The Silver Turk [AUDIO/2011.10.15]

★★★★☆

  Dark nights and violent thunderstorms, an unspeakable menace haunting the shadows and a monster gaining new life from a crack of lightning on top of a cathedral... oh yes, and there's Mary Shelley in the TARDIS. Has there ever been a more fitting companion-adventure pairing?

  The Silver Turk feels like a perfect meeting of worlds: the Eighth Doctor's Byronesque look and breathless romantic attitude, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley's more collected but nonetheless excited and compassionate personality in the face of travel in the TARDIS, a Gothic horror story with automatons creating automatons, mysterious deaths and two outsiders striving for survival. I've heard and watched several Marc Platt stories at this stage, and every one of them thrives on a cleverly-built atmosphere, enhanced with Platt's wonderful grasp on dialogue. There are very few writers who can make dialogue an organic ingredient of the narrative, make it feel incredibly poetic and powerful... and Platt is one of them. The Doctor's description of the Cybermen, the words the people of Vienna speak... they positively dance around the ears, and the actors are clearly having so much fun with the material. Mary Shelley's conversation with one of the Cybermen about religion is a clear standout — it's one of those moments you're not likely to forget anytime soon.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  

  The Silver Turk is one audio drama I keep revisiting every so often, to remind myself how good Doctor Who can be when everything is set to the highest standard. Paul McGann and Julie Cox are brilliant, the Cybermen are portrayed in such a fascinating light as the victims of the piece (lost in an alien world and mangled and subjected to body horror tortures), and Vienna is brought to life thanks to the incredible skill of Jamie Robertson. How fitting is it that this run of Eighth Doctor and Mary stories has its own Doctor Who title theme, with an emphasis on romance and heightened adventure?  

(original post)