AUDIO ADVENTURES IN TIME & SPACE: CONDUCT UNBECOMING

Doctor Who in all its forms requires a certain degree of forgiveness from its audience. If you’re not prepared to forgive the aliens who have a blue-line all the way around them that goes mad when it reaches their 80s hairstyle, then it’s simply not the show for you.

While the show was off the air for 16 years (no, not them, they don’t count) there was a massive gap in the market, which was ultimately filled by enthusiastic non-BBC copyright-savy productions such as this one.


Conduct Unbecoming is a one-hour CD adventure about the Sontarans – a race that featured in the original BBCtv series, but who remained owned by their author Robert Holmes.

Here, Gareth Preston does a good job of weaving a political story with a small cast of distinctive new characters, especially given that the Sontarans are a race of clones. He turns that to his advantage though, as their lack of individuality is exactly what the story is ultimately about. The dialogue is a bit too wordy when actions need explaining by the characters, and I have to admit that the ending is so quick that I lost the plot in the last five minutes.

That said, as I turned the thing over in my head afterwards, I found that I was actually reviewing the images the sound had thrown up in my mind, such as when Maria hurls a rock at a robot.

That’s surely the mark of writing and production working rather well together.