The Doctor faces terrible choices, and Bernice has a race against time…

The final story in this set also marks the last time we’ll hear David Warner’s Unbound Doctor interacting with Lisa Bowerman’s Bernice Summerfield (although it’s now confirmed that there was one more performance by Warner in the vaults, ready for the 60th anniversary). Listening to this with that foreknowledge – and also bearing in mind that this is an Unbound Doctor, and we all remember that not every Unbound Doctor has to survive – gives Victoria Saxton’s script an edge it might not otherwise have had… Will the Doctor live? And, perhaps rather more to the point, will he want to?

The balance between Doctor and Summerfield is always a tricky one to pull off, but here it works, with Benny encountering an elderly countess who has somehow evaded the Cyber-pulse, while the Doctor is back in the nightclub, and dealing with an MC whose Cyberconversion leads to some truly horrific moments. The Torchwood audios get an “adult” warning on them; in many ways, this should have done as well – this is much closer to the horrors of Children of Earth or even Miracle Day than mainstream Doctor Who.

Steve Foxon’s sound design is essential to the storytelling and Scott Handcock’s direction never allows the listener to shy away from the tougher elements.

Verdict: Blood & Steel has been one of the harder listens, for all sorts of reasons, and this is an appropriate capstone to the Unbound Doctor and Benny’s travels. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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