April 26, 2011

The Sentinels of the New Dawn (2011)

The latest companion chronicle from Liz Shaw was one that I was looking forward to. Partly because I liked last year’s Shadow of the Past so much and also it was a prequel of sorts to the Lost Story ‘Leviathan’. Written by Paul Finch this is a story that starts of a year after Liz Shaw left UNIT (1975?) and move to 2014. This is because of the New Dawn movement. It’s claimed that the listener doesn’t need to have heard Leviathan to understand this story but I disagree because I think to have heard that Lost Story would mean a great understanding about the New Dawn group. Not having listened to that particular story since it was released in early 2010.

The story sees Liz becoming involved in a colleague’s time travel research and soon afterwards gets the Doctor involved and it’s a this stage that they are flung into the future and it becomes a race against time (forgive the pun) to stop the technology from being misused by the New Dawn. After a good start the story seems to get bogged down and the story struggles to try and find something big that it can throw at the listener. Sadly this doesn’t come when it should but instead comes in the last part of the story with Liz being sad how she left UNIT. Sadly we never go a proper final episode for Caroline John and as a result her departure feels somewhat unsatisfactory. The regret that Liz has about leaving UNIT echoes what people think if they were travelling with the Doctor. Why would you want to leave the Doctor?

Caroline John puts in another great performance but unfortunately isnt really given much drama to get excited about. I still think that Shadows of the Past is her best story but its always good to hear Caroline John and I also enjoyed Duncan Wiseby’s performance. He does a good job with the Beauregard character and hopefully he will return. I think that the character is one that has something odd about him from the outset and when its revealed who is really is then it makes the character even better.

The ending was very interesting as Richard Beauregard shows that he involved with New Dawn and its at this point that I was starting to wish that we could hear more about the New Dawn. The Sentinals of the New Dawn is an interesting story that unfortunately doesn’t have the dramatic punch that I would have expected. That said, its still a good story and a much better adventure that ‘The Forbidden Time’ and hopefully over the course of future Companion Crhonicles and even main range stories we will get more stories because there is lots of potential.

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