The Irrepressible Crystal

You can't keep a good crystal monster down. The 2013 Fifth Doctor audio play Eldrad Must Die is a sequel to the Fourth Doctor television story The Hand of Fear. Stephen Thorne reprises his role as Eldrad, the ancient and vengeful alien killer made of crystals. Featuring a really nice build up of tension and focus on Turlough, one of the Doctor's more interesting companions, this is an exceptionally good Fifth Doctor audio.

We catch up with the Doctor (Peter Davison), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Tegan (Janet Fielding), and Turlough (Mark Strickson) on a little holiday on an oddly deserted beach. The Doctor and Tegan go out paddling while Nyssa and Turlough explore and there's a nicely gradual accumulation of menace as each person discovers one disturbing clue after another about the sand or the animals. When finally a woman named Kate (Jessica Claire) shows up in a panic with a Geiger counter it feels like the Doctor and his friends have made an innocent, foolish, and very dangerous mistake.

Later, the group runs into one of Turlough's classmates from the boarding school he was attending in his first television serial, Mawdryn Undead. It's a nice moment that gives a sense of Turlough's back story as something he lived in instead of just exposition. As with Nyssa, writers haven't wasted the opportunity to develop the potential of an underused television companion--though Nyssa was more sorely crying out for expansion. She contributes to this story, too, having an effectively tense encounter with a dolphin. Tegan also has some nice moments, I particularly liked one scene where she tries to draw the Doctor's attention from one crisis to another, a scene Peter Davison plays really well, a nice reminder that one of the Doctor's weaknesses is that he can't be everywhere at once. Though he might be in multiple places but that's another kettle of dolphins.

Twitter Sonnet #1101

We saw a silhouette in fishless night.
In second subs, the sea decides the door.
A wall reclines until it's tilted right.
At depths the crimson rocks began to pour.
The unexplainable absorbs a dress.
As moons descend the draper clutches dreams.
Sapphire ships and crimson boats redress.
Responses wait in isles 'neath the beams.
The carry weight reduced in zero clouds.
A distance blurs distinguished shapes of limbs.
In all the hats a smile turned the crowds.
Our lamp may darken now but never dims.
Returned to honey, golden strings could melt.
The ink but sinks again into the felt.