The New Counter-Measures: The Movellan Manoeuvre

This is the first half of a two-part story. I am reviewing both parts here.

Although released separately, and written by different authors, this and The Dalek Gambit form a single story, clearly divided into two parts, but following on directly from one another and featuring the same guest characters.

The first half begins in typical Counter-Measures style with the team investigating an alien arms dealer who has unaccountably switched to selling cleaning robots. We're a way in before they discover who is behind it, although this is apparent to the listener from the title and cover. Instead, the mystery concerns what exactly they are doing and what something that's little more than a Roomba might have to do with it. This is handled well, with particularly good use of Rachel, although Gilmore's approach does seem over-the-top for somebody supposedly so experienced at spycraft.

After the conclusion of that story, we're directly into one where the Movellans are facing off against the Daleks, with Earth the unfortunate battleground in the middle. This helps to bring the series full-circle, since the Daleks were the opponents in the original TV story on which the audio series is based but, unfortunately, it doesn't work too well. While action has always been a big part of the Counter-Measures stories, here it's almost the entire focus, and it doesn't translate effectively to audio, with it often being difficult to work out what's going on.

More seriously, despite the cover showing the new series versions of the Daleks and there even being a shout-out to the TV episode Dalek, they're remarkably easy to defeat one-on-one, hardly the unstoppable killing machines of that story or, for that matter, of Remembrance of the Daleks. Having said that, the resolution at the end is effective, and there are good scenes for both Rachel and Gilmore. Allison and Sir Toby are less well used although the former does at least have one key role to play in the first half.

This appears to have been planned as the final release in the series, and the ending does have an air of finality about it, even though it does leave an opening for more if Big Finish ever wish to take up the baton again. Unfortunately, it's not one of the stronger stories, with less of the espionage feel of most other episodes and moving more into the territory of the UNIT series. There's also none of the '70s ambience, with a story that would have worked equally well set in the present day. It's not a bad story by any means, but it's not really Counter-Measures.