Big Finish Productions The Companion Chronicles The Sentinels of the New Dawn

Written by	Paul Finch
Format	Compact Disc
Released	2011

Starring Caroline John

Synopsis: Some time after leaving UNIT, Liz Shaw calls the Doctor to Cambridge University, where scientists are experimenting with time dilation. The device hurls them to the year 2014 and a meeting with Richard Beauregard, heir to the Beauregard estate. Yet there's something rotten at the core of this family... The seeds of a political movement that believes in a new world order. The Sentinels of the New Dawn are stirring and its malign influence will be felt for centuries to come...

• A Review by Thomas Tiley

A Review by Thomas Tiley 17/11/25

Set long after Liz Shaw (Caroline John) has left the Doctor to return to Cambridge, a UNIT officer arrives to interview her regarding an incomplete file in the archives, something relating to the Sentinels of the New Dawn, a tale that Liz retells in a flashback anout the time a work college built a working time machine that she asked the Doctor to inspect.

First of all, Caroline John is fantastic, sounding plausibly like the the version we saw from the '70s, although I'm not sure why they couldn't have asked the male guest actor (Duncan Wisbey who incidentally does a good job as the villain and the UNIT officer interviewing Liz) to narrate/play the third Doctor instead of her. She does an okay job at it though.

Richard Beauregard (Wisbey) is a plausible villain, seemingly charming and villainous enough to kill his own father when he tries to put a stop to his plans in a rather shocking moment. His comeuppance near the end is well deserved and is set up by the third Doctor rather cleverly, I thought.

There are some great ideas here, such as the time machine in the past linking to the one built in the future, the villain's use of portable time viewers to play the stock market/win the lottery to fund their schemes, the hawkman creature created as an assassin that hunts using the victim's DNA and the bad guys mistaking the Doctor for the time machine's inventor due to the creator's gender-neutral name (although its a bit silly wouldn't they have looked up everything they could have on her beforehand). The ending where Liz feels guilty at having to destroy her friend's time machine and all the blueprints to stop the Sentinels from finding and building it in the future but can't tell her why is rather sad. The story whips by very quickly and is rather fun, in my opinion.

The story is rather similar to a Bond film, with the bad guys having their secret organization based in a rebuilt castle filled with their guests from across the world, the Doctor using his Venusian karate to beat up the guards, their attempted escape in a speedboat only to be chased down by a biomechanical birdman, scientists, bioweapons and an airplane chase back to the time machine at the end. It's all good fun. It's a shame Liz didn't get her version of a Bond girl/guy unless you count the sympathetic scientist who helps them. It also felt very easy for the duo to escape.

The ending reminds me of the sort commonly seen in the Seventies in science-fiction and political-thriller films, a grim downer sort of ending, an "it's not really over" type of ending that leads into the Lost Story Leviathan starring Colin Baker that this story acts as a companion piece/prequel to.

An interview at the end has Paul Finch tell us about this story and the missing story that inspired it Leviathan and gives us some facts and ideas relating to it that was interesting to listen to, although a proposed third meeting with the Sentinels has yet to materialize.

All in all, I would say this is well worth it/ It stands alone well enough and as a useful but not essential companion to the linked Lost Story. I would easily rate this at an eight out of ten as a perfect Pertwee style story, maybe bump it up a point or two if you like Bond-style adventure stories.