Old Soldiers

Companion Chronicles #2.3

Released: 7 December 2007

Listened: 5/24/21

The next story from this era also doesn’t feature Liz. Instead, this is the only Companion Chronicle told from the Brigadier’s perspective, and narrated by Nicholas Courtney. It’s pretty appropriate that this is the only story to really get inside the Brigadier’s head, because it takes place after “The Silurians,” when the Brigadier's relationship with the Doctor was still on shaky ground. (Especially since this story was written and recorded a couple of decades before "AWOL.") It’s a very Brigadier-appropriate story, dealing with an internal UNIT experiment that’s gone entirely wrong. It’s rather heavily narrated, even for a Companion Chronicle, and starts off quite slowly, with the Brig doing his own investigations for a while before calling in the Doctor. Like other actors called upon to say the Doctor’s lines in a narrated story, Courtney goes very light on the imitation, trying for the cadence of Jon Pertwee, but no more than that. But the Doctor is fairly secondary in this story, with the focus being on the Brigadier as he reflects on what soldiers owe to one another, the responsibilities of command, and just how far he personally is willing to go in order to carry out his duty of protecting humanity. I don’t think you’d want too many stories from the Brig’s point of view, but this one is appropriate.