Doctor Who versus the Sasquatch?

Yes, Babes!

On a primal level, the title of this new BBC audio for the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday sounds like one of the “factual” books of the late 1970s/early 1980s, where Doctor Who would be a portal into factual learning about an important and scientific topic or debunk-resistant mythology. 

Good news, then – Sting of the Sasquatch is far, far better than that makes it sound.

Yes, there are Sasquatch (or Bigfoot, if you prefer). Yes, there are hapless Bigfoot-hunters of the scientific, rather than the predatory kind. Yes, there are local rangers who just want to keep everybody safe. And yes, there are missing people to save, rescue, and account for.

Into which already context-rich malarkey stumble the Doctor and Ruby. 

What’s especially delicious about the expanded universe releases, especially in an era of Who that’s so far only one series deep, is that writers are free to take the cues they’ve seen on screen and build whole ways in which the Doctor and companion react to the situations they encounter, and Darren Jones absolutely does that here. 

There’s a certain wistful nostalgia that creeps into the Fifteenth Doctor’s personality here, but it’s tempered and matched by some of the things we already know and love from the TV version – the love of new things, the exuberance, the turning-up-to-Fifteen of the Doctor’s constant appreciation for good people and brilliant species and a lovely bit of tech. 

The short version of which is that Jones captures the Fifteenth Doctor beautifully here, but still gives him occasional ways to surprise us. That’s got to be a good combination to start with, right?

Absolutely right.

But Sting of the Sasquatch is bigger and broader and better than that by virtue of that initial contextually rich scenario into which our heroes stumble, but also because of the mind-blowing nature of what Jones tells us is really going on with the ever-elusive figure of the Sasqutch. 

And that’s the crucial thing with this release – you’re in the hands of a writer whose pacing and plot progression is such that they will take you on a grand, highly visual, mind-expanding science-fiction adventure. In essence, everything that Doctor Who at its very best should be. 

Early on, we discover a scene that could almost be plucked from a Kong Vs Godzilla movie, and in itself, that moment is valid, but it serves only as an amuse bouche for the richer, juicier, fundamentally better sci-fi that Jones has in store for us down the line.

When we discover what’s really going on with the Sasquatch, something magical happens. It turns Sting of the Sasquatch from the sort of Doctor Who story you thought it was going to be into the sort of Doctor Who story that the likes of Russell T Davies could actually deliver across 45 minutes with a couple of sackfuls of Disney cash. 

You’d need the Disney cash to really deliver the story to its best and brightest effect, but that sings praise for the writing, in that it’s gigantic and complex and dawn of timey in ways that, for instance, In The Forest Of The Night could have been but never quite achieved. 

It builds a vast, bright, brilliant mythos around one of our favourite human conspiracies and lifts it far beyond the dull foundations of some long-lost proto-humanoid just trying to avoid humankind. In Sting of the Sasquatch, Darren Jones delivers an origin story for the species that is better than any of that.

It gives the Doctor at least a couple of moments of full-on heroism, and allows Ruby the chance for some relatively classic companion-action. Note to any Tardis travellers anywhere – if you think you’ve picked up a splinter in Act 1, you need to deal with it instantly, or the thing that will absolutely turn out not to be a splinter may well try and kill you by Act 3.

The story also lets Ruby do what, so far, she has proven best at – easing others into the bonkers world of the Doctor, calming them down, and heading off otherwise-inevitable freakouts.

Genesis Lynea (Harriet Arbinger from The Legend of Ruby Sunday and The Empire of Death, as well as much else besides) is an interesting choice of voice for the story. At first, you may struggle with the fact that she doesn’t particularly “play” either the Doctor or Ruby, while distinguishing some of the other characters well enough to let you follow the story. Chances are though that within a handful of heartbeats, that sensation will fade, and you’ll find yourself gripped by the story and swept up in a reading that at no point intends to hang about waiting for you to get it. 

That sense of pace and punch are useful, because Jones’ story is rich and dense and wonderful, so you need the force of a pacy reading to essentially stop you gazing about in wonder and getting caught up in all the beauty and drama. As such, there’s a cleverness to pairing Lynea’s reading with Jones’ storytelling, and you end the audio feeling like you’ve taken a long, long Tardis journey in an appreciably short amount of time. 

Arguably, that’s exactly what Doctor Who should deliver you – thrills, spills, chills, a couple of “Wow” moments that blow your mind, a rich human connection but also a richer science-fiction appreciation of the potential of the universe to be gloriously weird… and home very much in time for tea.

As such, Sting of the Sasquatch is one of those quiet gems that deliver above the weight you might expect from 71 minutes of audiobook. It’s the kind of story you want to hug to your chest and dance about with for a bit. The kind that brightens up a gloomy day, or sets a sunny day singing.

It’s a bit good, being the point. 

If you have 71 minutes in your week going spare, you could do very, very many worse things than picking up Sting of the Sasquatch and feeding it into your ears.  Tony Fyler

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