Synopsis: The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce was set up to tackle human contact with the extraterrestrial and paranormal - especially when that contact proved dangerous. But when the battles were over, when the top-secret ?clean ups? had been completed, where was all the alien technology taken? The Warehouse... UNIT's highly classified storage and research establishment. Here lie the dead, forgotten relics of past battles and encounters. But what happens when one of these relics is reactivated? UNIT has only one way of dealing with its mistakes. The Containment Team has been summoned... and the outcome is far from certain...

• A Review by James Ambuehl
• A Review by Stuart Gutteridge
• A Review by Rueben Herfindahl
• A Review by Richard Radcliffe
• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by James Ambuehl 22/11/98

Being a big fan of the Pertwee/UNIT era -- and indeed, those classic old monsters -- I wanted to give my impression on it:

First off, I read how this could truly be considered more of an authentic sequel to Spearhead from Space than Terror of the Autons, and while I do enjoy Terror I think I must agree. Auton has the look and feel exhibited in Spearhead, a cold, grim atmosphere that makes this story feel more like a short Quatermass movie than the much more whimsical Doctor Who stories we get, especially in the 4th Doctor era. In fact, Auton reminded me of the movie The Thing, with its claustrophobic, doom-laden atmosphere!

Many questions are raised in the story: such as just who is the mysterious Lockwood, and just how are the Nestene and the Autons different (Lockwood suggests they have metamorphosized) than the original strain (aside from the over-abundance of grape jelly, that is) ;-)

What will the Autons attempt to do next? Doctor Who continuity too, is well-maintained, with the storage of the Autons in the warehouse alongside something else from the original Who story, and there's even a reference given to the Doctor (in his 'John Smith' identity, which he of course assumed in Spearhead from Space). Of course, one asks why the Autons weren't disassembled or stored in a more impregnable vault -- but perhaps the Doctor thought they were well and truly destroyed (he has made such mistakes in the past, of course)!

Anyway, this story is a marvelous, tension-fraught successor to a classic Doctor Who story -- and I dare say the Autons' reappearance is a bit more successful than the return of the Yeti in Downtime (but that one had its moments too!) -- and I'm hoping there's a return in the wings for a couple of other old favorites: the Silurians and the Sea Devils!

A Review by Stuart Gutteridge 26/11/98

As an opener to a proposed trilogy, Auton has all the right ingredients and is probably one of the best independant spin-offs to come from BBV. Nick Briggs has come up with a script that provides the answers to a lot of questions, for example: just where did the remnants from the various defeated aliens end up? The answer is of course the main setting for the production, The Warehouse. And it is here, where scientist Dr. Sally Arnold reactivates the Autons.

Set in a warehouse, the atmosphere is tense, cold and claustrophic: the ideal setting. Given that Nicholas Courtney was scheduled to appear (and had to pull out), a new character had to be created. Which was probably just as well -- Michael Wade as Lockwood, Head of UNIT's Containment Team, literally steals the show. His character could easily have been a Doctor with sharp wit, bitter cynicism and an enigmatic streak a mile long. This is in complete contrast to Bryonie Pritchard, who as Dr. Sal gives a more human view of things.

So to the Autons themselves, redesigned and more solid looking (although they remain the same in appearance), an impressive feature, and deservingly so. With simplistic but effective special effects, some wonderful interplay between Lockwood and Dr. Sal and a taut script to match, Auton is a promising start to the trilogy.

A Review by Rueben Herfindahl 9/8/99

Auton sat on my shelf for a few months before I gathered up the courage to watch it. I ordered it the same time as Mindgame, and 3rd party Who ended up scaring me off for a bit.

The case of the video is highlighted by a Dreamwatch quote which proclaims it ,"The Best Dr. Who Spin-Off Yet!." They were right. Nick Briggs wrote a fairly compelling story with good characters, and a nice setup. It drags a bit (which is kinda sad for a 1 hour production), but still manages to keep your interest. Unlike Mindgame, the making of feature on the end is not only shorter than the feature proceeding it, it's actually interesting.

