Doctor Who: The Adventure Games

Development

 Charles Cecil, the man behind adventure games such as The Broken Sword Series and Beneath a Steel Sky will be executive producing the series alongside the Current Production team of Doctor Who - Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis and Anwen Aspden of BBC Wales. The actual production of the games was handed over to british dev studio Sumo Digital, famous for their work on several Sega franchises. The stories for each episode will written by Two veteran writers of the new Doctor Who series, Phil Ford and James Moran. Murray Gold, composer for the TV series since its return in 2005, has confirmed that he will be writing and producing the score for each episode.
  

Although released for free in the UK as part of the BBC website service, in America the Adventure Games are released at a price of $3 per game.

Characters

Both Karen Gillan and Matt Smith lend their vocal talents to each Episode of the Adventure Games, playing Amy Pond and the Eleventh Doctor respectively. As the adventure games are designed to be set in between episodes 3 and 4 of the 5th series of the Television show, Amy's fiancé, Rory Williams, does not feature as a companion. Each episode is fully voiced by the two stars of the show, as well as other voice actors playing the roles of monsters or other characters - including Nicholas Briggs, who provides the voices of The Daleks and The Cybermen in Episodes 1 and 2, which he also does on the Television show. 
 

Gameplay

 
  Player take control of both The Doctor and Amy at several points in the game, guiding them through levels and past patrolling monsters. There are stealth elements akin to game series such as Metal Gear Solid, where the player must sneak past creatures, avoiding entering their field of view. Sneaking sections are broken up with various minigames to represent moments such as using the Sonic Screwdriver to bypass security systems, or constructing various devices to help The Doctor and Amy progress through the story. True to the Doctor's nature as a pacifist, there are no combat sections in the game - if an enemy opens fire on the Doctor or Amy, the player must find somewhere to hide until they lose track of them, and then resume their course.  
 
Unlike previous entries in the Adventure Game series, Episode 3 is set entirely within the TARDIS, and there are no stealth sections where the player must guide The Doctor and Amy past patrolling monsters. Puzzle minigames that act as representations of wiring devices to the TARDIS console or creating pieces of technology to use return from previous entries in the series, but on the whole the episode is confined to the point and click adventure tropes adopted by the series as a whole.     

Episodes

Doctor Who: The Adventure Games will consist of 4 standalone Episodes considered to be a continuation of the Fifth series of the TV show by the production team. The first episode will be released on June 5th, 2010, with the final 3 being released between the series 5 finale and the 2010 Christmas Special.
 

Episode 1 - City of the Daleks

 

Episode 1 was released on the 2nd of June, 2010.   Promising to take his companion, Amy Pond, to a Beatles concert in swinging sixties London, The Doctor lands the TARDIS in Trafalgar Square. However, upon exiting the TARDIS, The Doctor and Amy find London in ruins - after confirming that it is in fact 1963, they see a young black woman, Sylvia, being attacked by a Dalek. Sylvia escapes into the London Underground, prompting The Doctor and Amy to sneak past patrolling Dalek Drones to make their own way after her. Using a London Taxicab to smash their way into the depths of the Underground. 
 
They find Sylvia and discover that she is supposedly the last Human on planet Earth - a massive Dalek Army appeared through a crack in time and space in the skies above London, destroying the army and then exterminating the human race. The three avoid more Dalek patrols as they make their way towards a maintenance hatch leading back to the surface. Just as The Doctor and Amy begin to climb through the hatch, the Daleks catch up with them, but Sylvia sacrifices herself to destroy the patrol and give The Doctor time to escape. The Doctor and Amy sneak past more patrols on the way back to The TARDIS, where the Doctor grimly sets course for Skaro, the home planet of the Daleks - he must infiltrate the capital city, Kalaan, and put a stop to The Daleks' time-destroying plans. 
 
The TARDIS lands in a small storage room in the captial city of Skaro, however The Dalek's destruction of the human race has caught up with Amy - with no ancestors alive, she begins to fade out of existence. The Doctor hurridly locates parts to a Chronon Blocker to hold back the effects of  the time warp on Amy: although stable for now, she is still fading in and out of Time. The Doctor decides that what ever technology the Daleks are using to time-travel must be located in The Supreme Council chamber, in the upper echelons of the Dalek City. After spying on The Daleks from a Visualising Chamber, the duo make their way up to the Council chamber, only to be caught by two Daleks and escorted to the Dalek Emperor himself. 
 
The Dalek Emperor reveals to The Doctor that his Daleks have captured The Eye of Time, an ancient Time Lord device that allows them to travel in Time. Claiming that the Daleks will become the new Lords of Time, The Doctor and Amy jump into the Eye and are transported back to Kalaan before The Daleks returned with the stolen time travel technology. The extra time travel without the TARDIS to protect Amy worsens her condition - even with the chronon blocker, she is pratically invisible and close to being wiped from existence. The Doctor uses Amy's invisibility to his advantage, tasking Amy to sneak past the hordes of Daleks flying through the Eye of Time to get parts to a device that will disable the Dalek's vision, allowing him to sabotage the device and restore time. 
 
