If this was released in 2025 you couldn't imagine Big Finish not putting Mark Gatiss and David Tennant's names on there cover.

There are edgy, dark characters. The alt reality setting allows for some fascinating character beats to unfold. A Doctor who didn’t turn up where he should have and a Brigadier who paid the price. Not to mention the fact it’s set in Hong Kong 1997 - a fascinating microcosm of personalities in “Little England”. Nick Courtney’s provides an incredibly strong performance here - the best I’ve heard him in audio.

I only wish it went on longer. Just as Gatiss' Master gets involved and it all kicks off, it all wraps up again. An incentive for me to dip into Warner's other unbound story. I'd love to hear more of Warner and the Brigadier travelling through space. This feels more like a pilot for a much longer arc than a complete project in and of itself.

Out of the Unbound stories, this is one I am most neutral towards.  It is not bad.  It's pretty cool.  It's a fun alternate take on the Third Doctor era.  The performers definitely make up for a script I found otherwise pretty boring.  David Warner's Doctor definitely stands out and it is cool that he would return to the series later on.  I can definitely see why the producers chose to do so.  It's a very fun role for Nicholas Courtney too, and one that shows even late into his career, he really had this enormous range and brought so much life to what could have been a one-episode role.  David Tennant playing Col. Brimmicombe-Wood is very fun, being about as despicable as he would be when they return the character later in the original UNIT series.  I like that Big Finish kept a bit of continuity built around Wood by introducing the main universe version of the same character from this series, that's a neat little detail in the history of this franchise.  And Mark Gatiss playing the Master was fun, that really felt fitting for him as an actor.  Plus he would also get to return to the role in the future, another pretty amazing little detail.

So the casting has a lot of cool stuff going on and it is a cool production because of it.  The Hong Kong setting works okay but this is not a time when Big Finish even bothered to hire actual Asian actors so I question it, to a degree.  It feels very off because of that, and the plot around the Ke Le was pretty boring.  They really just felt like generic zombies to me.

Overall, it is a cool story with lots of interesting trivia relevant to the franchise.  Absolutely worth checking out for fans, but definitely not the best story in the world either.

A very nicely done "What If?" that doesn't focus so much on how the Doctor is different but how the world is different thanks to his absence. Shades of Turn Left in how everything is infinitely worse for everyone, and Nicholas Courtney does very well playing a much older, more cynical Brigadier. Mark Gatiss is also a nicely sinister Master, very much in the mould of Delgado and Survival-era Ainley. David Warner is, of course, a big highlight and it's no wonder why they asked him back for more stories and he became the breakout character of this range. He's wry, witty, wise and warm all at once and even though he doesn't get quite as much focus on characterisation as the other Doctors in the Unbound range, he's still a great presence.

David Warner you will always be famous