Doctor Who: Watchers – Review

When Big Finish lost their license to produce paperback/hardback Doctor Who fiction, there has been a small flurry of Doctor Who audiobook work since 2009. But with their newest range, The Audio Novel range having kicked off at the end of last year with Scourge of the Cybermen, we come now to Watchers, the second in the range, written by actor and author Matthew Waterhouse.

It’s interesting because I think Adric really worked alongside the Fourth Doctor, despite there not being a lot of love lost between actors. I think he worked with the Fourth Doctor much more than the Fifth because he was the only companion for a few stories. And there aren’t that many solo adventures for the Fourth Doctor and Adric, so any that come along are genuinely welcome, no matter what people’s thoughts are on the character.

Right from the get-go, it’s clear how much Waterhouse still regards his time on the show, with a dedication to Christopher Bidmead, who brought some much-needed science, even if it got a little too heavy at times, to a show that was growing increasingly silly, Waterhouse keeps that sciency aspect going, mixing it with the humour of the Douglas Adams era. It’s also clear how much of a fan of Doctor Who Waterhouse is, with references to different adventures and indeed, takes a lot of inspiration and sets much of the opening action during the beginning of the Dalek’s invasion of Earth, that we later saw in the Hartnell era.

In the beginning, we get a brilliant set-up, which feels very Adams-esc with detail concerning the opening day of the Dalek invasion. We are introduced to Marcel, who was supposed to die but finds himself in a TARDIS owned by the titular Watcher. The Watcher is an interesting idea, a group of Time Lords sent out to keep an eye on events in history to make sure things stay on track. This puts Marcel’s Time Lord, the excellently characterised M ‘Lady, in a bit of a predicament, having accidentally saved someone who was supposed to die.

It’s a nice, though a perhaps unintentional nod to the Eighth Doctor’s companion, Charley Pollard, whose rescue put the whole of time in jeopardy, it does make for a bittersweet moment at the time, where Marcel goes back in time to find his lost love. As sad as it is, it feels like an entirely earned moment, that tugs at the heartstrings that Waterhouse delivers perfectly.

M ‘Lady was an excellent character too, and I was surprised at how much of the novel she does actually feature in, as opposed to the Doctor who was pushed a little to the side-lines during the middle of the story. She was a fun character and Waterhouse captures perfectly the eccentricity of Time Lords once they leave Gallifrey. From the vivid description of her clothes and TARDIS to her kind nature, even though she finds herself in a few predicaments. She, and Marcel, were well rounded and formed characters, that while highly unlikely, I hope we get to hear more from them in the future.

Less enjoyable, though not annoyingly so, was the inclusion of the Daleks. It seems lately we can’t go a month without a release featuring the Daleks. Luckily though, apart from the brilliant Dalek Invasion scenes, they aren’t too bad, and Waterhouse handles them well. Nicholas Briggs is again on voice duty, though they didn’t really sound like seventies Daleks which did irk me somewhat. Indeed, from the interviews, their inclusion in the story wasn’t originally supposed to happen and it does affect the story somewhat because as much as I enjoyed this story, I don’t know who the actual villain was!

But for a story that runs for nearly five hours, they don’t get that much to do, and I think like the first story featuring the Cybermen, Big Finish wanted to prove they could handle the Daleks in prose as well as on audio. But once again Waterhouse needs to be credited for effortlessly giving us some really evocative imagery of the Daleks in just his descriptive prose, he really made them feel like a threat in the opening segments.

Up until a special feature on a disc of I think The Visitation: Special Edition, I had no idea that Waterhouse did so much writing, since then he’s written a few Doctor Who stories, some stories for the Dark Shadows audio range, which are also excellent, and some short novels. But I still had no idea what a talented writer he actually was. Watchers flows excellently, from the dialogue to the characters, to the rich way in which Waterhouse describes the events of this story.

Not only working as author but also narrator, Matthew Waterhouse does a tremendous job bringing the characters to life. It probably helps that he did both because this is a world that he had been immersed in for a long time writing. He has a great handle on Adric, coming across not nearly as annoying as he does still do sometimes on audio, instead, he makes him entirely likeable, gone is the brattiness of his character that other writers seem intent on including, instead he feels like a brand new take on the character!

His handle on the Fourth Doctor at the end of his tenure is also well done, fitting him in perfectly between the lively Doctor we see in The Keeper of Traken and then the visibly older version from Logopolis. And the story gives some brilliant foreshadowing of the events to come. Including the return of the Master, whose shadow does fall heavily over this story.

Watchers might seem intimidating with a nearly five-hour runtime, but it’s highly enjoyable and I’d encourage anyone to go and listen to it over a few days. From the strong prose to the strong narration, everything about this story is enjoyable. It’s just a shame it will never see print in a book form, there would be another Doctor Who bestseller on our hands!