Protect and Survive

Well, this was bloody chilling.

Protect and Survive starts out with an absolutely gripping first part, and frankly, if the entire story had just been Hex and Ace stranded and struggling to survive nuclear fallout, I would have been absolutely on board.

But it didn't stop there. Raising the stakes and changing the game with each part, Protect and Survive remains absolutely gripping.

The introduction of the time loop. The realization that the loop is a prison. Learning just who those prisoners are – and who the jailer is. Every beat raises the atmosphere of  terror, helplessness, and distrust.

The sound design is top notch. The pacing is impeccable – the chilling transition from Peggy getting sick to the radio droning on about burial to both her and Albert being dead in the ground is particularly notable, but the whole episode keeps that standard.

My only quibble is, right at the end, when Hex realizes their escape plan has failed and begins to panic (thus triggering their escape), that moment feels a little cut short. To really drive home the helplessness at the core of this story, it would've helped to have a more drawn out sequence of helpless terror.

But that's a nitpick, and does nothing to prevent me giving Protect and Survive an easy five stars.

I love Big Finish stories when they're a little bit scary - something about scary on audio is thrilling to me. And Protect and Survive isn't exactly a horror story, but it is chilling.

Ace and Hex, trapped in a time loop where they are forced to live out the same nine days of nuclear fallout ovet and over again sounds pretty horrible on paper, and in your ears, it is exactly as spooky as you imagine. Interspersed with the radio giving instructions on what to do in event of nuclear attack, the story unfolds slowly, and the deaths at the end of the loop still managed to affect me even knowing they were coming.

An incredible story, overall, and even as we learn that it's a trap for some Elder Gods rather than a story about some normal people in Yorkshire, it doesn't lose impact. So often, the resolution of an episode like this takes away from the suspense that's been built into it, but this episode blew me away with how chilling it was right to the end.