DOCTOR WHO: SNAKE BITE (audiobook) by Scott Hancock






Published in 2012 by BBC Audiobooks Ltd.
Read by Frances Barber
Duration: 1 hour, 13 minutes
Unabridged

Two physicists are working in a secret lab in a massive space station that literally encircles a planet in Doctor Who: Snake Bite. Their secret project is kept hidden from everyone - even the power to run it is taken siphoned away from dozens of other locations on the space station. Down below, a unique planet is being studied. In the lab, a a stable wormhole is being perfected. As the wormhole stabilizes, the TARDIS arrives right in the middle of it all. The Doctor (Matt Smith's Doctor) doesn't know where they are at first and he certainly doesn't know why he is there. Once they start to figure things out they discover that things are weirder than they even imagined...
Frances Barber
Frances Barber was picked to read this audiobook. The producers tried to tie a little Doctor Who authenticity to the book by picking a Doctor Who alum to read the book. Barber played Madame Kovarian - the Eye Patch Woman who kidnapped Amy Pond's baby. This is a very memorable character and perhaps it would have been better if this character had been in the story because Barber just does not have the rhythms of any of the regular characters. For example, her Amy Pond sounds hesitant and scared. When Amy Pond gets scared, she gets loud and mad, not hesitant. Her portrayal of the Doctor does not have Matt Smith's rapid-fire delivery. 

 The plot reads like a middle-of-the-road Doctor Who story (not too good, not too bad) but the performance of the reading just wore on me and made it seem slow. About an hour into the story I checked to see if this was a 2 CD set and was very pleased to see that I had misremembered the number of CDs and this story was nearly over. 

 I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon here: Doctor Who: Snake Bite.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

STAR WARS: DARTH VADER: DARK LORD of the SITH, VOLUME 2 -LEGACY'S END (graphic novel) by Charles Soule

Image
Published in 2018 by Licensed Publishing. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Guiseppe Camuncoli, Daniele Orlandini, and David Curiel. Synopsis This series tells the story of how Anakin Skywalker completes his transformation to Darth Vader under the dangerous and abusive tutelage of Emperor Palpatine. Meanwhile, Vader and his team are searching for Jedi survivors of Order 66. The series starts with the end of Star Wars: Episode III. There are two main plotlines in Darth Vader: Legacy's End . Vader has a lead on the librarian of the Jedi Temple. She is rebuilding the library in a safe location from scattered sources and memory when she realizes that she has to return to the library to destroy a list of force-talented youngsters that the Jedi had compiled to recruit to join their academy before they were defeated. She is not nearly the warrior that Vader is, but she is very clever and knows the library like the back of her hand... The second story line is about an assassination squad th...
Read more

EXIT STAGE LEFT: THE SNAGGLEPUSS CHRONICLES (graphic novel) Written by Mark Russell. Illustrated by Mike Feehan

Image
Published by DC Comics in 2018. Part of the Hannah-Barbera Beyond series. 2019 GLAAD Media Award winner for Outstanding Comic Book Synopsis: DC Comics and Hanna-Barbera set out to reimagine some of their late 1950s to 1970s Saturday morning television cartoons, including The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Wacky Races, and Space Ghost. Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles is the last installment of the series. The graphic novel is set in the Red Scare/McCarthyism era. Congressional subcommittees are looking for Communists in all fields, but they are particularly concerned about Communist entertainers who may be negatively influencing Americans. Snagglepuss is a very successful New York City playwright. He lives in a world where humans and anthropomorphic animals interact as equals. He moved to New York from Mississippi years ago, but he still speaks in a Southern accent and often uses pithy folksy aphorisms. He is married to an actress, but that is a sham marriage. In rea...
Read more

BATMAN - ONE BAD DAY: CATWOMAN (graphic novel) by G. Willow Wilson

Image
Written by G. Willow Wilson Art by Jamie McKelvie Synopsis The One Bad Day series is a look at some of the biggest Batman villains in a book just dedicated to that villain. A lot of them, but certainly not all of them, take a sympathetic look at that villain. Batman - One Bad Day: Catwoman is one of the more sympathetic takes.  Catwoman is looking through an auction catalog for high end jewelry when she finds an unusual listing for a piece of post-World War II French jewelry that commemorates the end of Nazi occupation. It is a rare piece with a message of a return to freedom for France's artists its reserve price is $30,000. It is also a piece her mother sold to a pawn shop for only $200 when Catwoman was a child in order to attempt to make her rent money that month. Catwoman decides to take back the jewelry and right a wrong... My Review This one was interesting because the stakes, in reality, are really pretty low - a piece of jewelry that is worth thousands instead of millions...
Read more

STAR WARS: LANDO (graphic novel) by Charles Soule

Image
Published in 2016 by Marvel Enterprises. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Alex Maleev and Paul Mounts. Synopsis Lando Calrissian is in financial trouble - he has debts and he is working them off by pulling off "jobs" for the people he owes money to. He makes a deal to pull off one big heist for Papa Toren in exchange for all of his debt being cleared and the possibility of making of making a lot of profit for himself. Lando and his sidekick Lobot (see picture below) build a team and pull off the heist - stealing a space yacht from an imperial shipyard. Everything looks great until they find a Sith artifact onboard and realize that they've just stolen the Emperor's yacht! My review This is the fifth Star Wars graphic novel that I've read written by Charles Soule, and it was the weakest of the bunch. It wasn't bad, but it just wasn't great like the others. The plot had a lot of zip at first but moved from a heist story to a horror story and it slowed down so...
Read more

STAR WARS: DARTH VADER: DARK LORD of the SITH, VOLUME 3 - THE BURNING SEAS (graphic novel) by Charles Soule