After Amy retrieves the necessary parts, she takes the Doctor's device to the top of the decayed Council Chambers and activates it, blinding the Daleks and causing them to fire their death rays wildly around the Room. She collapses to the floor, almost fading completely out of reality. The Doctor dodges the wild Dalek fire and meets Amy at the top of the Chamber, disabling the Eye of Time with his Sonic Screwdriver. As the room explodes around them, they take one final jump through the Eye back to their normal time - finding Kalaan still in ruins, back as it should be without The Dalek's interference. With the Time Line restored and the Human race no longer dead, Amy stops fading out of time and returns to normal. The Doctor brings her back into the TARDIS, promising to take her to The Beatles concert as they originally planned and meet Ringo Starr. 

Episode 2 - Blood of the Cybermen

 

Released on the 26th of June, 2010, and originally titled 'Winter of Terror', Episode 2 saw the return of another classic Doctor Who villain, The Cybermen. Also returning for the first time since the 1975 classic series serial Revenge of the Cybermen were the Cybermats. On  Present Day Earth, an unknown skidoo driver flees from an artic cave, flashing back to memories of his research team discovering the Arm of a Cyberman. The rider hides in another cave, however a glacial movement sends him plummeting off the edge of a drop. 
 
Meanwhile in the TARDIS, The Doctor tells Amy about how he taught Elvis to play guitar when the console begins to flash - the ship has picked up a distress signal, and The Doctor decides to follow it. The Doctor and Amy arrive in the Arctic, where they find the crashed skidoo, and discover the unconscious rider at the bottom of an ice cliff. The Doctor and Amy rescue the rider, and learn his name, Chisholm. He is delirious - or, as The Doctor points out to Amy, terrified - and tells them that he can't return to his research base, as it  has been invaded by a terrible force. Insistent that he must save the survivors who sent the distress signal, The Doctor, Amy and a reluctant Chisholm,  travel by TARDIS to the GSO base. Upon finding it seemingly deserted, Chisholm is attacked by a small, metallic, snakelike being - a Cybermat. He explains to the Doctor that those infected by Cybermats slowly turn into Cyberslaves, a zombie like creature that is part human, part Cyberman. Chisholm then locks himself in a tower to prevent him from attacking the Doctor and Amy. 

The Doctor and Amy head towards the main dome in search of other survivors, however they are confronted by a Cyberslave waiting behind the door. Whilst the Doctor distracts the shambling monster, Amy disables it by blasting it with boiling steam from a nearby vent. They head into the dome and discover the director of the research project, Professor Elizabeth Meadows, is still alive, and working on a cure for the nanovirus to save her colleagues. The Doctor and Amy then go in search of a Cybermat in order to get a pure sample of the virus to work from. However, when they return, they discover that Meadows has mysteriously vanished. The Doctor completes the cure himself, and then heads over to the tower to administer it to Chisholm, but both he and Amy are shocked to discover he is already becoming converted, Cyber implants growing out of his arm and face. 

With help from Chisolm, The Doctor and Amy make their way through the Base security doors and head down deeper into the tunnels the team dug, making their way past patrolling Cyberslaves. Eventually they come across a huge cavern, containing the terror that the research team found beneath the ice - a crashlanded Cybership, containing a whole army of Cybermen in cryosleep, waiting to convert the human race. While making their way up to the control room of the ship, Amy is captured by two Cyberslaves - the Doctor gives chase, but when he reaches the control room, containing the Cyberleader itself , he discovers Meadows, partially converted: She was a cyberslave all along, tricking The Doctor into coming down to the Cybership. Meadows threatens that unless the Doctor revives the Cyber army from cryo sleep, Amy will be converted into the first of a new race of Cybermen. The Doctor reluctantly proceeds in reviving the Cybermen, and succeeds, as the Cyberleader begins to awaken on his throne. The newly revived Cyberleader states that Meadows and the cyberslaves are no longer necessary, and are inferior to pure Cybermen, and shoots her. He attempts to shoot the Doctor, but the Doctor manages to escape, avoiding more Cybermen as he heads over to the Cyber-conversion area where Amy is being held. Freeing Amy, they then proceed back to the Control room via a different route to avoid the patrolling Cybermen.  
 
However, they are cornered by the Cybermen. Just as the leader prepares to delete them, Chisholm - now free from the cybermen's nanovirus - surprises the cybermen and attacks them with the Cyber arm the team discovered at the research base, killing them. The Doctor then reverses the revival process, disabling the army of Cybermen currently marching its way across the antartic. Having misunderstimated the amount of time they would have to get out before the ship explodes, The Doctor, Chisholm and Amy flee from the tunnels and out of the base, just in time to avoid the blast. Outside the dome, the Doctor states to Chisholm that the Cyberslaves should revert as the virus has been destroyed in the process, and that UNIT would soon be on their way to ask questions - he tells Chisholm that all he should do is tell them he stopped the problem. As the Doctor and Amy step into the TARDIS, Chisholm asks what name he should give to UNIT, and the Doctor replies "The Doctor. Just 'The Doctor'." as he closes the TARDIS doors and dematerialises.

