Polly, the Brigadier and Thomas Brewster team up to deal with the dreaded G.L.

The Three Companions was an experimental  story that Big Finish tagged onto the end of their main range releases for a year in 10-minute chunks. As the producer’s notes reveal, the story was originally intended to feature Jo Grant, rather than the Brigadier, which makes more sense of some of the story’s later beats, but was basically broken down into three sections led by each of the companions in turn, with email used as the means of dialogue.

I wasn’t overly keen on the original releases, as a lot of the segments didn’t really work on their own, but the revised and re-edited version is considerably stronger, and shows Marc Platt’s scripting up much better. There are hints of some of his New Adventures concepts here – particularly in The Brigadier’s Story, which has a Time’s Crucible element to it – and Platt sells a global problem far better than Miracle Day is currently doing on television!

Worth listening to again, even if you caught the various parts as they were released.  7/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order The Three Companions (back of The Companions Chronicles The Specials Box Set) from Big Finish

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