Spoilers

The Doctor answers a distress call from his granddaughter, Susan, that takes him to the Diamond Array. The Array is vast, crossing dimensions and powered by an atrocity. It’s also oddly familiar and as the Eighth and Fourth Doctors play tag with their shared body, they finally discover why they’ve been degenerating and who is responsible.

You have to admire a story that goes for the big swings like this one does. Matt Fitton is tremendously comfortable with the series at its most cosmic and this is as cosmic as you can get. Odds are you’ll figure out what the Array is shortly before the characters do but that’s both deliberate and a meta-textual joke that lands delightfully. This is the series both looking to its past and its future and celebrating both, and the nature of the threat speaks to that. It also, cleverly, ties one of Big Finish’s best canonical choices directly into the core of the show and I’m really happy to see that. New and old combined, each one stepping out when the other one is needed. Harmony in degeneration and the new born out of the organized chaos of the old. This is the good stuff and Fitton’s rarely been better.

Ken Bentley’s direction has always excelled at centring both performance and emotional honesty and this story gets that by the bucketload. In fact the slightly extended running time here isn’t used to resolve the plot so much as it is to explore the characters further. The Fourth and Eighth Doctors work beautifully together and their shared swashbuckling tendencies give the story a solid dramatic foundation as well as Tom Baker and Paul McGann plenty of opportunities to have fun. The other incarnations get a surprising amount to do as well, with David Tennant’s Tenth and Jacob Dudman’s Eleventh and Twelfth all helping carry the plot along.

But inevitably, the hearts of the piece are Carole Ann Ford and Stephen Noonan. Ford is flat out brilliant here, Susan an unflappable and wry compatriot who is viewed not as an adjunct of the Doctor but a renegade in her own right. Noonan only gets a little here but everything lands and lands hard. The Doctor’s lives are so often made of unfinished business, the character so often cursed with perspective after the fact that it’s very touching to have a chance to return to old ground like Ford and Noonan do here. The one downside to it is the implication that none of them will remember this, the needs of canon mildly damaging the impact of the story, and not for the first time this arc.

That aside though, there’s a colossal amount to enjoy here. Alex Kingston’s Song (accompanied by her own theme music which is a lovely touch) is tremendous fun, playing both ends against the middle and engaging with the story on her terms. Rufus Hound too is a delight, his Monk equal parts desperate and brilliant. Jonathon Carley too, whose presence in the cast will give you a good idea of just who he’s playing, excels as does Michael Maloney. This entire arc has been full of acting heavyweights and this part is no exception.

Arguably best of all is Maureen O’Brien as the Union, the villain of the piece revealed and shining with regal mania. O’Brien is incredibly good fun and her Union fills the cavernous spaces of the Array created by Howard Carter with ease. She is the exact villain this story needs and a perfect foil for the Doctors in every sense.

Verdict: The Union holds nothing back and hits every target it aims for. It’s a very personal, very kind story but it also reads very much as a statement of intent. This is Big Finish Doctor Who at its most baroque and ambitious and the tone is both in line with the show and definitively unique. It’s both a jewel in the crown of the Sixtieth Anniversary and a great story in its own right. I have no idea what next year’s coda could add but based on just how good this arc has been I’m very excited to find out. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

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