Sound the Siren and I'll Come to You Comrade

Short Trips Rarities #1.5

Released: 22 December 2014

Listened: 3/15/22

Short story, long title. It seems like the title should be a reference, but I can’t find out to what. The Doctor wants to take Leela to the court of Peter the Great, but they miss and land in a Soviet H-bomb testing site in the 1950s, most likely this test. There’s a monster around, a beast that thrives on radiation, but the Doctor is more concerned about the fact that they’re testing an H-bomb. In the end, history is history, and the Doctor really does nothing, and solves nothing. However, it’s a look into the Soviet mindset of the time, and a really close look at what the first milliseconds of a nuclear explosion actually look like, so writer John Pritchard has done his homework here. Stephen Critchlow narrates, and does an excellent Fourth Doctor. He also gives the Russian characters distinct accents, so it feels like a full-cast play.