Image
Published in 2018 by Licensed Publishing. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, David Curiel, and Java Tartaglia with Guru-eFX Synopsis This series tells the story of how Anakin Skywalker completes his transformation to Darth Vader under the dangerous and abusive tutelage of Emperor Palpatine.  In the first story of  Darth Vader: The Burning Seas , Mon Cala has been reluctant to join Palpatine's empire. Governor Tarkin has been sent to Mon Cala to negotiate with their king. Mon Cala is the home world of fan favorite Admiral Ackbar. Ackbar is only Commander Ackbar in this story, but he plays a prominent role. Meanwhile, Vader and his team have been sent to Mon Cala to hunt down a Jedi that the Empire suspects is helping Mon Cala in their negotiations. When the shuttle carrying the Empire's negotiation team is destroyed by a bomb, all out war erupts... The second story ties in with the movie Rogue One. It is set on the planet Geonosis where the Empire is working o...
Read more

UNCOMMON VALOR: A STORY of RACE, PATRIOTISM, and GLORY in the FINAL BATTLES of the CIVIL WAR by Melvin Claxton and Mark Puls

Image
Published in 2005 by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. The Emancipation Proclamation was effective on January 1, 1863 - it included a provision that former slaves were to "be received into the armed service of the United States". The Union Army was a little slow to enact this provision, but by 1864 there were plenty of African American Union soldiers ready to go into the field. Uncommon Valor follows one of those units during the Petersburg campaign of 1864-1865. This history primarily follows Christian Fleetwood , an African American Baltimore clerk. Fleetwood was born free, but living in a slave state was a constant reminder of his second class status. He had been considering joining the army for a long while, trying to determine if it would be a blow for freedom, or just choosing to support one oppressive regime in order to fight an even more oppressive regime. If that was the case, he might as well sit it out and let both sides clobber one another. Sgt. Major Christian Fleetwoo...
Read more

BATMAN - ONE BAD DAY: PENGUIN (One Bad Day series) (graphic novel) by John Ridley

Image
Published by DC Comics in 2023. Story by John Ridley. Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cam Smith, and Arif Prianto. Synopsis Batman - One Bad Day: Penguin finds the hero (!) of the story, Batman's infamous foe Penguin, completely down and out. He has $20 and is sitting on a park bench in the rain. He is taped and bandaged up from a beating. He is unshaven and disheveled. He is waiting for a is waiting to meet a young person to sell him a gun. He has been pushed out of his role of crime boss of Gotham by a former subordinate. He plans to go into the city and take back his organization - but all he has is one little snub-nosed pistol, one bullet, and no friends. Turns out he didn't really need to pistol or the bullet - it's your friends that count. My Review I truly liked this comic. The way the story went surprised me and I really enjoyed it. Penguin can be a surprisingly sympathetic figure for a super-villain. His origin story isn't the roughest, but just about everyone has ...
Read more

THE LONG CON by Dylan Meconis, Ben Coleman, E.A. Denich, M. Victoria Robado, Aditya Bidikar

Image
Published by Oni Press in February of 2019. The phrase The Long Con has a double meaning this story. Traditionally, a "long con" is a long-term swindle that is being pulled on someone, like a long-term investment fraud. Meaning #1: In this graphic novel, The Long Con is the biggest Pop Culture Convention in the world. It has been an annual event for 50 years and it lasts a long time. Five years ago, it was location of ground zero of a horrible (unspecified) "cataclysmic event" that destroyed everything in a 50 mile radius. Everyone assumed that the convention hall was destroyed. Meaning #2:  Reporter Victor Lai was sent to cover The Long Con before the disaster - a duty that he considered a punishment. Now, the outside world has noticed signs of life in the convention center and Victor Lai is sent back into the convention center to see what's going on.  Surprise! The convention hall survived! The people inside it survived! And...the attendees are still havi...
Read more

THE MONKEY'S RAINCOAT (Elvis Cole #1) (audiobook) by Robert Crais

Image
Winner of the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original. Winner of the McAvity Award for Best First Novel. Originally published in 1987. Published in 2008 by Brilliance Audio. Read by Patrick Lawlor. Duration: 8 hours, 9 minutes. Unabridged. I have been reading Robert Crais' Elvis Cole novels for 15 years and I just assumed that I had already read all of the early ones years ago. But, when I checked my blog I found that I had not read 7 of them - that is more than a third of the series!  The Monkey's Raincoat is the first in this 20 book series.  Synopsis Two women come to meet Elvis Cole in his office. Cole is a decorated Vietnam veteran turned private detective. The women want Cole to find the Mort, the husband of one of the women and their son. Mort picked the boy up from school, but they never came home. Elvis starts to dig around and quickly discovers that Mort's talent agency is in trouble. The more he uncovers, the more it becomes obvious that Mort has been hiding m...
Read more

LULLABY TOWN (Elvis Cole #3) (audiobook) by Robert Crais

Image
Book originally published in 1992. Audiobook published by Brilliance Audio in 2008. Read by Mel Foster. Duration: 8 hours, 33 minutes. Unabridged. Anthony Award Nominee for Best Novel (1993) Shamus Award Nominee for Best PI Hardcover (1993) Synopsis Elvis Cole is hired by a very successful young Hollywood director in Lullaby Town to find his divorced wife and his son that he hasn't seen since he was an infant. It has been ten years since the divorce. His ex-wife hasn't been kidnapped or gone missing - she just moved away and the director has lost track of her. Now, he'd like to meet his son.  The director has to be the single most annoying client that Elvis Cole has ever had. He is pushy, obnoxious, and completely self-absorbed. Elvis notes early on that almost every sentence the man utters starts with "I" as in "I think this" and "I did that." It's pretty obvious why the ex-wife left him and just kept on going with no forwarding address...
Read more