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Doctor Who and the Armageddon Factor
Doctor Who and the Armageddon Factor
Jul 6, 2025 4:48 AM

Author:Terrance Dicks,John Leeson

Doctor Who and the Armageddon Factor

John Leeson reads this exciting novelisation of a TV adventure for the Fourth Doctor, Romana and K9.

Some time ago the White Guardian, one of the most powerul beings in the Cosmos, set the Doctor an urgent task to find and reassemble the six segments of the Key to Time.

Having successfully retrieved five of the segments, the Doctor and Romana arrive on the planet Atrios in the middle of an atomic war. There they must search for the last, most vital piece of the Key.

However, sinister dangers await them in this final stage of their quest. The actions of the Marshal of Atrios, operating under a mysterious influence, look certain to bring about armageddon for them all.

John Leeson, the Voice of K9 in the TV series, reads Terrance Dicks's novelisation of the 1978 TV serial by Bob Baker and Dave Martin.

(P) & © 2019 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Text © Terrance Dicks, Bob Baker and Dave Martin

1980 Reading produced by Neil Gardner

Recorded at Ladbroke Audio Ltd

Sound design by Simon Power for Meon Productions

Executive producer: Michael Stevens

TARDIS sound effect composed by Brian Hodgson

Cover illustration by Bill Donohoe

Reviews

Wondrous... a violent, all-action thrill ride shuttling between antiquity and the present... just downright brilliant... a transcendant, transporting experience... A helix, a mirror ball, a literary box of tricks… take your pick: this is a full-spectrum pleasure, mixing metafictional razzmatazz with pulse-racing action and a prose style to die for. I’ll be staggered if it’s not spoken of whenever prizes are mentioned this year

—— Anthony Cummins , Observer

A beautifully rendered retelling…[and] a gripping novel that, despite its rollicking plot, never feels relentless, and is often very affecting indeed

—— Jon Day , Financial Times

The extraordinary force and vividness of Haddon's prose ensure that The Porpoise reads [...] as a continually unfolding demonstration of the transporting power of stories... This is language that knows how to do things: sail a ship, make a gold buckle, negotiate the tides of the Thames. It's a stunningly effective combination of the quotidian and the mythic that pins impossibility to the page

—— Justine Jordan , Guardian

Compelling, satisfying and moving... Haddon's writing is exquisite, balancing simple storytelling with searing insight

—— Paul Connolly , Metro

The Porpoise is terrifically violent, with a bright, innocent ferocity … Haddon wants to restore agency to the female characters sidelined by the Antiochus legend. This could feel like a condescending attempt to end up on the right of history, but doesn’t

—— Katy Waldman , The New Yorker

Told in Haddon’s generously telegraphic prose – onparticularly good form here – [...] The Porpoise is a defiantly odd novel, dependent on the fine caul of Haddon’s prose to keep together the heavily spiced romantic mixture within… Haunted not just by its direct source but by Ovid and others, the novel exists in a world of old magic, of stories within stories, and webs of allusion that would crumble swiftly if mishandled, but which, here, weave their spell marvellously well

—— Tim Smith-Laing , Daily Telegraph

[The Porpoise] races across the oceans: it is a book of thrilling, salt-caked adventures that scintillate like sunlight on the surface of the sea. There are plagues and famines and sword fights with not-quite human adversaries. There are desperate escapes and terrible family separations and dramatic recognitions. It is a breathless, delightful, utterly absorbing read

—— The Guardian

The Porpoise by Mark Haddon is the book I’ve recommended the most this year because it’s the one I had the most fun with. It kept shifting as I read it, changing from action to romance to science-fiction. It’s dizzying

—— Stuart Turton , Observer, *Books of the Year*

Beguiling...ambitious...bold... Haddon's prose is beautiful, and he is utterly in command of his slippery material... An elegant homage to stories' capacity for endless renewal

—— Claire Allfree , Evening Standard

Beautifully written

—— Johanna Thomas-Corr , The Times

Daring... extraordinary... Haddon’s writing is beautiful, almost hallucinatory at times, and his descriptions so rich and lush and specific that smells and sights and tastes and sounds — foam smashing across a boat’s deck; a breakfast of olives and barley bread soaked in wine; a woman trapped alive in a coffin — all but waft and dance off the page... The Porpoise is a provocative and deeply interesting work

—— Sarah Lyall , New York Times

[A] multi-layered, ambitious novel… [with] an immersive, intricate narrative… Elegant, inventive and thought-provoking

—— Simon Humphreys , Mail on Sunday

Mark Haddon has written a terrifically exciting novel called The Porpoise … so riveting that I found myself constantly pining to fall back into its labyrinth of swashbuckling adventure and feminist resistance

