The travellers are separated as they cross through the barrier, but each discovers that history can be rewritten…

Without repeating myself too much from my review of the first story, Marc Platt’s terrific tale once again shows that Timeslip is a perfect addition to the Big Finish canon. Rather than reboot the idea – as was done successfully with The Prisoner and Adam Adamant Lives – this has gone the route of The Tomorrow People or The Omega Factor, picking up the stories and the characters and moving them on. Spencer Banks and Cheryl Burfield now feel quite at home again playing Simon and Liz, and they’ve got a worthy adversary in Sarah Sutton’s Charlotte Trent who’s only playing one version of the character this time around – but one with multiple facets. Orlando Gibbs’ Neil and Amanda Shodeko’s Jade both return, with a lot of new challenges thrown at actors and characters.

Platt repeatedly pulls the rug out from under the listener, confounding expectations both of those who only know the show through the earlier audio, and those of us who remember it from rather too many decades ago. Things that we’ve been led to believe – and which the characters themselves believe – are fixed rules of the game turn out to be nothing of the sort; people who we’d expect to jump left go right. And as for the barrier itself – things are not behaving properly.

There’s a very vivid picture painted of the world that our heroes (and antagonist) arrive in, but Platt very carefully doesn’t provide all the answers (for reasons that become clearer as the final part unfolds), although one mystery does get tidied up a little too neatly. (Well, it seems to be – as with recent revelations on the Doctor Who TV show, there are multiple ways of retconning it if needs be.) The society reflects many elements of post-War Britain, but with nastier twists.

Helen Goldwyn’s direction reflects the slightly different nature of this story – Platt incorporates some surreal moments, as well as cliffhangers that don’t necessarily work around a character being in immediate physical peril – and Jamie Robertson’s score and sound design bring the period to life. There’s strong work from the supporting cast, most playing multiple roles (in at least one case, I hadn’t realised they were the same actor until checking the cast list just now), and hopefully some will return, albeit perhaps as different versions.

Verdict: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there – very very differently. Another strong continuation of the classic series. 9/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order Timeslip volume 2 from Big Finish