The whole Unbound Range is simply put, incredible. Each story left me with a mix of emotions. Masters of War was particularly amazing. The Third Unbound Doctor and The Brigadier make a lovely duo.
Honestly, it was great!

This story is simply a derivate, cliche filled mess that has no coherence in its narrative. However! David Warner is absolutely incredible and Nicholas Courtney is great so I did sort of love it. The story itself is just a jumbled composition of 8 different classic who Dalek stories that don’t mesh together well, and are quite hard to follow.

To start with the biggest negative here I have to mention the Quatch. They are absolutely terrible. They are these etherial multi-dimensional beings voiced by people who cannot act and all they do in the story is antagonise Davros and few of the other characters. They then just simply get defeated in the most easy ex machina I’ve heard in a long time.

The Daleks don’t really do anything in this story. They team up with the Thals and that is quite fun, a few comedic scenes and even a touching moment or two but nothing that really makes it feel like a proper Dalek story. There is a plot point of the Doctor reprogramming one of them that makes for quite an interesting story thread but that ends up just disappearing towards the middle of part two. Speaking of Part Two the twist that leads into it is absolutely the most predictable thing I’ve heard in such a long time; I mean with Davros on the cover the fact it takes so long for him to appear and when he does he just sort of monologues for a bit, it’s quite disappointing.

The reason this story is actually something I’d re-listen to (in a long while) is David Warner. He is just incredible as the Doctor and I could honestly rank him higher than a lot of TV Doctors. He has such charisma and charm, his humanity and emotional nature make him such an affable character who you really get invested in. I am so glad that beyond this he got many more appearances across different Big Finish Ranges.

It’s always nice to hear Nicholas Courtney beyond his appearance in Battlefield, and he is just adorable. Such a humorous character who you instantly love if you’ve seen the stories from his TV appearances, it makes him the perfect companion. The Thals who are his main link to the story are quite interesting and offer plenty to the plot, but with so much going on we never get a moment where the plot slows down for us to get properly invested in their survival and truce with the Daleks.

Overall, a middling story saved by great characters, some decent action scenes, and if you ignore the terrible villains; a pretty decent story. I’d say it’s nowhere near as good as the debut story of David Warner’s Doctor but still I’m glad it wasn’t unbearable.

An incredible feat of imagination and storytelling. I feel the Daleks are explained better here than in most other places.

There are some excellent performances - Terry Molloy as Davros, Courtney as the Brigadier, Briggs as the Daleks, Amy Pemberton as one of the Thals - but there's a bit of a gap at the centre as Warner doesn't quite seem to know what hs Doctor is really doing. The plot, too, disappointed - it's a great idea, taking the Doctor and Brigadier to a post-Genesis Skaro where Davros parted from the Daleks on his own terms - but the key to the story turns out to be some rather dull all-powerful aliens manipulating Thals, Kaleds and now Daleks, and the plot has a lot of standing around getting bombed or shot at. It's not actually awful, but it is average where it could have been excellent.

Every time I listen to the Unbound Doctor, it's a good time.