The Auton Infinity

"Soldiers expect to die."

Writer: Tim Foley

Format: Audio

Released: September 2022

Series: Fifth Doctor Adventures: Forty 2

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough, Kamelion, Brigadier 

Synopsis 

Snowdonia, UNIT is running a training exercise with the Brigadier in attendance. Except it isn't long before things start to go badly wrong. The fake aliens primed to attack the troops might not be so fake after all, and a temporal disturbance attracts the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough into the fray.

Old enemies are on the scene with a deadly plan – but they might be the least of the Doctor's worries.

Because he's recently been sent backwards and forwards through his own lifetime... and he's finally going to find out why.

Verdict

The Auton Infinity was an excellent audio adventure! This really was quite an epic to conclude the Forty series of stories for the Fifth Doctor to celebrate his milestone anniversary. This really did have everything and I’m not even sure where to start because there really was so much going on! I liked the continuity from the first boxset with the Fifth Doctor experiencing the jumping of his own time tracks and we got that on full display here. The Brigadier featuring was delightful and I must say that Jon Culshaw did a tremendous job in voicing the three main characters that he did. His talents are uncanny and long may he continue to be an asset to Big Finish! You couldn’t have a fortieth anniversary celebration for the Fifth Doctor without having the Master present and it’s so lovely that Culshaw can bring to life the incredible incarnation of Anthony Ainley. This Tremas incarnation probably goes down as my favourite and getting a full adventure with him taking on the Fifth Doctor again was glorious. Tegan obviously has an extensive history with him as well and I thought that was explored really well here. The relationship and history between Turlough and the Brigadier was also a lot of fun to explore as we had some fun references to Mawdryn Undead and the Brig’s reaction to finding out his former student was from a different planet was a delight. I must admit that I think it got slightly confusing at times to have two different versions of the Fifth Doctor present, but the character interaction allowed more than made up for it! We really did get everything. Tegan was fantastic and the Doctor having a rare moment of praise and acknowledgement for her was wonderful as he described her as his anchor throughout the recent ordeals in Secrets of Telos and God of War where he was going through the time tracks. That was a really nice touch. I loved the mirroring of Terror of the Autons with the Master joining forces with the Nestene Consciousness and having his TARDIS in a familiar circus tent guise was terrific. I loved just hearing that iconic laugh again and the Master trying to use a duplicate Auton version of the Doctor to pilot the driller through the vortex was magnificent. It would never work, but the boldness of the scheme was audacious! I really liked the idea behind doing an Auton/Nestene Consciousness origin story and it worked really well. The idea behind the First Consciousness being an Old One and everything that encompassed with Remembrance and Prodigal was superb! The difficult conversations about using ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ were very good in explaining their collective makeup. I was a big fan of them and Prodigal made for a tremendous character. The Master’s attention to detail was pretty sensational when it came to his impersonating the Brigadier and shooting dead T. Mears as part of UNIT because of the anagram was just delightful. That was the Master at his very best. The use of the Nestene masks was more than decent too! Exploring Gallifreyan technology prior to TARDISes was nicely done and I liked exploring the early history of the universe through the Nestenes. Even going as far as to provide a rationale for the tentacle appearance was fantastic! I thought the hints at what was to come for Tegan leaving soon were handled delicately and tackling with the Doctor returning to his normal time stream with the knowledge of Adric’s death was excellent. The conclusion was exciting even if I didn’t wholly understand the science behind the time scoop, but after nearly three and a half hours I just liked that I was still very interested! The ending leading into Resurrection of the Daleks with the time corridor was a neat touch as well. Overall, this was a fitting end to a brilliant trilogy of stories to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of my first favourite Doctor! A fantastic (and very long!) listen. 

Rating: 9/10