Doctor Who: I.D. and Urgent Calls

Big Finish: Monthly Range #94

by Eddie Robson, Colin Baker (Narrator)

I.D. (a Three Part Story)
In the 32nd Century, the Doctor finds himself on a planet piled high with discarded computer technology. Picking over these remains are an army of Scandroids, a collection of unsavoury, illegal Data Pirates and a team of researchers from the mysterious Lonway Clinic. This is a world of organic-digital transfer and 'personality surgery' which the Doctor finds disturbing enough, until something far more deadly starts to emerge.

Urgent Calls (A One-Part Story)
Earth, 1974. An innocent phone call. Okay, it was a wrong number, but there can't be any harm in that. Can there?

Genres: Doctor Who, Audiobook, Science Fiction, Fiction

Audio CD

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

Eddie Robson is a comedy and science fiction writer best known for his sitcom Welcome To Our Village, Please Invade Carefully and his work on a variety of spin-offs from the BBC Television series Doctor Who. He has written books, comics and short stories, and has worked as a freelance journalist for various science fiction magazines. He is married to a female academic and lives in Lancaster.

Robson's comedy writing career began in 2008 with material for Look Away Now. Since then his work has featured on That Mitchell and Webb Sound, Tilt, Play and Record, Newsjack, Recorded For Training Purposes and The Headset Set. The pilot episode of his sitcom Welcome To Our Village, Please Invade Carefully was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on 5th July 2012. It starred Katherine Parkinson and Julian Rhind-Tutt.

His Doctor Who work includes the BBC 7 radio plays Phobos, Human Resources and Grand Theft Cosmos, the CD releases Memory Lane, The Condemned, The Raincloud Man and The Eight Truths, and several short stories for Big Finish's Doctor Who anthologies, Short Trips. He has contributed comic strips to Doctor Who Adventures.

Between 2007 and 2009, Robson was the producer of Big Finish's Bernice Summerfield range of products, and has contributed four audio plays to the series. He has also written books on film noir and the Coen Brothers for Virgin Publishing, the Doctor Who episode guide Who's Next with co-authors Mark Clapham and Jim Smith, and an illustrated adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Reviews

[Polly Batchelor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only listened to 'Urgent Calls' - 33 minutes, short story, that takes place over a series of phone calls between The Doctor and Lauren. Throughout become more and more curious as to why they keep getting in touch with each other, without even meaning to.


"If I ended up calling everyone on the phone whose life I have saved then I would never have time to do anything else!" - The Doctor

[Tom Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I.D (3 part format)

Written by Eddie Robson, and if am quite honest, I didn't like I.D at all. I.D is about data theft and personality surgery. The Doctor lands in the 32nd century on a junk planet when a conspiracy of data collection, but is this data vital and what does it detail to the plot? It would work better as a 60min story, feels like it outstays its welcome by a bit. Got to admit, this audio started giving me a headache in the final part! XD

Performances are okay, sometimes I think lines could have been taken again. The Doctor doesn't have any highlight moments of memorable lines of dialogue compared to other releases featuring his incarnation. The atmosphere, again okay; I could make the excuses it's old audio, but audios near its time have produced far better results. Not a good three-part story. Likely not ever listen to it again, unless I decide to do a Monthly Range marathon. 3/10

Urgent Calls (1 part story)
The small 1 part story turns out to be what pushes this audio to be at least worth it, but pick it up on eBay for like £4. Feels like a companion chronicle (something like solitare) or Scherzo. Only two characters, but it's a wonderful dialogue-driven piece. It slowly builds character depth and relationship building with The Doctor and Lauren methodically and very therapeutic. Like this one a lot. 8/10

Average release, Urgent Calls is worth a listen 100%, but I'd rate this only two stars.
5/10

[Jamieson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Big Finish's Doctor Who Monthly Adventures #94, we get some experimentations in story length with I.D. (a three-part story) and Urgent Calls (a one-part story). Both of these feature a companion-less Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker). The first story sees the Doctor arrive on a junkyard planet in the future. Here, he gets caught up in the hunt for a mad scientist's research that might have been saved among discarded tech that had been dumped on the planet. It's a fun hard sci-fi adventure that deals with themes of memories and identity-editing. It's enjoyable, but nothing outstanding.

The second story is Urgent Calls and is part of the "Virus Strain" arc (a bit on that in a moment). This story is told through phone calls as the Doctor and a woman named Lauren keep calling wrong numbers and getting a hold of each other, each time with a positive result because of the wrong call. It's a really fun, clever story that works well in the audio medium where it wouldn't work as well in print or TV. As stated above, this is part the "Virus Strain" arc which was introduced around this time in the Monthly Range and revolved around mysterious alien viruses popping up here and there along with the mysterious Viyrans. It's was seemingly dropped shortly after before being explained in the excellent Doctor Who: Patient Zero. On the whole, this was an enjoyable outing with the Sixth Doctor and well worth a listen.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 for the whole set. The three-part story I.D. had a somewhat interesting premise, but ultimately felt dragged out. I'd give that story 3/5. As for the one-part two-hander Urgent Calls, this one held my attention very well. Only problem is the conclusion feeling a bit incomplete. But I liked the phone conversations. A very pleasant listen. In the extras, there are some interesting stories relayed by someone (they don't say who it is at the start) talking about how he met the first four Doctors (and Peter Cushing).

