Jenna and Cally turn to smuggler Dorian for help…

One of the advantages of setting stories in a well-established SF universe is that you can create pairings that wouldn’t have been thought of by the original writers – taking characters who logically must have been around all the time the series is set, but who Our Heroes don’t encounter until much later (simply because they weren’t thought of!)… Series D kicked off by introducing the character of Dorian – whose origins, if you weren’t aware of them already, are as blatant as the name would suggest – who clearly knows quite a bit about the crew of the Liberator, although we never find out how. Mark B. Oliver’s enjoyable tale fills in the gaps.

As you might expect, given Dorian’s original TV appearance, this is a story rife with betrayals, plots and counterplots, with some particularly effective sequences where you almost forget that we know for certain that the Liberator crew will survive… but at what cost to themselves? Geoffrey Burridge’s original performance as Dorian is echoed nicely by Matthew Gravelle with Lisa Bowerman’s direction keeping the story from feeling overly pulpy.

Verdict: Plenty of twists ensure this keeps the listener’s attention. 8/10

Paul Simpson

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