‘I just make the sassy comments.’ A 10-part audio series from BBC Studios with occasional appearances by the Doctor but largely fronted by an ensemble cast of new characters and written by a YA author, this had the potential to be Class for radio. It’s not helped by a slightly desperate-sounding trailer featuring Jodie Whittaker fretting that everyone is forgetting she exists, and begging us, ‘Please listen.’ It centres around the Blue Box Files – a sort of amateur Uncanny podcast – which unwittingly exposes an imminent global apocalypse.

1: SOS, by Juno Dawson (17/4/2022)

‘My name is the Doctor… Planet Earth… Is this getting through?’ Introducing the podcast and its hosts Cleo Proctor, Abby McPhail and Shawna Thompson, this sets up the premise of the series: people (including Ryan and Graham) are going missing – but worse, they’re going missing from people’s memories. There is a strange, howling static noise that keeps interfering with radio communications. And the Doctor is, seemingly, somehow responsible.

Journalist Penny Partners in Crime Carter (the first of several recasts, as presumably the TV actor was unwilling or unavailable) reveals some of the details of the Adipose incident but is confused about the role of the Doctor (who seems to have been ‘redacted’). Penny also reveals she’s gay – like the Podcast hosts, reinforcing the series’ primary concern with lived LGBT experiences. And then, Rani Chandra reaches out…

As an opener, this has a decent hook and the presence of Whittaker and Anjli Mohindra give it some credibility. Cleo emerges as the main character: initially positioned as feckless and self-oriented (expecting Abby and Shawna to do all the hard work on the podcast, just dropping in some ‘sassy’ comments) it’s already clear this is going to be a journey of personal discovery.

2: Hysteria, by Juno Dawson (24/4/2022)

The podcasters’ quest for the truth about the missing people continues as they make contact with both Oliver Smith and Jones Morgenstern (another recast) and Rani (the real deal). This raises the spectre of social contagion and mass hysteria, with the Doctor at the centre of it.

The scenes with Rani are the highlight of the episode, nailing Cleo’s initial persona – laughingly dismissive of Rani’s warnings and cracking Princess Leia jokes about the hologram technology (Cleo’s meant to be Gen Z, but also offhandedly makes Buffy references: like Class, there’s a definite sense the cultural touchpoints aren’t quite as current as they think). But by the end of the episode, when a ‘super soldier’ attacks, the pace is picking up.

3: Lost, by Juno Dawson (1/5/2022)

Confronted with a real danger, Cleo finally steps up, keen to rush back into danger to make sure Rani has escaped. But the promise that the series was about to move up a gear dissipates as this episode largely reiterates what we already know – people touched by the Doctor are going missing and are being forgotten (including Queen Victoria). Mostly, it takes a pause to focus on the personal lives of the podcasters and concludes with the danger getting really close to home as Cleo’s brother goes missing.

4: Angels, by Catherine Brinkworth (8/5/2022)

By this point, the story is running on fumes. Bringing in the Weeping Angels and Larry Nightingale (the actual one!) to trade on one of the most beloved modern episodes sounds like a good plan, but the reality is it just restates the plot as we know it with a couple of added wrinkles – the angels are running too. In itself there’s the potential for a decent Weeping Angel story, but it suffers from its placement as we’ve already had three weeks of minor characters telling us the same thing. It really is time to cut to the chase.

5: Interrogation, by Sasha Sienna (15/5/2022)

The three podcasters are brought in for interrogation by a UNIT operative. The story remains in the doldrums with developments restricted to Cleo’s connection to the Powell Estate and the arrival of Kate Stewart. The idea that UNIT is scared because the Doctor seems to be causing the threat rather than helping to fix it should be a shock – except Rani already told us the same thing three weeks ago. If you love the new characters, hearing their reaction to their predicament would probably be mildly gripping if they seemed more than half-bothered by it.

