The Sentinels of the New Dawn

Companion Chronicles #5.10

Released: 14 April 2011

Listened: 6/5/21

A bit of a throwback: This is a Liz Shaw story, even though it takes place during Jo’s tenure. Liz calls the Doctor for advice a year or so after leaving UNIT, and he comes to help, without bringing Jo. Caroline John voices Liz and provides the narration, which means she offers her version of the Doctor, which isn’t bad. Unfortunately, her version of an African general sounds rather stereotyped, but he only has a couple of lines. Liz is concerned because a colleague is working on a time machine, or at least a time window, and wants the Doctor’s opinion. Messing with it gets the Doctor and Liz tossed forward to 2014, which was a few years after the story was released. There, they encounter the titular Sentinels of the New Dawn, an Illuminati-type group who have the time machine plans, and are using it to make money in the stock market. They’re also planning a weaponized release of Ebola, so they can take over the world. (Ironically, while Ebola was known in 2011 when the story was released, they couldn’t have known there would be an outbreak in actual 2014.) The most interesting story point is that Liz finds the Doctor more jovial and playful than he was when Liz was at UNIT. That could be Jo’s influence, or it could just be that the Doctor doesn’t take this problem all that seriously. The group doesn’t seem like all that much of a threat. Liz gets to show off her smarts a few times, even knowing immediately how to prevent being knocked out when she’s unexpectedly gassed. There’s a bit of a frame story, also taking place in 2014, with a twist that’s honestly pretty easy to spot. And sadly, we’ll now bid goodbye to Caroline John for this project, although not to Liz.