The Nightmare Realm is a Doctor Who audiobook published by BBC Audio. The story is written by Jonathan Morris and read by Dan Starkey. It would feature Peter Capaldi’s version of the Doctor alongside Nardole if this were a television episode.
So the story is framed as if it’s part of an anthology series in the vein of The Twilight Zone or something like that The Doctor and Nardole arrive in a small American town that appears deserted and then suddenly appears to be under a nuclear attack. Strange people and an even stranger monster start to appear with a young boy being the consistent watcher of all of these things. The Doctor starts to wonder if his TARDIS has taken him to someone’s dark imaginings and how to escape a literal nightmare.
This particular installment steps into the arena of surrealism, and it’s a pretty entertaining step. I think this is one of the better ones from the prolific Jonathan Morris. The real treat is Starkey’s vocal gymnastics. He comes out with a fairly wide selection of voices for the various characters. He can even sound fairly close to Capaldi’s Doctor. Starkey may be moving up the list of favorite presenters for the BBC Audio series. He is of course best known as playing the Sontarans in the television series and for Big Finish Productions.
Anyway, this turned out to be a pretty intriguing idea. The idea of the Doctor landing in someone’s dream or imagination has sort of been done before, but Morris managed to pull off one of the better efforts for this kind of story idea. I was quite pleased to add this one to my collection.
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