‘THE DAY BEFORE THEY CAME’
Please feel free to comment on my review.
Bayview and Kayla Worthington with the Eleventh Doctor
‘The Day Before They Came’ is another enjoyable episode in ‘The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles: Volume Two’. The full-cast audio drama format works far better compared to the audiobook format.
This episode is by Daniel Blythe, who has written ‘Doctor Who’ stories before. He wrote two ‘Virgin New Adventures’ books, including ‘The Dimension Riders’ and ‘Infinite Requiem’ with the Seventh Doctor.
He’s also written the ‘New Series Adventure’ book called ‘Autonomy’ with the Tenth Doctor. This is my first encounter with Daniel Blythe as a ‘Doctor Who’ writer and he’s impressed me with his writing. 🙂
This episode takes place in a shabby seaside town called Bayview and it happens to be November in the year 1986. We’re introduced to Jo Woodcock guest starring as Kayla Worthington in the episode.
Jo Woodcock has done Big Finish audios of ‘Doctor Who’ before, as she was in ‘Static’ with Colin Baker and ‘Starlight Robbery’ with Sylvester McCoy. I enjoyed her performance as Kayla in this story.
When we’re introduced to her, she seems to be a 16-year-old schoolgirl who’s distancing herself from others. She’s waiting for an alien invasion to happen. It has caused some to consider her ‘weird’.
Eventually, she meets up with the Eleventh Doctor, who seems to be on the lookout for something in Bayview. She acquires Kayla’s help, especially when he’s interested in the gadgets she’s carrying. 🙂
It’s interesting how Kayla’s character unravels. She starts off as a ‘wierdo’ schoolgirl before she reveals that she’s an alien visitor. I found that rather disappointing when I listened to the episode. 😐
But by the time we get to the end of the episode, it turns out she’s not an alien visitor at all. She’s a human girl that wanted to live out some of the fantasies that she’d read in her grandfather’s novels.
Her surname might be debatable though. I honestly didn’t expect the surprise twist with her character in the episode. The Eleventh Doctor of course implied that Kayla had lied to him a little bit.
It’s a relief that Kayla being an alien visitor on planet Earth didn’t turn out to be the case. That would’ve sounded like a story idea that would’ve been done too many times, especially in ‘Doctor Who’.
Of course, there is an alien in this ‘Doctor Who’ episode, as it happens to be a sponge-like tentacle creature that exhumes blue foam when filling up the pipes. This is especially inside somebody’s café.
From hearing the episode featuring a tentacle creature that exhumes foam, I’m surprised it didn’t turn out to be the seaweed monster from ‘Fury From The Deep’. Was Daniel Blythe inspired by that?
The sponge creature happens to be a Spongiform, voiced by Nicholas Briggs, the director of this episode. There’s a point where the Doctor names it ‘SpongeBob’ – as in SpongeBob SquarePants. 😀
Apparently, according to Nick Briggs in the behind-the-scenes interviews, he says the voice of the Spongiform is based on his old ‘year leader’/’head of the year’ named Mr. Bell, which is intriguing. 😀
He wanted it to sound distorted as if it was ‘struggling all the time and having difficulty speaking’. Apparently, somebody pointed out that the Spongiform sounded like the comedy character Mr. Bean. 😀
That didn’t occur to me when listening to the episode, but from hearing Nick Briggs in the behind-the-scenes interviews, he does do a good intimation of Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean, which is funny.
The guest cast also includes Joe Barnes as Ray, the apparently ‘overweight’ café owner; and Jacob Daniels as Lee, a young lad who crushes on Kayla. It’s a shame Lee never got a chance to date Kayla.
Jacob Dudman, who plays the Eleventh Doctor, also plays Daz, an arcade manager in the episode. I didn’t realise this till the end, but it’s nice to have Jacob play another character as well as the Doctor.
According to the CD extras, it turns out both ‘The Day Before They Came’ and ‘The Melting Pot’ were recorded in February 2020. That’s like one month before the Covid-19 pandemic happened in 2020. 😐
‘The Evolving Dead’ and ‘A Tragical History’ were recorded remotely in August later that year. Overall, ‘The Day Before They Came’ is a good audio episode to listen to with the Eleventh Doctor. 🙂
The CD extras are as follows. There are behind-the-scenes interviews with Jacob Dudman, Jo Woodcock, Joe Barnes, Jacob Daniels, Nicholas Briggs, writer Daniel Blythe and producer Alfie Shaw. There’s also an interview with sound designer Lee Adams on the making of one of the story’s scenes’ sound effects.
‘The Day Before They Came’ rating – 8/10
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