The Forth Bridge – a place for a reunion of old friends… and enemies.

The first part of this finale to the first audio season of Ninth Doctor Adventures sees some strands picked up from earlier in the series, as well as elsewhere in the Big Finish Doctor Who universe, notably with the presence of Warren Brown’s Sam Bishop, a mainstay of the various UNIT-related stories we’ve had in the last few years. (There’s also a nice little Easter egg regarding UNIT dating casually thrown in early on.) The key guest character of course is Jon Culshaw’s Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart who’s on another of his post-retirement missions, with Doris not far from his side. We get the meeting between new Doctor and Brigadier early on, with some nice touches from Roy Gill and it’s all too easy to see Nick Courtney playing the moment he was deprived of on screen.

There’s other elements from both the Doctor and Brigadier’s past here, and while I understand the marketing requirement, it’s a shame that the Cyber-presence is revealed on the box set cover – it would have been great for Nick Briggs’ Kreel to turn up towards the end and we are as much in the dark as Sam’s girlfriend Fiona as to who and what he is (the voice is sufficiently different). But there are plenty of twists involved with exactly what the Cyberman wants and has been doing – and the cliffhanger builds off a key part of this Doctor’s character.

Verdict: A suitably epic era-appropriate penultimate episode. 8/10

Paul Simpson

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