The Sixth Doctor decides it’s time that he put things right – but will his attempts only make things worse…?

There aren’t many Doctor Who stories that I finish and immediately decide to rewatch or relisten to – and certainly not many that will be on a specific date. However, I suspect I won’t be the only person who marks the centenary of the end of the First World War by digging this out of the collection and spending another 80 minutes in Colin Baker’s company.

This is one of Justin Richards’ finest audio scripts ever – to the extent that you have to wonder if the whole trilogy was devised to reach the final half hour of this story. It’s a comparative rarity: a story told by the Doctor himself (and I don’t mean narrated by an actor who plays one of the incarnation, but within the fiction, it’s the Doctor’s thoughts we are privy to). This is the Sixth Doctor as many of us (and one suspects Baker himself) would have liked on television, the Time Lord who can make the hard decisions but understands, and doesn’t shy away from, the costs; the alien who loves humanity but knows that he can never really be one of them. It’s a Doctor who faces a terrible choice and then finds a way to deal with it.

Richards quotes from a number of earlier Doctor Who stories as he makes the Doctor face the dilemma, and justifies (in the proper sense of the word) the decisions that he makes. Baker gives a terrific and nuanced performance, particularly in the scenes showing the Doctor’s self-doubt with Neil Gardner’s production and David Darlington’s sound design never feeling intrusive but aurally contextualising the tale.

Verdict: One of the best, if not the best original Doctor Who audio story from BBC Audio and its predecessors – highly recommended. 10/10

Paul Simpson

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