Doctor Who: UNIT - Dominion

A whopping four-hour long audio play, this begins with two separate strands that meet up at the half-way point. In one, we have the Seventh Doctor travelling through alternate dimensions with companion Raine Creevy. Raine is based on the character originally intended to follow Ace had the TV series not been cancelled in 1989, and she hasn't appeared in the regular Big Finish stories before. Here at least, she comes across as a fairly “generic” companion, despite some references to her background. This thread is by no means dull, but taken on it's own, it doesn't really ramp up until that half-way cliffhanger, either.

It is, however, initially overshadowed by the second plot thread, which follows former time-travelling Nazi Elizabeth Klein as the new UNIT scientific advisor, teaming up with a future version of the Doctor (who is deliberately vague about what number he is). Klein is superb as always, and her understandable distrust of the Doctor is played to the hilt, making for a great dynamic. Alex MacQueen, as the future Doctor, also does a good job, with a mix of over-the-top camp and more serious determination and pragmatism. Once the two plot threads collide and the two Doctors properly meet for the first time, there is also some great interplay between them.

The Earthbound parts of the plot concern a series of invasions as one race of bullet-proof aliens after another pop up through inter-dimensional portals. The aliens in question are pretty inventive, some of them being the sort of thing you could imagine a more regular-length story being based around. That they'd require entirely too much CGI to do well helps reinforce one of the strengths of audio (although a novel would do just as well, of course).

UNIT itself doesn't come particularly favourably out of this, and fans of the Third Doc may want to note that it's set some time after the Brigadier et al. have retired (the specifics are unclear, but I'd guess that it's probably set in the 1980s), so all the characters are new. While the senior officers come across as rather dim military types, Sergeant Wilson gives the team a more human face, although he's largely there in a supporting role.

All in all, this is an epic story, which, perhaps surprisingly, given its length, doesn't flag at any point, and remains engaging all the way through. A knowledge of Klein's previous stories will certainly help with understanding her subplot, and her attitude towards the Doctor(s), although it is briefly recapped for those unfamiliar with it. So, it's far from being an introductory story, but nonetheless an exciting and original tale that's well worth the 4 hours devoted to it.