Bounty (Earth and Beyond)

Audio  Bounty has many firsts.  Beyond the TV Movie and The Eight Doctors, here's his first trip in the TARDIS with Sam Jones, a side step to the Seychelles and an encounter with some alien bounty hunters.  It's also his first original audio adventure nestling alongside two recordings of previously published Short Trips.  It's also the first original story read by Paul McGann, the first time we would have heard him say new dialogue in character (he'd previous read an abridged audiobook of the TV Movie).  This was published so long ago, it was a cassette release.  The version I listened to was from the re-re-release of the MP3-CD anthology Tales from the TARDIS, downloaded from Audible.  Eighth Doctor stories don't get much earlier than this.

Is it a taste of paradise?  Oh God yes.  It's taken me (does maths) twenty-five years to get around to listening to this  (although to be fair I didn't become a fan until a couple of years after its publication date) and it's a nostalgic delight to hear Paul reading a story about Sam Jones, with writer Peter Anghelides (who offers some background on this website) managing to fit in some of Eighth's early signature elements like the way he repeats his new companion's name "Sam, Sam, Sam ...", his purple Volkswagen Beetle, waistcoat business and how he somehow (telepathically?) knows facts about the people he encounters not long after he's encountered them.  How much did he know about where these tales came from?  Did he expect to be reading more or was this a one off?

The story itself is pretty straightforward but that in and of itself is refreshing.  The tendency with Short Trips and Short Trips about the Eighth Doctor in particular is to take a more experimental approach but there's also something to be said for a well executed adventure with a couple of character through lines and an explosive conclusion.  Bounty isn't long, just over half an hour in mp3 duration, but there's enough here to explain how this TARDIS team bonded between The Eight Doctors and Vampire Science, even if the Doctor dropped Sam off at a Greenpeace Rally soon afterwards and spent three years mentally getting his shit together before scooping her up again.

Placement:  Just after The Eight Doctors.