These past few days have seen an almighty flurry of releases based around the fifth season of "Doctor Who" since its return, starring Matt Smith as the Doctor and Karen Gillian as Amy Pond. One such release is an unprecedented one, but on that note a welcome inclusion too: an audio exclusive dubbed "The Runaway Train" is available with the Telegraph today, well ahead of its announced 3rd of February 2011 retail sale. Matt himself reads the story, focusing on the American Civil War and one of the first steam trains sent to Arizona in the 1800s, and featuring both the Eleventh Doctor and Amy. It will become immediately clear that Smith's origins are anything but American, as he attempts with haste to pull off a Wild West-style accent for several groups of cowboys on the time travellers' tails, however he flourishes as per usual in his own title role, and does his best to put some fun and bravado into Amy's dialogue (since later releases seem to include both Matt and Karen reading, this problem should easily be remedied). The plot itself doesn't require a heavy knowledge of the Civil War in the US, quite the contrary, keeping away from any major details as to where and when in the conflict this story takes place, but despite this there will definitely be times when listeners will struggle to keep up with the action, detracting from the overall positive effect "The Runaway Train" has. As a first "Who" audio effort, this is easily well above sub-par, and sets a decent standard for future voiced adventures in the TARDIS- well worth the £1.80 price of the Telegraph!
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