As Toos visits Poul in the rundown area he’s made his home, a broken robot demands to know who murdered it…

Every so often, a Big Finish audio – notably in the Torchwood range – is prefaced with the warning that the story following contains adult material. It’s not present on this story by Guy Adams; frankly, it should be.

Circuit Break is a very adult look at mental health issues – and you can take the robot element out of it, and it still very much is true to life. Adams, director Ken Bentley, and the cast – notably the late David Collings, for whom this is one of his best Doctor Who performances, and Carolyn Seymour – all take it absolutely seriously, and Lee Adams’ sound design echoes the madness that one of the key characters is experiencing. In fact, much as I love Joe Kraemer’s score, I wonder if there is a case for this one being music-free…

The relationship between Pamela Salem’s Toos and Collings’ Poul is central, and I’m delighted that it’s been incorporated into the ongoing Robots story – and even more so that the events of The Robots of Death have had its effects on the survivors of Sandminer 4. People don’t simply snap their fingers and recover (as they often had to do for television series in a time when ongoing narrative arcs were not anywhere near as key as they are now), and this proves that you may think you know someone, but aren’t privy to their own confusions and concerns.

Verdict: Go into this one forewarned – it’s a great but harrowing piece of Big Finish. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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