"Old Soldiers"
by James Swallow

It's the turn of everyone's favourite not-quite-companion Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to narrate the third episode of The Companion Chronicles Season Two. Old Soldiers, by James Swallow, is a Third Doctor story read by the wonderful Nicholas Courtney, in which figures from the past invade the present at an overseas UNIT facility, where one of the Brigadier's oldest friends is posted.

Courtney gives a casual reading, which feels very natural, aside from a few moments of awkward delivery. His warm voice is welcoming and makes for a comfortable relaxing listen, pulling the listener in from the very start. There's also a sense of passion and dedication: the closing moments of the story could've been the biggest pile of twee claptrap ever, but Courtney really sells it, making the sentiments his character expresses seem genuine and heartfelt. The best moments of his performance, though, come from the "live action" chunks of the story, where we see snippets of his interactions with Konrad and Schrader; Courtney seems to thrive more when bouncing off another performer than when he's reading alone.

After some almost spot-on impersonations of the Doctor in the last two instalments of Companion Chronicles, my hopes were high for a decent Jon Pertwee imitation here; I was out of luck, but the speech patterns and tone are accurate even when the voice itself isn't convincing.

As the supporting voice in this adventure, Toby Longworth is good, but despite his well-known vocal versatility there wasn't quite enough variation between the two roles he plays. However, he sells the strong relationship between the Brigadier and Konrad very well indeed, and all his appearances in the story are enjoyable.

The story itself is fantastic: things unwind at a good steady pace, the ideas presented are intriguing (even if the origin of the phantoms doesn't feel entirely original), and seeing the Brigadier in an unfamiliar environment (in terms of location, and the lack of familiar faces) is a joy, opening up the character a little more than normal. As the only familiar element in the story for the majority of the first episode, the audience is forced to identify with the Brigadier from the start, which gave me a whole new appreciation for him. Swallow's script also allows us to get inside the man's head - as he recounts his tale, he explains and justifies some of his thought processes, even re-evaluating decisions he made with the benefit of hindsight - and this fleshes out his character more than any of his previous stories have done.

The extra material on this release consists of a nice interview with a cheerful Courtney, who talks enthusiastically about the story and comes across as a generally charming gentleman, as well as some isolated pieces of Old Soldiers' dark and forboding score.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the division of the story into two parts frustrated me once again with this CD. Sure, the cliffhanger in the middle of the plot is exciting, and it doesn't feel like it's been shoehorned in, but breaking up the action really doesn't seem necessary. So many other Big Finish single-disc releases carry one uninterrupted story, and I don't see why the Companion Chronicles releases should be any different, because it never seems to help the story in any way.

That's a minor complaint, though, and there's a lot to enjoy in Old Soldiers. Not only is this a damn good story in its own right, with a fantastic script and lovely narration, but it's by far the best character piece this series has given us so far. Swallow could quite easily have stopped at making this a strong Third Doctor tale, but he's gone the extra mile with some deep exploration of one of Doctor Who's longest-standing personalities. Simply brilliant.