Disclaimer – there are now two versions of The Stones of Blood novelization, and therefore two audiobook versions.

One was written by David Fisher, who originally wrote the TV script for the story. Originally released as an audiobook in 2011, it is read by Susan Engel, who played the lead role of Vivien Fay in the story, with additional K9ings from the original and most familiar voice of everybody’s favourite robot dog, John Leeson.

In a curious reversal of fate, it was later released as a Target-style paperback in 2022. That makes it a member of a fairly exclusive club along with the recent Pescatons novel, and the upcoming Slipback in having been born on audio, and only having been novelised some years subsequently.

Original actress, original K9, original screenwriter – what could be better, right?

Well, quite – it’s a heck of a ride, and you should absolutely check it out. But here’s the thing.

It’s probably not the version you remember.

Fade To Black And White… Almost

The version you probably remember was released all the way back in 1980, when the original Target series of Doctor Who novelizations had been running for seven years, and was properly getting into its stride. Written by novelizer-in-chief and former script editor Terrance Dicks, it had a cover by Andrew Skilletter that featured the chief baddie of the piece, the Cailleach, on a blood red disc against a stark, bright white background. 

In the days before the instant availability of most of the broadcast Doctor Who episodes, the Target novels were the way most people first experienced stories they either hadn’t caught when they went out, or hadn’t been alive for, because yes yes, old-fan sob story, if you missed it on transmission, that was it, you missed it, we know, Grandpa, you’re ollllld!

The point being that with Terrance Dicks in charge of the words and that arresting cover illustration, you really wanted to read The Stones of Blood. And the newly released audiobook is the translation to the audio medium of that version, the version you read from mobile libraries or passed around at school, sometimes having precisely no idea of the Key To Time season story arc of which it was the third instalment. 

You saw it, you wanted it, you read it on paper, because that was a primitive age for audiophiles, and we’re just getting the audio version right now.

TL;DR? This audiobook is a big freakin’ deal for fans of a certain sore-knee’d, back-pained vintage. Yes, the David Fisher/Susan Engel version is awesome and epic, but we’ve been waiting for this version for a long, long time. We’re going to take our moment to revel, thank you very much.

Now, to business.

A Tale of Glorious Madness

The story of The Stones of Blood is madness. Glorious madness, absolutely, but madness nonetheless, mostly on account of its severe left turn three-quarters of the way in.

For the majority of its run-time, it’s the Doctor and Romana looking for the third piece of the key to time (a glorious almighty MacGuffin that strung the otherwise entirely different stories of Season 16 together). The quest leads them to then-contemporary England (1976), to a set of standing stones and a scientist who is studying them, the fabulous and redoubtable Professor Rumford (Beatrix Lehmann), accompanied by her local companion, the elegant, slightly severe Vivien Fay (Susan Engel).

Then the pagan blood sacrifices kick in and things go totally tonto. 

Because… naturally.

There’s a bunch of local neopagans and (it was the Seventies, remember?) they’re conducting blood sacrifices on the stones, apparently under the command of the Cailleach (Cally-Ach!), your actual ancient pagan bird-god who, from time to time, joins in the proceedings in person.

Which in fairness, is more than many gods can be bothered to do. Perhaps then it’s little wonder that soon, the Doctor’s strapped to a stone with a knife at his throat, and Romana’s being pushed very nearly over a cliff by someone that appears to be the Doctor but obviously isn’t. 

Did we mention everything going totally tonto?

Long story short, in among the wiiiildly offensive pagan stereotypes, it turns out that the stones not only drink blood, but it perks them up more than somewhat, to the point where they start roaming around the countryside in search of more.

They’re called the Ogri, and they’re alien stone vampires, so that’s all right then!

The House That Hammer Built

All of this, along with local mysteries about missing paintings, anti-patriarchal land holdings (we kid you not!), and the pagan society being more or less like a more edgy version of the Women’s Institute or the Rotary Club, establishes a very distinctive Hammer Horror tone to the whole story, with the slightly weird addition that the blood-drinking Hell-rocks are in fact an alien life-form. 

