Beyond History's End | 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Review 7 of 12 | UNIT: Dominion written by Nicholas Briggs and Jason Arnopp

Ever since the classic series’ cancellation, one of Doctor Who’s most persistent rumours has been that another Doctor Who feature film is just around the next corner. Yet, unless you count a TV movie, which is closer to a feature-length telly pilot than it is the colourful Peter Cushing box office smashes of yesteryear, nothing has ever come of them. I’ve never been too troubled by this though, as such an enterprise would probably turn out to be a complete reimagining of the series built around some Hollywood hunk in a scarf, or just a really long and effects-driven episode starring the series’ incumbent Doctor. But then I listened to UNIT: Dominion, and promptly decided that if the series does ever return to the silver screen, all that the moviemakers would need to do to keep me happy is to put pictures to the already-cinematic sounds of this Nicholas Briggs / Jason Arnopp audio epic.

Big Finish are, of course, masters when it comes to painting pictures with sounds, but with this sprawling story they’ve reached fantastic new heights. Comprised of four feature-length instalments ranging from an hour to eighty minutes in length, UNIT: Dominion might be one long adventure, but it is one comprised of many discrete segments, each of which has its own monster of the week. From “mind leeches” to “energy vampires” to perhaps the most unsettling alien creatures ever seen or heard in Who, the colossal and cherubic “Skyheads”, this story bombards the listener with one powerful and nightmarish image after another, each larger and more vivid than the last. And whilst sound designer and musician Martin Johnson can take some of the plaudits for the realisation of these images, the truth is that they’re as much the product of the masterfully-written dialogue as they are the beguiling soundscape layered beneath it.

  

More remarkable still is the story’s sense of scope, which even after listening to it twice, I’m still struggling to take in fully. Answering a distress call from a race that his apparent future self has warned him not to trust, the true-to-himself-right-now seventh Doctor is lured into a situation in which he’s forced to break down the walls between dimensions in order to save his companion Raine’s life. The consequences of him so doing are evident to the listener before he’s even entered the tale, as on late 1980s Earth, incursions are coming thick and fast from all manner of extra-dimensional creatures, and it’s up to UNIT to try to repel them. The only trouble is, UNIT’s latest CO, Colonel Lafayette, is an empty-headed twit, and even his fiercely-efficient scientific advisor is experiencing psychological problems thanks to the “Umbrella Man” who’s taken up residence in the corner of her eye, from where he’s keeping tabs on whether or not she’s “invading Poland”. It’s fortunate, then, that an overblown incarnation of the Doctor not yet known to UNIT arrives when he does to offer his assistance. Or so it might seem.

There are so many fascinating, competing threads here that, at any one time, listeners have a number of unanswered questions blazing away in their imaginations, not least of which is the identity of this alleged future Doctor, who’s magnificently given life by Alex Macqueen - the man behind the villain of the Colin Baker Lost Story, Paradise 5; an anti-speedbump campaign in Outnumbered; and, most famously, Inbetweener Neil’s “bumder” father. Macqueen’s even been in the thick of it with television’s next Doctor, Peter Capaldi, which, incidentally, is the reason why savvy listeners won’t accept him at face value for a second - Big Finish’s licence doesn’t cover the Doctors of the revived series, which by definition must include all incarnations yet to be seen. And Macqueen’s embroidered performance doesn’t do much to convince us otherwise - he outdoes The Next Doctor’s David Morrissey and perhaps even The One Doctor’s Christopher Biggins in the deliberate-ham stakes. Yet there is a “dimensional crisis” going on here, and whilst UNIT: Dominion seems to follow Season 26’s Battlefield (and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon...) by suggesting that these dimensions are physical planes rather than quantum states, until the truth about him is revealed, the listener can’t rule out the possibility that Macqueen’s Doctor is some Unbound alternative of the Doctor, but a Doctor nonetheless. Even when he conducts himself in an unDoctorly fashion, as he does from very early on, listeners know from the existences of the Valeyard, and, more recently, John Hurt’s enigmatic fourth ninth Doctor, that the Time Lord has it within him to act contrary to the honorific that he’s chosen to live by.

Furthermore, whilst it is assumed, the listener doesn’t even have the certainty that the seventh Doctor that they’re listening to is the same seventh Doctor that usually inhabits Big Finish’s monthly range, and if he is, whereabouts in his subjective (and increasingly impenetrable) timeline he sits. I’m again thankful that my ‘Continuity Corner’ days are behind me as, with its companions who “come and go” (and go far as Gallifrey, it seems); a Nazi scientist who’s had her entire existence rewritten; and, of course, the ubiquitously-undatable UNIT, UNIT: Dominion makes the mind boggle - and, as confirmed by one of its writers in the lush documentary that accompanies the four episodes in their splendid box set, that’s precisely the idea. I’d throw an “edge of your seat” cliché at it, but it would be more accurate to say that this production won’t even allow you to find your seat in the first place, let alone perch precariously upon its edge.