—— Ron Charles , The Washington Post

The Porpoise is lovely, sad, ambitious and admirable... Every age retells, refocuses and interprets the classics. In The Porpoise Mark Haddon has done so in a way that makes us look afresh not only at the story of Pericles but also at storytelling itself

—— Simon Baker , Literary Review

An enthralling novel that will sweep you up from the off

—— Isabelle Broom , Woman & Home

Seriously good... a beautiful read you won't forget

—— Clara Strunk , Evening Standard *Summer Reads*

Haddon’s glittering tapestry of a novel skilfully redeploys the structures of Pericles’ source material… In The Porpoise, Haddon gives voice to a character who, in Shakespeare, receives no more than a passing mention, and in doing so, shows the transcendent power of stories to heal and restore

—— Philip Womack , Independent

Staggeringly ambitious, innovative, beautifully written... The Porpoise has the pace of a really good thriller, but combined with a subtlety and depth that few thrillers possess

—— Pat Barker

A full-throttle blast of storytelling mastery. I read it on the plane in a single sitting at 30,000 feet and enjoyed every second. Gorgeously written and very clever, but also such fun! Ancient and modern overlap and tangle in exhilarating ways, it’s like romping through a Literary Netflix: an episode of something historical and bloody, then something slick and contemporary, then something really weird and unnerving. So many pleasures in one book. The Porpoise is a joy to read

—— Max Porter

There is storytelling of such primacy in Mark Haddon’s The Porpoise, that when I turned the last page, I was left completely elated. A gorgeous, enlivening experience. It is also one that insistently asks: how? How did all this add up to something so sublime? How, with all its subtle slips, and stunningly weird passages, could this strange, beautiful book feel so finely composed? It is disarmingly wild. And the story itself, in which the myth of Appolonius, remixed as Pericles by Shakespeare and George Wilkins, is again turned inside out, thrown backward and forward, and hurled against oceans (in an act of imaginative heroism by the author), invites us to understand something Haddon always has, which is that even stories as old as this one can remain relevant to our current moment. Especially if they are told with this much originality and conviction

—— Guy Gunaratne , Goldsmiths Prize

Mark Haddon cuts right down to the grittiness of humanity every time he writes. The Porpoise is a beautiful, unputdownable, ancient tangle with its own sweeping tides and dangerous depths

—— Daisy Johnson

It's hard to describe just how much tremendous joy and pleasure there is on every page

—— Charlotte Higgins

Haddon deftly adapts this ancient myth for the 21st century to illuminate a timeless, ugly truth about how the violent appetites of men strip women of their agency

—— Esquire

Beguiling yet unsettling

—— Eithne Farry , Daily Mail

A fantastical narrative that involves rampaging pirates, ghost women and princesses...Bold

—— Andrea Martin , Heat

This gripping and evocative novel questions the nature of the stories we tell ourselves and others

—— UK Press Syndication

A rollicking fantastical narrative

—— i

A wild adventure...full of splendid incident... There is much to enjoy in this novel -- the liveliness of Haddon's imagination and the virtuosity of his style

—— Allan Massie , The Scotsman

[The Porpoise] achieve[s] the truly Shakespearean feat of simultaneously conveying disgust at the darkest aspects of human behaviour and relishing them, making the reader feel horribly – and deliciously – complicit

—— Jake Kerridge , Sunday Express

Stamped with the same bold and original imagination… Haddon’s mash-up of myth and history may have a fantastical feel, but once the reader has adjusted to his exuberant originality they will find prose on every page that is pure joy

—— Jane Thynne , Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

Haddon writes with wrenching beauty about how the world inflicts itself on the disadvantaged... It's a testament to Haddon's prodigious gifts as a storyteller that this strange, epic adventure is so compulsively readable

—— Nicholas Mancusi , Time Magazine

A strange, tangled web of a story, drawing on ancient mythology and expanding into time travel… this innovative novel offers escapes into multiple worlds

—— Culture Whisper

Irresistible storytelling that slides between the present day and a mythic realm… A heady delight

—— Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2019*

The novel draws on Shakespeare and Greek legend, and is the sort of mile-a-minute adventure you can get lost in for hours without realising

—— ShortList, *Summer Reads of 2019*

[The Porpoise] confirms the sense of a gifted writer letting his talent off the leash at last… Mind-bending yet marvellously readable, it stakes Haddon’s claim to be one of the best writers in Britain right now

—— Daily Mail, *Summer reads of 2019*

Haddon conveys all this with startling granularity: the stinking, seething Jacobean London traversed by the ghosts of Wilkins and Shakespeare… Haddon's novel creates, throughout, a looming sense that something very bad but not quite perceptible is in the process of unfolding: a terrible half-glimpsed fate that the characters are powerless to resist

