Smoke and Mirrors [AUDIO/2013.5.1]

★★★★☆

  Janet Fielding is having a field day with this one (ha, cracked a joke and didn't even notice it myself until the time of publishing). She's audibly fired up by this superb script of Steve Lyons', acting out each character of the Season 19 TARDIS team with a sense of joy. Her Fifth Doctor is the fresh-faced, breathless blonde with an attitude befitting a young schoolmaster, and she captures Peter Davison's intonations perfectly. I've always loved her attempts at an English accent, so it's a plus that practically every character she narrates for except her own speak in that accent, generally speaking. 

  Fielding isn't the only exciting element of Smoke and Mirrors, though she is a big one. This is an audio drama that relishes being an audio drama, full of wonderful little audio cues and detailed sound effects to bring alive the carnival setting (a personal favouriteof mine in fiction), and full of these eerie narrative twists and turns that are creepy and entertaining enough to sate my needs (the Doctor being threatened with drowning, the Master haunting everyone as a reflection, phantasmagoria). Highlight has to be how Steve Lyons' script handled Harry Houdini, never indulging in true hero worship but showing that beneath all his flaws and blunder, this is a sensitive man who's willing to listen to reason at the end of the day. A seminal entry in the Dr. Who Harry Houdini compendium, this.