6: Recruits, by Ken Cheng (22/5/2022)

The funniest episode so far, with a welcome appearance by Ingrid Olivier as Osgood (Human or Zygon remains TBC), and the hilariously deadpan Joel played by the episode’s writer Ken Cheng. The downside is that the story has basically ground to a halt while the podcasters mess around inside the Black Archive, with the only significant plot point being the discovery of evidence suggesting Cleo’s father died after an encounter with the Doctor.

7: Requiem, by Àjoké Ibironke and Juno Dawson (29/5/2022)

With Abby having “betrayed” Cleo and Shawna to join UNIT, the remaining podcasters contact ‘Requiem’, a woman offering answers for loss and grief, and the plague of loneliness sweeping the world. It’s another one in the vein of the third episode, Lost, where we learn nothing of great significance beyond delving into the personal lives of the podcasters, particularly Cleo’s own difficult childhood. It does have a great moment of people vanishing from a zoom call one by one, but aside from that it’s thin.

8: Ghosts, by Doris V Sutherland (5/6/2022)

On the plus side, this adds some much-needed jeopardy for Cleo, returning to the Powell Estate to find it subjected, again, to invasion by an Army of Ghosts, with phone calls from the past and an eerie deserted café. It’s very Sapphire and Steel, with all the implications that brings – I didn’t know what was supposed to be happening at points, particularly when there was some random noise and someone shouting about ‘foul beasts of death.’ Doon Mackichan understudies Neve McIntosh as Madame Vastra (heresy!) for the cliffhanger.

9: Rescue, by David K Barnes (12/6/2022)

‘I cannot abide unnecessary exposition.’ Some much-needed oomph as Cleo and Shawna make their escape through the sewers with an entertainingly brusque Vastra, pursued by ghosts which are all that remains of the missing people. Abby makes a slight return, having worked out it’s better to report on UNIT stories than be a player in them. This builds to a suitably apocalyptic cliffhanger as the whole of existence is threatened by ‘the redaction’, and a sinister alien foetus in a jar demands the podcasters kill the Doctor to save the universe.

10: Salvation, by Juno Dawson (19/6/2022)

‘You can’t outrun your past. Take it from someone who knows.’ Jodie Whittaker finally arrives, and it’s a truly Doctorish moment as she acts as a catalyst for Cleo to understand the past and face the future. It turns out Cleo’s father suffered the same fate as Elton Pope’s mother in Love & Monsters – the victim of an alien the Doctor stopped, but too late.

It seems that the redaction is the result of a tiny psychic virus the Doctor has picked up, which has placed everyone she’s ever met in a psychic coma. There are shades of Covid, with a virus causing more devastation than most diabolical masterminds, and providing stubbornly resistant to the Doctor’s usual ability to talk her way out of problems. Except, therein lies the solution – as it’s a psychic virus an episode of the Blue Box Files is able to break the infection and bring people back to reality. Cleo’s finally learned the value of facing up to responsibility, and all’s well that ends well.

This is fine, and it was a good move to make the Blue Box Files important to the solution because I feel that it fell by the wayside as this story continued. As a whole, Redacted is less successful. It’s a War Games length story and tries to follow a similar structure: one notable reveal per episode that builds momentum – except several of the episodes lack any substantial reveals, and between the first and last couple there are long stretches of chat rather than plot.

Even that might have worked had they remained true to the podcast format. Instead, making this a quasi-Big Finish audio invites unfavourable comparisons. These include a reliance on recasts rather than the genuine articles for several key roles (even now, Big Finish tend to use recasts as a last resort), and some moments of incoherent “action”. This kind of drama would also have benefited from an experienced actor in the central role of Cleo – who works fine as a presenter in the “scripted podcast” scenes but is less effective when asked to carry swathes of emotional and sci-fi plot. When the Doctor seems more affected by events than the viewpoint character, something has gone wrong.

Ultimately, Big Finish have done podcast based dramas more successfully recently in Rani Takes on the World. I appreciate Redacted’s intent to centre queer characters, but I’m disappointed by the patchy execution. There are possibilities here, and you have to start somewhere, but this ended up confirming my hypothesis that it’s Class for radio.

Next Time: The Power of the Doctor