2.3. “Doctor Who: The Adventure Games”

“Doctor Who: The Adventure Games” is a series of episodic third-person adventure games, based on the BBC TV series “Doctor Who” and developed by Sumo Digital. Charles Cecil served as the executive producer and worked with Sean Millard and Will Tarratt on the design.

Each episode was made available for free download to the residents of the UK via the BBC's official Doctor Who website; a UK internet address is required to both download and play them, though several of the games subsequently were made available for international sale. The first one was released on 5 June 2010, the second one released on 26 June 2010, the third released on 27 August 2010 and the fourth released on 22 December 2010 and the fifth released on 31 October 2011. In February, 2012, the BBC announced they had shelved the games in favour of worldwide console games such as “Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock.”

The games were commissioned by Simon Nelson and Rosie Allimonos of BBC Vision. Phil Ford was selected to write because of his experience in writing for Doctor Who, including writing the Dreamland animated Doctor Who series.

Phil Ford and James Moran wrote the scripts, and Charles Cecil worked on the game design. The Games were created by Sumo Digital with Will Tarratt as lead designer. Composer of the revived series of “Doctor Who” Murray Gold has provided music for The Adventure Games. The executive producers of the 2010 series of the show Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger and Beth Willis, along with BBC Wales Interactive's Anwen Aspden and video game creator Charles Cecil all serve as executive producers of the interactive episodes. Producer and voice director was Gary Russell who had previously directed the animated serials The Infinite Quest and Dreamland.

As of February 2012, The Adventure Games have been shelved.

On 7 April 2010, the game was first announced on the official Doctor Who BBC website. It included a brief description of what was to come as well as 13 in-game pictures.

The first episode was scheduled to be available on the 5 June, but a 'not quite final' version was available 3 days early. The Mac version was released on 15 June.

On 17 June, Simon Nelson, the controller of portfolio and multiplatform at BBC Vision told games magazine MCV that the number of downloads of the first episode had already exceeded half a million. "The result is a lot more than I was expecting. We had set ourselves some fairly stretched targets on this and we’ve blown them away", he says.

To promote the second episode of "Blood of the Cybermen", Steven Moffat and Nicholas Briggs went to Gavinburn Primary School in Scotland and to the Pacific Quay in Glasgow.

To coincide with the airing of "The Big Bang" in the US on 24 July on BBC America and Space, the Windows versions of the first two episodes were made available to purchase outside the UK via Direct2Drive.; the Mac OS versions of the games, however, were never made available for sale; although it was announced that the remaining games likewise would be made available for sale, as of mid-2012 this has yet to happen.

On 20 September 2010, the second series was commissioned for 2011. BBC’s head of multiplatform in vision Simon Nelson said "Given the success of the first series, we'd be daft not to recomission. But it's not just about the numbers; the feedback we've had has been overwhelmingly positive.

City of the Daleks

The Doctor and Amy arrive in Trafalgar Square, London, in 1963 to find the city in ruins and under the control of the Daleks. Following a woman, Sylvia, into the London Underground they learn that she is the only human survivor after the Daleks invaded - appearing through a 'split' in the sky.

Blood of the Cybermen

A number of flashbacks show an excavation of an arctic base. A worker at the base called Chisholm flees from the base on a Snowmobile where he finds a Cyberman arm. Chisholm falls off a cliff and gets badly hurt. The Doctor receives a SOS call which he responds to, and landing where Chisholm fell. The Doctor and Amy rescue Chisholm and they use the TARDIS to go back to the base where Chisholm came from.

TARDIS

The Doctor and Amy are inside the TARDIS, discussing where they should go next for a more peaceful outing, and the Doctor mentions that his holidays in Brighton and Paris did not turn out well. However, the TARDIS suddenly enters a 'space riptide', and the Doctor is launched through the doors and out into space.

Shadows of the Vashta Nerada

The episode begins with the Doctor and Amy being stalked through the underwater city (from the end of the previous episode) by an enormous shark-like creature known as a "Zaralok". The two make their way through a series of tunnels while the Zaralok tries to ram its way in; while they manage to escape, the Zaralok destroys one of the tunnels, separating them from the TARDIS. They head over to the city's central building, Poseidon Eight, where they are greeted by an oceanographer called Martin.

Martin explains how Poseidon's workers have been suffering from some form of disease, and how Jones, the intelligent computer monitoring Poseidon, has been forced to place the crew under quarantine. Martin then takes the Doctor and Amy to meet Dana, the crew's medic, and Oswald, the captain. Before they are able to explain any more about the situation, the lights go out due to a generator malfunction; when they come back on, Martin's flesh has been eaten away from his skeleton inside his diving suit. The Doctor realises that Poseidon has also been infested by Vashta Nerada.

The Gunpowder Plot

While leaving China after trying to get a take-away, the TARDIS collides with an alien ship, creating a dimensional lesion inside the ship that links the TARDIS to an alien planet. They trace the ship that they collided with and discover that it is under London in the seventeenth century. While the Doctor works on a device to close the lesions in the TARDIS, Amy and Rory explore the sewers where they have landed, and discover that they have arrived at the time of the Gunpowder Plot.

The Eternity Clock

Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock is a video game released on 23 May 2012 and is first in the new series of Doctor Who console games based upon the BBC television series.

The plot is promised as allowing the player to take on the role of the Doctor and River Song as they travel across space and time in an effort to save the Earth by gathering pieces of the eternity clock, an object that is a record of everything that has or will ever happen in all of existence. Along the way a decision is made which leads to "multiple possibilities" and puzzles. Players will encounter Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians and The Silence. The game had previously been confirmed for release on 30 April 2012, but was later postponed to 23 May 2012.

The game takes place just before the events of "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" in River Song's timeline as indicated by various notes within her diary as well as the use of her title of 'Professor'