Honestly, as far as that all goes, it’s compulsive reading, and compulsive viewing, and now, finally, compulsive listening too.

And then The Stones of Blood ratchets up the tonto one more time, and switches focus from Hammer-style folk horror to a space-based legal drama with a justice machine comprising of two cantankerous flashes of light.

No, really. The whole blood-drinking stones thing has apparently been leading up to the escape of a space criminal with a ship that’s more or less stalled in hyperspace, who’s been evading the flashy justice-folk for a few thousand years by living life after life after life on Earth.

Ultimately, the whole “Oh yes, the third segment of the key to time” storyline is barely there, and is written in with half a handful of lines towards the end, though it does have a bearing on how the criminal has been doing what they’ve been doing for all this time and getting their Cailleach on – so at least that’s something.

What A Difference A Dicks Makes

You really have to commit to the lunacy of The Stones of Blood to make it make even the slightest sense, but here’s the thing you need to know about that: Terrance Dicks made it work for a whole generation of Who-fans, arguably significantly better than it did in the broadcast version.

In the broadcast version, for instance, it’s difficult to escape the sense of farce about the Ogri, who have a tendency to look like they’ve meandered in from a rogue episode of The Goodies.

Midway through a siege between K9 and the Ogri, the walking stones naff off for a quick snack, and the couple of camping humans they find for elevensies are treated very much as light relief.

And probably above all, the space criminal, once they shift locations from Earth to the spaceship, takes the opportunity to turn remarkably silver, with never a word of explanation in the script, and no notice paid by the Doctor or Romana.

Dicks in his novelization writes the Ogri in a way that flirts with Dennis Wheatley Satanic sensationalism, but leaves you enough room to make them fundamentally more scary than they ever appeared on screen.

Similarly, the campers are given a backstory, and their deaths, when they come, hit home with an appropriate level of force.

And with the space criminal, Cessair of Diplos, no mention is made of any change of skin colour, which substantively adds to the believability of the space trial section, since a big point of law hangs on the fact that the justice-machines have never actually seen Cessair of Diplos, and so cannot recognise them. But it’s odd that no one in the broadcast version says “It’s probably the one who’s a bit silver, really, isn’t it?” 

That means Dicks’ novelization skirts one of the clunky moments in the plot, and powers on regardless to its end.

What that ultimately means is that Dicks’ novelization flows more smoothly, and clings on more firmly by its fingertips to some notion of logic than the broadcast version ever does.

A Note On Voices

The David Fisher version of the audiobook though has Susan Engel and John Lesson on reading duties. That’s hard to beat in the new audio version. Yes, bringing Geoffrey Beevers in on main reading duties is by all means a safe bet – as a Tom Baker era Master, he has a silkiness that can smooth the story along and a strongly snarling malevolence when it’s called for, albeit in this story it rarely is. It also feels like he enjoys delivering “batty academic” Professor Rumford more than should probably be legal.

The main way in which the Fisher audiobook outbids the Dicks version is enough to break a Who-fan’s heart to write. Because 2011 John Leeson is significantly more on his game than 2026 John Leeson is. Here, K9 feels squeaky and strained, almost like a comic parody of the character, despite to all intents and purposes saying the same lines and being involved in the same heroic action.

In fairness to the man, John Leeson is 83 in 2026 (to Beevers’ 85), and achieving K9’s robotic tones was probably significantly easier at 68 than it is at that age. And let’s be honest here, you still know it’s the Leeson K9 in this audiobook, which makes the book worth getting for that reason alone.

It’s just that if you were to stack up cold numbers and weigh Susan Engels and 2011 Leeson against Geoffrey Beevers and 2026 Leeson, you’d have to give some credit to the earlier version for the sprightlier, less strained voice of K9.

But given the history of Dicks’ novelization, and the anticipation of it coming to audio, and the joyous readings overall by both Beevers and Leeson, there’s more than enough reason to get your mitts on the new audiobook version, and be thoroughly satisfied with the joyous dark lunacy of The Stones of Blood. Tony Fyler 

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