Start to Finish: 2.03 - Old Soldiers

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

In the first series of the Third Doctor's adventures, the Doctor was challenged by his companions in a new way. Liz Shaw was a brilliant scientist, less easily impressed by the Doctor's genius than others had been, but their clashes were moderated by the presence of a mutual antagonist in the military mind of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. It's sad to think that Caroline John and Nicholas Courtney are both gone now, and pleasing that they were each able to make a final mark on the world of Doctor Who through the Chronicles.

In the aftermath of an argument with his scientific adviser, the Brigadier travels to Schloss Kriegskind to help out an old friend. What he finds there tests him to the limit, and he soon finds himself in need of the Doctor's help; if he will even answer after the business at Wenley Moor.

If Jamie is a character ill-suited to melancholy, the Brigadier was made for it. Narrated by an older, more introspective Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart to a silent, perhaps absent, listener, James Swallow's Old Soldiers is a reflection on the nature of war, and of UNIT's battle against the bizarre in particular. The story is bookmarked by the Brigadier's toast - 'to absent friends; old soldiers' - and offers a rare look behind the officer's mask of certainty.

Nicholas Courtney is not one of the great mimics, but his Third Doctor has just enough of Jon Pertwee's more nasal delivery to mark him. He is assisted by the presence of Toby Longworth in a dual role as Colonel Heinrich Konrad and his second in command Major Schrader.

The story is textbook UNIT weirdness, with ghosts that aren't ghosts and perils that humanity brings upon itself, with a claustrophobic setting and a deeply affecting delivery from Courtney to lend weight and pathos to the proceedings.

We wrap up series 2, and the 'experimental' phase of The Companion Chronicles with Louise Jameson's Leela in The Catalyst.