Show Notes
There are libraries full of books. There are libraries full of knowledge. And then, apparently, there are libraries aboard the Nosferatu 2.5 where the books have started becoming rather selective about who gets to exist in them.
This time aboard the ship, Sophie is joined by Dan Starkey, actor, writer, voice artist and one of the most recognisable inhabitants of the Doctor Who universe, despite frequently being hidden beneath several layers of prosthetics.
Dan has played a remarkable variety of characters across Doctor Who, but is perhaps best known to television audiences as Strax, the gloriously literal Sontaran warrior who became an unlikely member of the Paternoster Gang alongside Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint. He has also played numerous other Sontarans, appearing opposite several incarnations of the Doctor.
His relationship with Doctor Who extends well beyond the television screen. Dan has become a major presence in the world of audio, particularly through his extensive work with Big Finish, where he has appeared across Doctor Who and numerous other productions. He has also moved behind the microphone as a writer, co-writing Terror of the Sontarans, proving, perhaps, that having spent enough time playing Sontarans eventually leads to the inevitable conclusion that one must start writing them as well.
But Dan’s arrival aboard the Nosferatu 2.5 comes at a particularly strange moment.
The ship’s Narrative Archive has become a library, although not one that Sophie and Hobbes entirely trust. Books are present, but stories are missing. Information remains, but somehow the things that give that information meaning have begun to disappear.
Meanwhile, Mrs C and the Ffantaface provide their usual means of escaping the immediate problem, taking Sophie somewhere rather unexpected for another conversation with a very special guest.
This time, the Ffantaface brings us Laurence Scott, award-winning author of The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic Comma Lightning.
Laurence has spent more than a decade writing essays and criticism for publications including The New Yorker, Financial Times, New York Times, The Guardian, WIRED, Boston Globe, New Statesman and the London Review of Books, exploring the increasingly strange relationship between technology, culture, time and the ways in which we experience the world around us.
And, perhaps most importantly for a journey aboard the Nosferatu 2.5, Doctor Who has had a profound influence on Laurence both personally and professionally.
And somewhere aboard the Nosferatu 2.5, the books are waiting.
Just be careful which one you open!
Sophie Aldred's Ace Odyssey stars Sophie Aldred with James Showers as Hobbes. Special Guests- Dan Starkey and Laurence Scott.
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Music by Graeme Allan Sound Effects & Sound Design by Gavin Rymill Programme Assistant Liz Whitmore
Based on a short story by Soula Carmichael Written, Produced and Directed by Paul Carmichael
You can follow Graeme Allan on Bluesky @graemeallan and listen to more of his music at www.youtube.com/brassbandit
You can follow Gavin Rymill on Twitter & Bluesky @themindrobber, and you can watch his superb Dr.Who series Terry Nation Army on www.youtube.com/dalek6388
You can follow Paul Carmichael on Bluesky @paulcarmichaeluk and on Threads @paul.carmichael.1213 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Sophie Aldred's Ace Odyssey
Something has come aboard the Nosferatu 2.5, and it has taken an interest in Sophie. When Lisa Bowerman arrives by Time Scoop, she seems to be carrying more than a little temporal residue. An intelligence is reaching out through her, and it knows something about Sophie that perhaps Sophie herself does not yet understand. But who, or what, is it? And what happens when something that has been calling from a distance finally finds its way aboard?
Some stories are about monsters, some are about impossible planets, and some are about the rather more dangerous territory of memory, belonging and the places we still think of as home.
Welcome aboard the Nosferatu 2.5 for a rather special journey through the wider world of Sophie Aldred’s Ace Odyssey for August Bank Holiday weekend!
Something is shushing aboard the Nosferatu 2.5. But who is shushing whom? And why has the Time Scoop delivered Sarah Sutton aboard the ship apparently carrying fragments of a story that never existed?