Doctor Who: Inferno

By: Terrance Dicks

Narrated by: Caroline John

Inferno is the name of a top-secret drilling project to penetrate the Earth's crust and release a major new energy source. A crisis develops when a noxious green liquid leaks out as drilling progresses - the green poison has a grotesquely debilitating effect on human beings. As the Earth's plight worsens, the Doctor is trapped in a parallel world, unable to rescue the planet and its inhabitants from the destructive force of Inferno... Caroline John, who played Liz Shaw in the original Doctor Who TV serial, reads Terrance Dicks' complete and unabridged novelisation, first published by Target Books in 1984. 'BBC Audiobooks has chosen well with its books and has taken the right approach with its readers... they benefit from new music and sound effects.' - Doctor Who Magazine.

Solid Reading of a Faithful Adaptation

Produced at the time when Target novelizations of Doctor Who stories were limited by their page count, "Infero" captures the essential story that takes place across seven episodes but still feels a bit lacking.

Terrance Dicks' retelling of the classic serial is faithful and straightforward. But in a story that feature a parallel universe with parallel versions of several regular characters, a bit more background might have been nice. Again, Dicks is limited by a page count. It'd be fascinating to see what he could do with the story now. (Dicks does a nice job of fleshing out the background and history in several of his earlier Pertwee era novels, "The Auton Invasion" and "Day of the Daleks")

This time around, I listened to the BBC audio book release of "Inferno," which is up to the usual high standards set for this line. Caroline John acquits herself fairly well as a reader, though she still falls into the second tier of readers for the line. The novel helped me pound out a couple of longer runs on warm afternoons and for that, I'm grateful. But in many ways hearing the story of "Inferno" only made me want to dust off the DVD copy of the serial and watch it again.