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The first series of Dan Dare adaptations was one of the best collections of audio fiction I’ve heard in a long time. The combination of old school British space heroics and a distinct, post-BSG mindset paid off again and again and set it up as a hopeful, if cautious, vision of the future.

Volume 2 is even better.

Opening with Reign of the Robots, adapted by Simon Guerrier, it sets the comfy world of Dan and friends on its head. This is a motif that’s repeated at every level throughout the collection but here it’s at its most visceral. A teleportation side effect means the crew are in stasis for a decade and when they return to Earth they find it a robot-controlled ruin with the Mekon at its head.

This is bleak stuff and Guerrier cleverly uses the only thing an author can to make this kind of situation work; go absolutely all in. In the space of 10 minutes you’re dubious and waiting for the reset button. In 15 minutes you’re worried it hasn’t shown up yet.

By 20 minutes you’ll have gone ‘…WHAT?!’ at least once.

This is complex, character driven and bleak SF with a rock solid core of hope. It leans on the exemplary three central performances and in doing so creates a very human view of the robot apocalypse and a soft reboot of sorts for the series. Amy Humphreys turns in the first of a series of strong guest turns here too as resistance member Eko.

Operation Saturn, adapted by Patrick Chapman, builds on that feeling very neatly. With Earth rebuilding after a decade of captivity, Space Fleet is stretched thin. So when an experimental ship that vanished a decade ago is detected, Dan and his team are sent out to investigate.

As well as realizing the endearing debt that Event Horizon clearly owes this story, Operation Saturn takes the series into dark and nicely subversive waters. The villain here is not who you think it is, and there’s a sense of the whole story being part of a much larger bigger picture we haven’t quite seen yet. As well as a gloriously spooky EVA sequence, there’s a great turn from Jonathan Rhodes as Blasco and the first real sense of just how dangerous our backyard is. Space Fleet have not one but two hostile alien forces inside the solar system to deal with. That, combined with the very different and very odd approach Eagle are taking to the aliens sets up some major events for future series as well as being great fun in its own right.

Colin Brake’s Prisoners of Space is the series’ equivalent of that moment around a TV show’s mid-season finale where the writer’s room puts the pedal to the metal.

Not only does the series bring back Flamer, played by Noof McEwan, from the first series (yay continuity!) but it also explores the hunger that the 10 years of Mekon rule has created. Earth feels like it’s behind where it should be. It’s panicking and its enemies can use that. A complex plot that includes Flamer, a series of disappearances and another great supporting turn from Robert G Slade as Old Timer combine to create a story that blows the premise of the series apart. Everything Dan knows is based on falsehoods. Everything Earth has done and faced is part of something much bigger. And somehow, all of this just reaffirms the core of the series, at the same time as seeing Dan make peace with his job, his past and his father’s legacy. The direction throughout is impressive but here, in the soundscape of Dan and the Mekon’s psychic battle, it’s flat out brilliant too. It’s a thrilling, action packed story that’s also the emotional and thematic torchbearer for the series to date.

Verdict: A brave, joyous note to close the second run on it shows just how good this adaptation is and just how much more there is for Dan and co to find. I can’t wait to fly with them again. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart