The Phoenicians [AUDIO/2019.1.29]

★★★☆☆

  All historicals are a delight to watch, read, and listen to; I'm partial to the Doctor and co. travelling back through time and meeting famous people, re-enact famous events and such. You can tell I was a history nut back in the day. I was obsessed about that stuff, and one of the reasons I was especially excited to go into The Phoenicians was because I had the story of Queen Dido of Carthage and the bull's hide lodged in my memory! It was a delight to listen to it represented in this story, to say the least -- the Horrible Histories series did some good, it seems.

   I heartily recommend The Phoenicians. It won't exactly rock your day (unless you're really passionate about the genesis of Carthage), but it's a solid sturdy piece of drama. Sure, I've experienced better historicals before, but there's still a lot of fun to be had -- the Doctor joining forces with a royal assassin, Susan learning swordfights, and Ian getting fancied by the queen herself (and Barbara looking on in barely-hidden jealousy and rage). Marc Platt always does something interesting with his regulars, and this time he incorporates the notion of the Doctor as a mythological figure (or a figure sent down to the mortal realm by the gods) and uses it to create some heady drama. At this point, I'm fairly confident in saying that you need not worry about the cast of the First Doctor Adventures -- it's all about their interpretations of the characters, not their competence on impersonating them. This four-parter is a competent historical with lots of historical and mythological nuggets scattered about, and it's a bunch of fun.