Re: Gauging interest about classic Dr Who series audio described
I would certainly like to see this, however bare in mind the BBc has already done a good few of these from the 60's. Since there was the purge of the bbc film archives in 1972 that lost many of the classic episodes on film, but both scripts and soundtracks still exist, the Bbc have released a good few as what are billed as what are effectively audio described soundtracks. Many of these were on tape, but I'm pretty sure with the revival a lot are on cd these days too, although with the Bf stuff I've not looked into acquiring these as much and unfortunately some of the old tape versions I had whilst growing up are no longer functional. I've heard power of the Daleks, Tomb of the cibermen, Fury from the deep, Evil of the Daleks and the Macra terror, and I've also seen The Highlanders, the smugglers and the faceless ones.
Some of them even got later encarnations of the doctor, or the Doctor's notable assistants to narrate. Tom baker does Power of th e Daleks which is awsome, having the 4th doctor recall his experiences as the 2nd doctor while the audio of those experiences plays. john Pertwee even did Tomb of the Cybermen, (recorded in the early 90's before his death), though he merely narrated, he didn't do an in character thing the way Baker did.
Regarding novelizations, well while it is true that every single episode of classic who has recieved a novelization, there are only audio books of some of them, (often read by Doctor who regulars). Also, some of the audio books are annoyingly abridged, though some equally are not. I've heard great unabridged audio book versions of Doctor who and the silurians, and Robot (novelized as Doctor who and the giant robot). Unfortunately however when I tried to read the audio book version of Fronteer in space I found it was! abridged, as irritatingly enough are many of the audio book versions of original novels published more recently and often read by people like David Tenant (abridging books should be made punishable by dismemberment!).
Then just to confuse things even further, there are audio books which actually exist as read with sound effects type of dramas, ---- sort of like the companion chronicles from Big finish, though usually just with a narrator rather than a companion playing themselves in character.
I heard william Russel do a great version of the novelization of Doctor who and the Daleks, ---- which actually improves on the tv story in a lot of interesting ways, albeit some of them not exactly canonical. For example, though ian is still a science teacher, he doesn't actually teach at the same school Barbara does, the one Susan attends. In the book, he's been made unemployed and is driving back from a job interview at the colehill school when he crashes his car into what later turns out to be the Tardis, where he meets Susan and Barbara who've walked back from Susan's school, and the first Doctor (who doesn't take kindly to Ian's presance). They then get into the Tardis and wind up going straight off to scaro skipping the cavemen.
There is also the awsomeness of the Glass Dalek who is in charge on sCaro, ---- an idea they apparently had at the time but didn't have the money or resources to produce on screen which is a shame since it would've been awsome!
So, would I be interested in audio described classic who? Most certainly, however I'd recommend checking out what is and is not already available, since there seems no need to reinvent the wheel and if your going to put that kind of work in you'd be better trying to cover new ground.
Since as far as I know all the actual described soundtracks are from the era of the first two doctors, Perhaps you could start with the Third Doctor's appearence in spearheard from space. This was the first Doctor who in colour in 1973, and it marks the appearence of both the master and the auto ns, as well as being a story where a lot of the action is visual, (including murder by a plastic troll doll), indeed the third doctor's era would be a great bit to begin describing since Pertwee did have something of a tallent for liking stunts and action sequences.
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=157839#p157839
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