The best thing about Auton has to be the lighting. So often amatuer productions give away their origins with poor lighting. If the acting is good, and the lighting sucks, the effort will fail. With Auton we are blessed with both very good acting (much of it better than some of the "real" Dr. Who) as well as good lighting.

The special effects are nothing spectacular, but they manage to not be distracting, because they "feel" so much like the best of Jon Pertwee's era. It helps that the device that defeats the Autons is something that was used in the original (or at least good enough to fool the casual viewer).

Overall just what a starving Who fan needs to fight off the hunger pains for a while.

A Review by Richard Radcliffe 4/10/04

I had been recommended to watch this. "A good example of how the spinoffs can be as good as the original" was the hard-sell I was given. I had steered clear of spinoffs to be honest - there was enough videos, books and audios with Doctor Who emblazoned all over - without having to spend even more money on spinoffs. But the above statement persuaded to check out the Auton series.

This series now numbers 3, and upon writing this I have seen the first two. I am very keen on watching the third which is an indication how I liked the first two. But I am ahead of myself again. The first, simply called Auton, is a good place to start.

There are a few connections with our favourite programme, that immediately draws us fans in. There's the obvious presence of those pesky Autons, not seen since the early 70s - except in Gary Russell books. There's also the presence of UNIT. The Autons are slightly different looking from their DW counterparts, but act exactly the same. They are brought to life by those funny ball things which rained down in Spearhead From Space, and the Nestene Consciousness is the all controlling force behind them. The Auton threat then has been taken wholesale from its parent show. UNIT are quite different. The lack of regulars emphasizes this, UNIT has moved on - but still very much the investigatory force for unusual, alien occurences.

What impresses is how slick most of the production is. When I heard of DW spinoffs, I expected amateur productions with low production values. Auton definitely is not that - it is easily as well presented, perhaps moreso, than its parent show. BBV clearly know exactly what they are doing, and have some very talented people on board.

Nicholas Briggs provides the story for Auton. He is a very capable writer, and his forte is the characters he introduces. Sal Arnold is the special projects person, who foolishly reactivates the Nestene Ball. This act of stupidity taints her character throughout, she just comes across as a misguided workaholic. Not the best criteria for watchability. The warehouse worker Winslet fares better. He is the glorious everyman, stuck in a mundane job, but king of his castle anyroads. By far the best character is Lockwood. Crustily portrayed throughout he dominates every scene he is in. He joins the Autons as the most memorable thing about this story.

The story itself is self-contained. It is set solely around the Warehouse where these mysterious containers are housed. This actually provides a claustrophic feel to the production, it no doubt cut down on costs too. The script is pretty good, emphasizing the Auton threat and using the characters to their fullest potential. Of its very nature the Auton threat is localized, and therefore limited - but like a stage production it uses its limited environs as well as could be expected.

Auton is worth a look. It shows BBV to be adept at this kind of production, and how these spin-offs can be as good as the source they feed off. 6/10

A Review by Finn Clark 23/6/13

It's another Doctor Who semi-professional fan video and the first of an Auton trilogy, followed by Sentinel (1998) and Awakening (1999). I quite liked it.

What makes it good is Michael Wade's Lockwood. Yes, I said "good". There are other things I like about the film, but those are merely things to suggest while rubbing one's chin thoughtfully. Wade though is fantastic. More specifically, he's obnoxious, brutal, gloating, sinister and a son of a bitch. He's also by light-years the best character I've seen yet in any of these Doctor Who semi-pro films. Occasionally his dismissiveness makes him a cock - e.g. his "none of your concern" to Bryonie Pritchard about life-or-death information - but that's good too. That's Lockwood.

Wade stomps all over the film in hob-nailed boots, does wonders with what on paper isn't a particularly remarkable role and makes me astonished that he didn't have more of a career. He's endlessly watchable. I love his laugh and smile on "to pick over our remains", for instance.

He's a late replacement for the Brigadier, incidentally, after Nicholas Courtney dropped out due to health problems. He's in no way a cut-and-paste, though, despite one or two lines that smell as if they might have slipped through from a previous draft. It's suggested that he might not be human, unless I'm misreading the scene where he gets hold of some codes telepathically. Maybe he's a Time Lord? Maybe he's an advanced Auton that's no longer under Nestene control and has grown itself an abrasive personality? He works for UNIT, but it's unclear what rank he holds.

