The Alphans make contact with other humans – but why is there a coded warning hidden in the message?

Big Finish – or more to the point, Nicholas Briggs – is sticking to the pattern of mixing old and new episodes in the rebooted version of the Andersons’ Space 1999. After an original tale, we now have Roland Moore’s take on Anthony Terpiloff and Elizabeth Barrows’ Death’s Other Dominion and if you know the original episode, you’ll recognise some of the beats of this story. However Moore and script editor Briggs have taken those and woven a tale that’s far truer to the characters – indeed their version would have played much better with Landau, Bain and co. Let’s put it this way: scientists are true to their calling here.

There’s some nice continuity with the treatment of Simmonds (who wasn’t seen in the original), and the lessons he learned from his last time on an alien world, and the core trio of Koenig, Russell and Bergman are given some nuance by Mark Bonnar, Maria Teresa Creasy and Clive Hayward. The guest stars – Nicolas Asbury, Chris Jarman and Beth Chalmers – give slightly broader performances than you might expect (although nothing on the line of Jarman’s predecessor in the role, Brian BLESSED!), and Iain Meadows’ sound design is excellent, particularly for the sequences on the planet’s surface.

Verdict: Nival is just as potentially lethal to the Alphans as its spiritual predecessor, Ultima Thule – but this time the threat is expressed much better. 8/10

Paul Simpson

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