The persisting tension is heightened by the bravura performances of the cast, which not only features the already-mentioned Macqueen making a convincing bid for a role as a future Bond villain – “Hello you!”; but also a fresh-from-Middle-Earth Sylvester McCoy, who’s at the height of his pensive powers here; and a number of double and triple-headers that give the illusion of a cast of thousands. Cover artist Alex Mallinson warrants particular mention for his innumerable marginal roles, which at their extremes encompass a rampaging gigantic insect creature and an ill-fated UNIT private. The real star though is Tracey Childs, who gives her finest performance to date as Dr Elizabeth Klein. Childs was the perfect villain when she appeared all those years ago in Steve Lyons’ Colditz, but when she returned as an unlikely companion in the monthly range’s second trilogy of 2009, she added new layers to the character, complementing the intelligence and resolve of Colditz with something more vulnerable, and, occasionally, sympathetic. UNIT: Dominion represents the apotheosis of the character as she seems to have become, even when she learns of what she was in another world, the best possible version of herself, true to the qualities that made her such a formidable fascist, but without any of the necessary evil. I’ve yet to listen to her recent return in Persuasion, but the way that she’s going I smell another spin-off series coming - one that I’d definitely purchase.

And Klein’s struggle to step out of her overwritten self’s long shadow is mirrored beautifully - explicitly so, at one point - in the relationship between Macqueen and McCoy’s characters, which cuts a lot deeper than the competitive bickering that we’ve come to expect when we see more than one iteration of the Doctor together. UNIT: Dominion might be an action-packed and unusually filmic Doctor Who adventure, but at its core it’s quite a clever, and ultimately very moving, examination of the old ‘nature versus nurture’ debate that stretches from Third-Reich Britain in a world that never was, all the way back to the distant annals of Gallifrey’s forbidden past.

My only possible complaint about this production is that it’s billed as a Doctor Who / UNIT joint venture, but it doesn’t really bear any semblance to the original UNIT series that Big Finish rolled out almost a decade ago. I appreciate that Klein is a de facto part of UNIT now (in fact, she has the absent Lethbridge-Stewart’s last-held post in the UNIT series), but she’s nonetheless a character indelibly associated with Doctor Who, which is where we’d always found her prior to this masterpiece release, and beyond her the only UNIT faces on parade are new ones. This is actually beneficial though, in some ways, as by vesting our sympathies in the likes of genial Geordie grunt Pete Wilson (perfectly played by newcomer Bradley Gardner), Briggs and Arnopp draw us deeper into their story than they would’ve done had they filled it with more “posh totty”. Indeed, with his wife about to drop their first bairn, Sergeant Wilson (yes, it has to be a Dad’s Army gag) makes us care about every red-shirted soul that we encounter in the story irrespective of their rank - he’s like a 21st century Benton, albeit with the benefit of a back story. He conveniently fills Yates’s charm-the-companion boots too, offering Beth Chalmers’ Raine a much-needed foil in the lategoing. Other than her safe-cracking mind opening a few dimensional doors and an unexpected dose of future Doctor-fuelled insecurity, there are long stretches of narrative here that only posh-girl flirting will carry Raine through. Fortunately she excels at it.

For a closing thought, I must return to my opening movie analogy. If you’re wondering what UNIT: Dominion can offer you that your already-paid-for monthly range subscription doesn’t, it offers greater scale. It offers higher stakes. As absurd as it may sound in relation to an audio drama, it offers more action; bigger and bolder set pieces; 2.35:1 widescreen pictures. Even the closing theme that pre-empts the inevitable Keff McCulloch sign-off sounds like it should be bound to a never-ending scroll of credits. But there is one key area where my simile is strained; one thing that will make UNIT: Dominion even more appealing to Big Finish’s target market than a truly authentic blockbuster movie-style audio drama. For all its bangs and flashes, UNIT: Dominion hasn’t been written for mass appeal, but for niche delight. Every layer that’s pulled back will slake some pent-up fanboy thirst somewhere, and every masterful twist of fate will have someone punching the air. The term ‘special’ tends to get thrown around a lot these days, but this luxury release has well and truly earned it.

UNIT: Dominion is available to download from Big Finish for £35.00. The CD box set version (which also comes with a free download) is just five pounds extra. You can read my 2011 review of Big Finish’s original UNIT spin-off series here.

The Doctor is looking for hope. But instead, he finds himself on a mission. The Time Lords have uncovered terrifying fragments of an insane plot to destroy the universe. And somehow, at the centre of that plot is one, random female in Earth’s history, Molly O’Sullivan.

Soon, the Doctor and Molly find themselves thrown headlong into a series of dangerous and terrifying adventures, with the dreaded Daleks never far behind them.

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