revisit the story in the future because of the time commitment listening to it takes up.

I must also conclude that the padding out of the plot to full novel length has taken the story of Scratchman away from its origins as a Doctor Who film script, presumably intended to be about 2 hours long or roughly the same duration as a four-part TV story. Supposedly it was first cooked up as a film idea by Tom Baker and Ian Marter in the 1970s, and they wanted Vincent Price to play Scratchman (which would have been great). I remember reading about this many years ago, probably in Doctor Who Magazine, and somebody had even gone to the trouble of mocking up a film poster to go with it.

The 1970s origins are clear from the setting of the first act, a remote Scottish island where there are no signs of modern technology such as mobile 'phones or internets (which allows the island to be more easily isolated), and where pinball is considered to be a radical new fad among young people by Harry and Sarah Jane. To a modern audience, this setting may as well be as remote as the historical eras that Jamie and Victoria came from.

I recommend reading or listening to this - and listen to it, if you can. We're lucky to have Tom Baker, there really is nobody else like him.