The Prisoner's Dilemma has Ace, the Seventh Doctor's companion, sharing a prison cell with the mysterious Zara, who is on a quest. I was not impressed, for much the same reasons as Rob Buckley. The plot resolution didn't make a lot of sense to me (apparently an irreversible brain wipe is not irreversible after all), and Sophie Aldred's weaknesses as a performer seemed to me cruelly exposed - Laura Doddington as Zara is better, but unfortunately this is not saying much. Can safely be skipped if you want to enjoy the other Key 2 Time stories. ( )

This most recent season of The Companion Chronicles has been branching out by including adventures about companions who feature regularly in the main line of Big Finish audio dramas. The Prisoner's Dilemma by Simon Guerrier is only the second to do so, starring Sophie Aldred as Ace. However, it's also a tie-in to the current mini-season in the main line, The Key 2 Time, a sequel to the 1970s Key to Time serials.

Going in, I wasn’t entirely convinced by either of these concepts. I’ve felt like the point of The Companion Chronicles was to hear from companions we otherwise couldn’t hear from, and I feel like recently Big Finish has been over-relying on elements of the show’s past to bolster its stories. However, I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

Overall, The Prisoner's Dilemma is a bit disjointed-- the first episode is very good, surprisingly so, selling me on the Key 2 Time concept, but the second is mostly a lot of backstory combined with some wasted potential. The Zara segments are the best, and Laura Doddington shines, but though the Ace segments are not so exciting, that’s no fault of Sophie Aldred's-- she was simply not given the material to really do anything with.

You can read a longer version of this review at Unreality SF.

3 ( )