The Pescatons

Argo Records Special

Released: July 1976

Listened: 2/14/22

This story has a strong up-side and down-side. On the one hand, it’s the first ever Doctor Who audio, recorded in 1976, featuring a remarkably young-sounding Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen. As Sladen’s only appearance in this part of the project, that’s welcome. On the other hand, the story is strange, and frankly, not very good. It’s heavily narrated, with small patches of dialog here and there, which is fine, but it’s narrated from the Doctor’s point of view, revealing him to be not just excessively wordy, but also frequently frightened, which just doesn’t fit at all. The bad guys are the Pescatons, a race of humanoid shark-people from a dying planet (in the constellation of Pisces, rather too on the nose). They’re supposedly vicious on a hand-to-hand level, but honestly they’re kind of low-rent, even for a classic-series monster. And yet the Doctor describes them as irredeemably evil, and needing to be destroyed, which is entirely out of character, almost as much as him being afraid of them. Sarah Jane doesn’t seem to have a purpose in this story, as her conversations with the Doctor are usually unimportant, with the big dramatic bits being covered in narration. There’s also a completely unnecessary flashback that doesn’t make a lot of sense, given how short the story is. And the aliens do an absurd amount of damage worldwide, and rack up rather a high body count, yet UNIT is never seen or mentioned, which really makes no sense given where it’s set in Doctor Who history. As a historical artifact, it’s amazing. As a story, it’s fairly terrible. It’s probably best to think of it like a TV story from its era; not able to pull off what it promises.