Reboot

"We need to catch an alien thief."

Writer: Ken Cheng

Format: Audio

Released: September 2023

Series: Redacted 2.05

Featuring: Shawna, Abby, Cleo, Rani

Synopsis

Abby and Shawna go to meet Rani Chandra at Bannerman Road, but they aren't expecting the house to be booby-trapped. Meanwhile Cleo is taken hostage by Honour Bray. She learns the truth of her twisted plan and meets the giant metal 'Cobot' tasked with carrying it out.

Verdict

Reboot was a decent episode to continue my way through the second Redacted podcast series! This series doesn’t seem to be quite on the level of the first in terms of the stakes and with what’s going on, and of course a lack of Doctor involvement this time around obviously hurts, but for a penultimate episode this has set up an intriguing finale. The relationship between Cleo and Apex developed further over this half an hour and they had enjoyed a really amazing night together. They were building some chemistry and almost becoming a couple. It was quite nice to hear Cleo happy and she was finally in a good place. Her story in this episode with Honour was interesting and I liked the continuity with the rest of the series. Hearing the Cobot in action was intriguing regarding the hundreds of drones and I liked that Apex had supplied Honour with the Torchwood technology to help create it. That was good and I like how the series has subtly built up to what should be an eventful finale. The format for much of this series in splitting episodes between Cleo & Apex and Shawna & Abby has worked very well and it was the case here. But once again I was much more vested in the Shawna and Abby half. They seem to be more consumed by the continuity as they spent the first half of the series investigating Torchwood and now here they were at 13 Bannerman Road! Some of the crossover this series has with Rani Takes on the World from Big Finish is really good, although the recent The Revenge of Wormwood anthology indicated that Mr Smith was permanently shutdown. Of course, that could be a spoiler for this series finale but for some reason I suspect that shan’t be the case. I really enjoyed the latter half of the episode in the famous attic of Bannerman Road and having Abby and Shawna get caught by the forcefield was quite amusing. Rani wasn’t the big shot initially thought as she wasn’t on a private jet in the slightest, but the two podcasters ignored her warning and went in alone. I thought it was fun for Rani to show her experience and have them tackle the forcefield, but the more important matter was rebooting Mr Smith. I honestly didn’t realise that the title of the episode would concern this but it worked well and it was an absolute delight to hear Alexander Armstrong reprise his role. That was some terrific nostalgia! The battle to get Mr Smith rebooted was good and I enjoyed the reference to The Lost Boy regarding his previous restart. Shawna using her computer skills was really well done and I appreciated her determination to get Mr Smith up and running again. She wasn’t taking no for an answer and I admired that, as well as her excitement for interacting with an alien operating system. Mr Smith’s grand revelation of the Doctor being missing felt a bit odd as I’m not sure where in the timeline this would fit after the events of The Power of the Doctor, but is it really that odd for the Doctor to not be present or traceable? Apex seemingly being back in league with Honour was good and left Cleo pretty helpless. He was after the TARDIS after all, but how he’s going to get it I’m not sure. Will we get a Doctor appearance in the finale? I’m really intrigued to see how things conclude here and that has me infested in the final episode for sure. Overall, a strong listen!

Rating: 7/10