It’s time for Turlough’s long-awaited homecoming. Returning to Trion, the third and final story of the Reunion boxset finds the TARDIS trio in a battle to rescue its people. But with a fiercesome foe in their way, will Turlough be able to make the necessary sacrifices…

Completing the triology, Broken Home is the culmination of several different factors. It is the highly anticipated conclusion to the Older Turlough arc, and it is the first story (from TV or Big Finish) to feature his home planet of Trion. As you might imagine, with an adventure that is quite literally decades in the making, it has some rather large shoes to fill. So, how do you go about successfully wearing these suckers? Probably not like how it is done here. Although it pains me to say it, the epic of Turlough’s homecoming is more than a little lacklustre.

The general crux of this story revolves around the idea that Turlough is always going to be a self-centred coward. Once a traitor, always a traitor. A great concept, if only it could be played off as remotely believable. The issue that this story comes up against is that every outing throughout this arc has been specifically tailored to convince the listener otherwise. For over 5 hours, we’ve already had the debate about Turlough’s trustworthiness, and by now we already know that he’s going to make the right decision come what may. As a result, when Turlough hands The Doctor and Peri over to the invaders and asks that they trust in his plan, there’s no doubt over his motives to be had, and it simply kills any threat or tension that might’ve been had dead in its tracks. This constitutes 90% of the adventure, and nothing that happens within it matters because its conclusion has already been decided.

Turlough’s trustworthiness isn’t the only issue facing this adventure; the villains too share some of the blame. Known as the Avican, these ultra-tall war bringers are supposed to have conquered countless worlds alongside Trion. That must mean that they are pretty threatening, right? Well, if they are, they struggle to show it, as, for most of their audio scene time, the TARDIS trio effortlessly run rings around them. It also doesn’t help that, beyond their leader General Hesht, they are a pretty one-note species whose ambitions and complexities fail to move past which planet they’d like to subjugate next.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom from this reviewer, and Broken Home does have its fair share of positives. Firstly, AK Benedict has a strong sense for descriptive narratives, and through her dialogue, you can tell just how much Turlough’s return home means to him. Moreover, there is some great shock value coming from the twist climax of Turlough’s death sentence. It’s unexpected and one of the only points in the story that creates a real amount of tension. Although, even here, I think they could’ve gone further and actually gone through with it.