The Demon Song

First Doctor Adventures #2.1

Released: 16 February 2023

Listened: 2/26/23

The first boxed set with Stephen Noonan and Lauren Cornelius was a success, so here’s another. This time around, the two-parter comes first. It’s set in Camden in the 2020s, post-pandemic anyway, which is a heck of a thing for Dodo, but she seems to take it all pretty much in stride, once she gets over everybody’s phones. The First Doctor is written brilliantly here, as he clearly knows about the history and technology of this period, but doesn’t seem to have experienced it himself, so he’s both familiar and unfamiliar. The story involves an alien (considered a demon by many) who’s spreading a song that hypnotizes people, and then kidnaps them. Of course, that turns out to be pretty standard stuff. A lot of the scenes with the Doctor are played for humor, as he’s either confused or confusing people. Once again, I feel like Stephen Noonan is playing him too high-pitched, and they’ve still got the tic of Hartnell blowing his lines, which I don’t like. And yet the scenes with Dodo are often serious and very grim, although the wild tracks of screaming and moaning in the background seem rather overdone. On the whole, it’s OK, but the tonal clash hurts it.