BONUS - The Maltese Penguin

The classic Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler hardboiled mysteries, which lead to Bogart film noir classics like The Maltese Falcone, Key Largo, and The Long Goodbye, is a perfect fit for the audio play medium. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with science fiction as the quintessential radio genre, so this mash-up affair starring shapeshifting penguin Frobisher is a hilarious and brilliant adventure.

Deciding to go it without the Doctor (Colin Baker), Frobisher gets work as a private detective, and narrates as all the best detectives do. But to appear inconspicuous (or less conspicuous than a talking penguin), Frobisher shape shifts into the colourful sixth Doctor and gets drawn into a classic femme fatale conspiracy full of references to the Hitchcock and Huston genre classics.

M014 - The Holy Terror

Douglas Adams would be proud of this 6th Doctor tale, which blends absurd commitment to religious tradition with a penguin companion and a genocidal 5-year-old.

We first meet the royal court of a recently-deceased God-king, who, because he died, has proven himself to be a false God. Now the whole religion must be thrown out, statues toppled, and heretics executed unless they sign the dark blue recantation form (remembering to keep the light blue copy in case a replacement receipt is required).

Into this satirical madness lands the Doctor and Frobisher, a shape-changer who has taken the form of a giant penguin. Their arrival gives the crowning of a new God-king a proper miracle and cements his place on the immortal throne. The bureaucratic traditions of this castle are soon upset when the new God's half-brother tries (as is tradition) to steal the throne. But with the Doctor and Frobisher in the mix, the pattern is broken and a dark secret is revealed.

This imaginative story keeps improving with every twist, and the introduction of a super-powered, genocidal 5-year-old results in the creepiest voice I have heard yet. Colin Baker's Doctor is a nice fit for the tale and he, and his Technicolor coat, are the only version of the Doctor that I could imagine partnered with a giant talking penguin.