Whispers of Terror

The Doctor and Peri arrive at a museum where all the exhibits are sound archives; speeches, songs, soundbytes - it is all housed here. But this particular museum has recently become haunted by a creature that can exist as a soundwave, hiding in any sound with the power to kill. The museum itself is soundproof, but an impending broadcast of a significant political endorsement speech will not only give a murderer undeserved publicity, but will give the sound creature the chance to escape and replicate itself across the world.

Very very clever, the creature made of pure sound becoming a new take on the evil disembodied intelligence type that the Doctor has encountered before. Clever too how the menace is almost immediately contained in episode one, only to be set loose once more by a maniac's bent political desires. There's nothing terribly complex about this story, and once the Doctor realizes the true nature of the sound creature it all moves along at a good pace, with the ultimate revelation of the identity of a killer not coming as a suprise, but at least coming along when expected.

As far as production sequence goes, Whispers of Terror was the first Big Finish audio to feature the sixth Doctor and Peri, and the difference between the squabbling duo of season 22 and these two friends is like night and day; the relationship has warmed considerably between the two characters and you can sense Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant really enjoying being back in the saddle. Bryant spent most of season 22 stuttering and whining Peri's lines, gaining a bit of confidence in Slipback, and now... she's a new woman. She actually sounds like her old self from the stretch of episode with Peter Davison as the Doctor; one might just say that it took her this long to get used to the Doctor and be sure of her relationship with him, if one was a revisionist.

The supporting cast do quite well, although as I indicated above it's not exactly rocket science to figure out what's going on and who did it. Then again, I have heard this particular story something like 3 times now over the years.

NEXT EPISODE : ...ISH