A way beyond canon Doctor story starring David Warner as the Doctor and Mark Gatiss as the Master. The tale describes the arrival of a very different 3rd Doctor arriving on earth some thirty years later for his exile on Earth and finding a world that was very different from what was expected. The world has been changed irrevocably by the Doctor's absence during events such as the Auton invasion that he wasn't there to stop.The Brigadier is living in disgrace after having been drummed out of UNIT and has bought a pub in Hong Kong. The Doctor arrives on the verge of the handover to China and just in time to foil the Master's plan to make use of some sort of mind control parasite (from the 'Mind of Evil' episode).
The story was excellent and both Warner and Gatiss are perfectly cast. It's fun to hear the Brigadier again as he must be a fair old age by now (and indeed has since passed on between the time I wrote this and now). One of the strangest things here though is the presence of David Tennant as the new head of UNIT. He's in full scenery chewing mode here with Scottish accent fully intact as a very gung-ho colonel.
The only problem I had with the whole thing was the ambiguous ending which seemed to have the Doctor behaving against type by leaving quite a major loose end behind by not knowing whether or not the parasites had gone for ever in the Chinese nuke tests or whether or not the Masters newly unbrainwashed minions had gone nuts or not - they had.
A poor ending to a fairly cracking listen and I fully intend to track down some more of these.
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