[Shaun Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another exceptional Big Finish tale with the Sixth Doctor. I.D. plays out over three parts as opposed to the normal four and really benefits from the shortened run time, as it forces the truncated story to be tighter, faster paced and less stuffed. Urgent Calls is a fun one-parter. For more on these, check out our reviews at www.travelingthevortex.com

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to Urgent Calls, a great fun little episode conducted solely of 5 wrong number calls. Good premise, possibly a little short, could easily have been fleshed out more into a full length episode.

[Lee Gannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Urgent Calls only

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

ID, average nothing special here. 3 stars

Urgent Calls, an original idea well implemented that had my attention from the word go.
This short gets 5 stars

[freeze · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 4/5 is mostly for Urgent Calls but I.D. was solid as well!

[Alien_Dwarf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Urgent Calls: I'm a big fan of this "bottle episode" kind of stories, the Doctor interacting lightly with a lone individual and affecting them deeply. Plus, the Virus origin! 3,5*/5

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I.D. ***
Urgent Calls *****

[Paul Stanis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I.D. (75% of package) rating: Two stars.

Urgent Calls (25% of package) rating: Four stars.

[Tabitha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing special

[ava · Rating 4 out of 5]

I.D. - 3.75/5
Urgent Calls - 4.25/5 (teared up a little at the end)

[Chasity Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first Doctor Who book I've listened too and I'm quite pleased that I listened to it. I'm just now attempting to jump on the Doctor Who bandwagon and I'd say listening to a few of the short stories is definitely getting me hooked on the Doctor.

In this story The Doctor and Lauren expierence this weird phenomenon that when they call someone it ends up being a missed call that leads to one another. At first they don't understand the situation, but then it starts to make sense and The Doctor figures out what is going on.

The Doctor first speaks to Lauren when she's ill and he tells her to go to the doctor, she does and finds out what is wrong with her. Next she dials a number and apparently The Doctor answer the call instead of who should have. Lauren details what happened and the Doctor thinks something peculiar is happening, especially on the third call.

Wrong number calls are always annoying, and I can imagine for Lauren the situation she was going through was annoying even though it ended up being helpful to mankind. I would have been frustrated had I been in her shoes, and I would have physically wanted to help the Doctor instead of playing telephone tag, because that sucks.

All and all, I really enjoyed listening to this story and have listened to several other's since and have quite enjoyed each of them.

[Jamie Revell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I.D. is a three-part story, featuring the 6th Doctor, but without any companions. It's a fairly routine story about a base under siege by deranged robots, although it obviously aspires to be rather more. In particular, as the title implies, it's supposed to be about the nature of identity, this being a culture in which it's possible to upload personalities, but, honestly, it's a fairly small part of the story. Quite well done, to be fair, but nothing remarkable. (3/5)

However, I.D. is followed on the CD by a short, 30-minute story, and this is actually rather better than the main feature. Ideally suited to the 30-minute format, the story consists of a number of phone calls made by a woman in 1970s Britain. We learn what's going on through her phone conversations with (mostly) the Doctor, but because we never actually 'see' anything, we have to piece it all together from the clues provided, and even then, there are deliberate gaps left to our imagination. It's a clever character piece, providing Baker with the opportunity to show the Doctor in ways he never could on TV, and I personally liked the ambiguity about what's really going on. (4/5)

So, three-and-a-half stars, rounded up to four.

[Nicholas Whyte]

Features Six-on-his-own getting involved with a computer salvage operation where there is more going on than first appears. It didn't really sing to me, despite the presence of big name stars like Giles Brandreth and Helen Atkinson Wood (and Sara Griffiths from Old Who). [return][return]Urgent Calls, on the same CD set as I.D., is a different matter. It's virtually a two-hander between Colin Baker, at the end of a phone line, and Kate Brown playing Lauren who keeps getting connected to him accidentally. In the space of thirty minutes we have two different alien manifestations and a certain exploration of what the Doctor is really doing. Very impressive.

[Christopher Hatch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Urgent Calls was excellent.
The CD Extras were very entertaining and Gyles Brandreth was especially so.
The story I.D. was at best okay, but since this was 3/4 of the CD it lowers the overall rating.

I wasn't aware at the outset of listening that this was a 3 part story, and I was wondering how they could could drag it out, and actually dreadding them doing so. I was quite a relief to find Part 3 was the end.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only listened to Urgent Calls as it was part of a free Big Finish give away awhile ago. It was a lovely story. It was a really clever two hander that was spooky, claustrophobic and a little funny. It made for a very nice change. Definitely one I'd recommend.

[Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Companionless Sixth Doctor adventure. I.D. sees Sixie encountering robots and computer programs in a space junkyard. Urgent Calls is a short story with Six and a telephone operator who, by luck, team up but never meet up.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

A wrong telephone number on 1974 Earth has strange consequences.

[Debra Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story ID has the Doctor trying to stop robots from killing people because of a virus. Urgent call was a virus causing wrong numbers in the phone lines.

[Saturnberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

S'got the best Doc intro I've ever HEARD! I was lmao and had to listen to it over and over. Colin Baker is awesome. :)

[Magdalena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I.D. was boring, but Urgent Calls is perfect - short and clever, perfect for beginners!

[Silvia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only listened to "Urgent Calls".