  Episode 3 - TARDIS 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
Released on August 27th, Episode 3 allowed players not only to fly the TARDIS for the first time, but also to explore different areas of the The famous timeship for the first time since the TV series' return in 2005.   TARDIS begins with   The Eleventh Doctor  and his companion,   Amy Pond , squabbling in the console room of The   TARDIS . As Amy argues that none of The Doctor's supposed 'Holidays' ever occur with out danger or aliens to fight, the ship violently shudders, causing its doors to open and suck The Doctor out into space. 
 
Amy hurries over to the doors in an attempt to reach The Doctor, but he is trapped outside with no air, and surrounded by small, swirling blue creatures. Holding his breath, he mimes to Amy to press all the red button on the TARDIS console to reset the power and extend the air bubble outside the TARDIS so he can breath again. As Amy does so, the Doctor explains that the small creatures are called Chronomites, and although relatively harmless to him, are making him itch. He tells her that she will need to generate a tractor beam from the console out to pull him back into The TARDIS, and that the parts can be found in his drawing room. After giving her a series of complex directions to navigate her through the rooms of the TARDIS to get there, Amy attempts to ascend the flight of stairs out of the console room - but she somehow reappears back in the same room time and time again. The Doctor explains that the violent shudder that originally knocked him out of the TARDIS was the ship entering a rip tide in Space and Time, which is somehow distorting the interior of the ship. In order to negate the effect and get to the drawing room, Amy operates the control panels of the TARDIS to generate a dampening field. 
 
Eventually Amy makes her way to The Doctor's private study - a vast, wood panelled room filled with objects from The Doctor's past adventures, and lined with a variety of clocks and shelves full of books - and sets about looking for the parts to make a tractor beam. Another jolt from the rip tide shakes the ship and causes one of the clock faces on the wall to open, revealing a small safe behind containing a Laser Screwdriver - a weapon used by The Doctor's arch nemesis and fellow Time Lord, The Master, and a small bottle. As she picks up the screwdriver, Amy accidentally knocks the bottle to the floor, breaking it open. She nonchalantly ignores the bottle as she returns to the console room with the Laser Screwdriver, however behind her back a glowing, orange cloud of energy rises out of the bottle, forms into a spherical cloud, and floats up the fireplace's chimney.
 
Amy returns to the console room, and under the Doctor's orders, rewires the Laser Screwdriver into the console and projects a tractor beam out to him, freeing him from the Chronomites and returning him safely into the TARDIS. However, their reunion is cut short when another Jolt from the rip tide shakes the TARDIS once more, and in a glow of light, Amy mysteriously disappears. She finds herself in a dark and cold version of the TARDIS' console room, with no Doctor in sight, when The Entity attacks her, covering her in a glowing orange energy field. 
 
The Doctor realises that Amy has been sent through a lesion in Time, to the same point of space, but 1,000 years in the future. He makes his way to the drawing room to fetch parts to create a device that will allow Amy to return to the present, and notices the smashed bottle - realising that The Entity has escaped it's prison, he hurriedly returns to the Console room and constructs the device, and sends a message to the future console room so Amy will know how to activate the device and return to her own time. Amy, still under attack from The Entity and weakening, receives the Doctor's message and activates the device, transporting both herself and The Entity back to the present time. The Doctor confronts The Entity, revealing that it is slowly consuming Amy's Time energy, and, if left unchecked, will consume all Time energy in the universe. He demands that the Entity return Amy's energy to her and then return to a new prison bottle to spend the rest of time in captivity and starvation, or allow The Doctor to find a place where The Entity can feed of Time safely. The Entity declines and advances on The Doctor, who's nature as a Time Lord would satisfy it's hunger for the foreseeable future, but The Doctor manages to trap the creature and restore it into a new bottle. He opens the doors to the TARDIS and offers The Entity one last chance of freedom in the void, where it can live with the Chronomites and feed off their infinite generated time energy. The Entity agrees, and The Doctor releases it into the void, closing the doors. 
 
After congratulating Amy and himself on a job well done, he decides to take her on a real holiday - one without any danger. He prepares the TARDIS for flight, operating a multitude of buttons and switches on the console before setting off. The TARDIS lands in an underwater base, The Doctor explaining as they exit that it is the 23rd Century, and that this is London after the Great Flood destroys it. As they make their way through the base, alarms suddenly begin wailing, and a gigantic, shark-like creature swims over head, heading menacingly towards The Doctor and Amy...
 

Episode 4 - Title TBA

 
Episode 4 carries on directly where TARDIS left off, with The Doctor and Amy in an underwater base that is home to the citizens of London in the 23rd century, and is currently under attack by massive, shark-like creatures.