Review by Scott Lopes

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Knights of the Round Tardis, by LR Hay, starts a new chapter in the series centered around the versions of the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan first seen in An Adventure in Space and Time, with the newly added twist of it being Unbound.  

Despite this, Knights of the Round Tardis feels like a very normal release. For quite a while, it had been known that Big Finish was developing an Unbound range for the David Bradley First Doctor, a range inspired by the Peter Cushing films of the 1960s. When this inspiration is meant to appear, however, remains to be seen.

Knights of the Round Tardis is in most every way your run-of-the-mill First Doctor audio. The most to be said about it supposedly embracing a new film-inspired formula, is that it is no longer being broken into 20-minute chunks, but beyond that, it feels surprisingly normal.

That being said, the story itself, while in the end not proving to be anything groundbreaking, is a pretty fun time. A relatively traditional historical with the Monk showing up with a plan he definitely could have thought through a bit better isn’t anything new, especially for the First Doctor, and while you could make the argument that this particular gimmick has gotten a bit repetitive, it still manages to be a good time here regardless.

The story has several moments that felt a bit slow and definitely could have been paced better, but it was never enough to ruin the experience. The reason that this series is “Unbound” now, however, is something that I can’t say I’ve fully bought into at the moment, but hopefully it will become more interesting as the series continues.

Beyond the story aspect, however, the release has incredible production quality. Rob Harvey gives a fantastic score that fits the story perfectly, and the cast all give top performances, with Keith Wickham as The Monk and Jemma Powell as Barbara being the particular standouts here. It’s safe to say a lot of effort is being put into the quality of this range, and it’s great to see. 

Overall, Knights of the Round Tardis is a fun adventure for the Adventure in Space and Time crew for sure, but it has yet to really justify an Unbound reboot. It doesn’t feel anything like its advertised inspirations, and it’s a very normal First Doctor adventure that, while not losing anything from being Unbound, isn’t exactly gaining anything either. If you’ve enjoyed these characters in their pre-Unbound series, you’ll absolutely want to continue with them here. If you’re a Monk fan like me and you need your Time Meddler fix, this is definitely for you, too. If you’re an Unbound fan? I’d suggest waiting a while before you jump in. Hopefully, the next release will more accurately achieve what the series wants to gain from being Unbound, but at the moment, it’s not quite there.

Knights of the Round TARDIS is available on CD or as a download from http://www.bigfinish.com