—— Adam Smyth , London Review of Books

The Porpoise begins as a page-turning thriller and soon shifts into something slippery and strange – but remains propulsive throughout

—— New Statesman

Mark Haddon’s best novel yet. The Porpoise begins as a propulsive thriller…and segues into a classical-world adventure that reinvents the story of Pericles in prose of a hallucinatory vividness

—— Justine Jordan , Guardian, *Books of the Year*

The Porpoise reworks legend with the compelling force of a thriller

—— Lindsey Hilsum , Observer, *Books of the Year*

[An] exquisite retelling of Shakespeare’s Pericles

—— Claire Allfree , Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*

Thrilling, dramatic and exquisitely written, The Porpoise combines myth and reality to enthralling effect

—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail

Vuong…[is] a keen anthropologist of the contemporary American experience.

—— Jessica Loudis , Times Literary Supplement

A beautiful novel full of raw feelings.

—— Laura Waddell , Scotsman

[A] phosphorescent debut novel… Vuong layers past and present brilliantly in a shifting series of brief episodes and striking mood-musings from within the mind of his protagonist… the hyperreality of Little Dog’s self-awareness is always a delight.

—— Mark Hudson , Tablet

Staggering, sensual and poetic

—— Pandora Sykes

[A] stunning debut… Ocean Vuong crafts lyrical, masterful prose in this emotionally-powerful piece of story telling. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is sure to stay with readers long after they have put the novel down.

—— Eastern Daily Press

A brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.

—— Asian Art Newspaper, *Books of the Year*

A tender exploration of violence, migration and language.

—— Justine Jordan , Guardian, *Books of the Year*

This romantic, lusciously written debut lingers over kisses.

—— Robbie Millen and James Marriot , The Times, *Books of the Year*

A magical synthesis of memoir, fiction and poetry.

—— Joyce Carol Oates , Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

So very full of beauty and power. Also, grace.

—— Tommy Orange , Observer, *Books of the Year*

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is a stunning, relentless work of pure passion and I was captivated from the go.

—— Úna-Minh Kavanagh , Sunday Independent *Books of the Year*

A story that is deeply relatable, understandable and can find common currency with us all. He uses his differences to connect us, to show the links that bind us, to explore violence, masculinity, poverty and yearning… you’ll quickly get carried away by his undercurrents into spaces and places you’d perhaps never thought of exploring or even realised existed.

—— Gscene

Vuong’s gift lies in his ability to write with beautiful specificity while digging into the wounds of immigration, culture, queerness and memory. I’ve read many very good books in 2019 but none have obliterated me like On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.

—— Katie Goh , Skinny, *Books of the Year*

Ocean Vuong is a magician with words. When he writes, it's as if language itself is dancing. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is… a brutally honest exploration of race, class and masculinity. This debut novel is a luminous, mesmerising gift.

—— attitude, *Books of the Year*

Astounding.

—— Malin Hay , Upcoming

Vuong jettisons the prose for poetic verse, with Roland Barthes, Duchamp’s Fountain and queer love all collapsing into splintering lines of verse. Vuong’s sentences are so beautiful, sometimes I would say them over and over again in my head, hoping I might be able to trap them in there.

—— Annie Lord , Independent

[Vuong is] brilliant and so flexible with language and has such an understanding of what an emotion incarnate is, he is able to not condense it but to heighten it across languages, across countries, across codes as characters speak to one another. He's peerless.

—— Bryan Washington , Observer

[A] triumphant debut novel... On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous felt like a true masterpiece being crafted before my eyes, and I was devastated to see the novel draw to a close. I truly can't recommend this book highly enough - I don't remember the last time I was so floored after reading something that I had to take the rest of the day off speaking to family... a passionate, eye-opening journey, and is most certainly one to be added to your lockdown reading list.

—— Rebecca Scott , Glasgow Guardian

Beautifully written... Unlike anything I have read before

—— Ellie Down , Exeposé

An engrossing coming-of-age story.

—— Mariella Frostrup , Sunday Times

[Vuong] is an author of incredible and magical talent, with many of his paragraphs reading like the most beautiful poetry... An absolute must-read

—— Glamour

Raw, lyrical and at times hearth-wrenching, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a book of real beauty

—— i

For a long time after I read this, I could still feel the impact of his story. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is an experience that you need to have.

—— DIVA

I read the novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong while on tour and the language often stopped me in my tracks... powerful.

—— Dua Lipa , Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2023*

Inventive... [On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous] just stops you as a reader to marvel at the beautifully constructed narrative

—— Art Newspaper
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