The actor has penned a tale featuring Adric and the Fourth Doctor vs the Daleks.
Written and narrated by Matthew Waterhouse, Doctor Who: Watchers is the second ‘audio novel’ from Big Finish. These enhanced audio books aim to recreate the feel of the beloved Target novelisations of the 1970s and 80s.
After the success of Simon Guerrier’s Pertwee era Scourge of the Cybermen, which we loved, we have high hopes for Watchers. While the former gave the Third Doctor a full-on Cyber story with Sarah, The Watchers also provides a fan pleasing notion or two; Adric never faced the Daleks and the appearance of the pasty Watcher in Logopolis was only ever loosely explained.
This particular tale offers an extra dimension as its writer starred in the show at the period it is set. This is a growing trend in Doctor Who fiction, with Alex Kingston’s The Ruby’s Curse, Sophie Aldred’s At Childhood’s End and Tom Baker’s Scratchman; in some cases, it’s widely known that these tales were at least co-written.
However, in Matthew Waterhouse’s case, he’s already an author with a number of books, plus a candid Doctor Who memoir, to his name.
Here’s the synopsis for The Watchers:
When the TARDIS is trapped in the Vortex, the Doctor and Adric realise that there is something immensely powerful that is draining time itself from the universe.
The wrecks of other time ships –the products of countless experiments in time –exist in a fused cluster in the Vortex. None of them can escape and many of their crews are dead. As the Doctor tries to free the TARDIS, he and Adric encounter threats from other groups, desperate to escape, including a hostile reptile species, mechanically enhanced cyborgs –and Daleks!
But there is someone from the Doctor’s own world who is watching.
Someone who will prove useful when this Doctor reaches the end of his life…
Speaking about the project, Matthew Waterhouse said:
“Putting together a 60,000 word novel of considered prose is obviously real, challenging work but I didn’t find it difficult in any negative, onerous way. Big Finish has always been supportive of my work and they were very supportive of this.”
“I found I could nudge my story to where I wanted to go with it while still creating, I hope, the texture of a ‘classic’ Doctor Who complete with cliff-hangers.”
And on the challenges of writing for the Daleks, he comments:
“Their kind of icy villainy is fun to do. As a child, Doctor Who met my imagination halfway and perhaps those old serials – or my memory of them – still remains.”
Running to six hours, Watchers bridges the gap between The Keeper of Traken and Logopolis. While Waterhouse narrates, Dalek Supremo Nicholas Briggs is on hand to voice the monstrous mutants and the latest Big Finish podcast has a behind-the-scenes feature for the story.
Doctor Who – The Audio Novels: Watchers is available on download now from Big Finish and we look forward to bringing you our review.