In other words, he's terrific. "She's in shock. She's no use to me at the moment."

Other good things include:

(a) The small scale. It's set in a warehouse, telling its little story with the simplicity of a stage play. This works well. Downtime was messy, for instance, but Auton focuses effectively on its small cast of characters and gives a bit of backstory or personality even to "yes sir" soldiers. I'm no particular fan of Nicholas Briggs, but here he's created something that arguably turns its limitations into a virtue. It's clearly drawing inspiration from the harder-edged Season Seven Pertwee era, for instance, to the extent that they appear to have forgotten about Terror of the Autons. The code on the crates is "AAA/RH/2961", for instance, with AAA being Spearhead's story code and RH being "Robert Holmes". Don't know what 2961's supposed to mean, though.

I could almost imagine this as an adaptation of a hypothetical eight-page Doctor Who Weekly back-up strip. The tone is similar. That's a compliment, by the way. Admittedly, there's not a huge amount of plot, but only on a couple of brief occasions did I feel the film was starting to drag. For the most part, it supports its running time.

(b) The tone. Imagine Torchwood, but not mishandled. Being shorn of the Doctor and then of Lethbridge-Stewart has made things nasty. Bryonie Pritchard has heard sufficiently bad things about UNIT containment teams that she thinks they might be about to execute her for no reason... and, what's more, Lockwood would probably do it. Our introduction to UNIT is helmeted soldiers booting their way in to hold everyone at gunpoint.

(c) The fact that it's trying to do the right thing. There's that attempted characterisation I mentioned. It doesn't usually add up to much, except with Wade, but I appreciated the effort. Similarly, a minor supporting character (Verona Chard) dies... and is mourned!

(d) The story makes sensible choices. When a character gets duplicated, for instance, the script doesn't try to present this as a twist, but instead lets us quietly put two and two together.

(e) The choice of monster. It's impossible to make a bad Auton, since the whole point is that they're cheap-looking dummies. I actually prefer these versions to the rubbery CGI in Rose, whereas other semi-pro Doctor Who films have managed to make a hash even of apparently simple monsters like Yeti.

The script's hardly perfect, mind you. There's a daft line of dialogue in which a soldier claims to have searched a fifty mile radius and found only a few farmhouses and cottages. This is about 12% of the area of the entire United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. You'd think the soldiers would have been faster to give up on using firearms on Autons. Also, the ending dribbles away in a manner that's either sequel-hunting or abysmally written. (Given the existence of two sequels, I'll assume the former.) The Autons go into a room and our heroes... go away. The end. Admittedly, there's also a bit of business between Wade and Pritchard, but that's just personal stuff and I'd have thought we were supposed to be worrying about the Earth's fate and so on.

It's fannish, obviously. The Autons, Nestenes, etc barely even get explained, but I suspect that's reasonable given the audience. If anything, it feels heavy-handed when they take the trouble to explain to us that what we're looking at is indeed the Doctor's Nestene-killing lash-up from Spearhead, somehow still extant and looking exactly the same after three decades.

The acting's pretty decent, though. I adore Wade, obviously. There's one dodgy bit at the start, with a telephone conversation, but otherwise I was happy. The imdb suggests that the cast have usually done a bit of acting... not enough to be a serious screen career, but by no means jumped-up amateurs. The big exception though is Reece Shearsmith (The League of Gentlemen, Psychoville), who's gone on to massive fame and yet his first four screen roles were in Auton and the P.R.O.B.E. Winterborne videos.

Overall, I thought it was good. I enjoyed it. It's hardly ambitious, but it hits its chosen marks far better than a lot of its stablemates. It makes good use of its confined scale, the mildly sinister tone is effective and of course Wade is devouring the scenery like a Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. The ending would have been a problem if it weren't for the two sequels, but fortunately they exist. I'm looking forward to them.

"This is a Code 7 situation, so your death certificates have already been prepared by UNIT. With luck we won't find it necessary to issue them."