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 | Reviews for UNIT: Dominion |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 1 November 2020 |
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| Rating: |   8 |
Here we have another Big Finish attempt at a Doctor Who epic. As these things go, Unit: Dominion is probably the best of them, far superior to Zagreus, for instance. The plot is that The Doctor, now travelling with Raine, gets called off into another dimension on a rescue mission. There, he meets his future self (maybe), who gives him a brief warning and then disappears. The Doctor's rescue of the Tollians (I guess that's how it is spelled) turns out to be a wrong idea when the Tollians for no particular reason turn out to be just another bunch of war mongers with a "conquer the universe" mentality. So, Doctor 7 and Raine are forced to leave behind the TARDIS and go through inter-dimensional holes to escape. Meanwhile, future Doctor suddenly pops up in the life of UNIT scientific advisor Elizabeth Klein. Here, he seemingly saves the day against various invasions by strange critters from other dimensions. Hmmm... what's the link to Doctor 7 I wonder? Once Doctor 7 arrives on Earth at the end of the string of dimensional gateways, the narrative becomes a two-Doctors story, with Doctor 7 not quite trusting future Doctor and Klein not trusting either. The story is broken into four 1-hour segments, so it is quite long. As such, there is some padding to justify the length. Thus, we get three invasions for UNIT to deal with, which gives both the characters and the audience a sense of "not another one." The plot is very episodic, with several almost standalone bits. Some of it seems silly just to be silly, such as the floating giant baby heads that can zip through the air at hypersonic speeds. A lesson for writers: Just slap the words "from another dimension" on something and you can get away with just about anything. Still, the story has enough linking parts and enough mysteries to be revealed along the way that it does not fall apart the way Zagreus or The Next Life did. The acting for the principal characters is first-rate. Tracey Childs really makes Klein complex and interesting. Alex Macqueen is marvellous as "future Doctor," extravagant, but not too much so, and subtle just where he needs to be. Overall, this epics works well enough by not treading water too long, and by keeping the plot moving.
