“Years ago, I’d have felt uncomfortable with a Beretta in my hands. But not now...” Dr. Daniel Jackson wakes up on the floor of his SGC lab, with no memory of what happened or how he got there. With him is Lt. Hunter of SG-12 - the team that should have accompanied SG-1 on their mission to P2K-797. But now, here they are, back on Earth with the whole of Stargate Command incapacitated around them. What has happened? Why can no one remember? And why is the Stargate apparently connected to an alternate reality...?

A gift from Big Finish - in the shape of a new series, this time based upon the television versions of Stargate. Full-cast audio dramas would have been an even more exciting prospect, but I suppose that would have been impossible to mount, and these all-new talking books are the next best thing - especially when you have Michael Shanks doing the reading.

As well as re-creating the role of Daniel Jackson, in a tale that takes place during Season 3, before the episode Fair Game, he also does some nifty impersonations of the rest of the regular cast, especially Jack O’Neill and General Hammond. He even gets the delivery of Samantha Carter bang on.

As with Big Finish’s Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles series, the reading is further enlivened by the presence of a secondary voice, on this occasion provided by John Schwab as Lt. Hunter of SG-12. In addition, there are authentic sound effects, including zat guns and the famous Stargate kawoosh!

Writer Sally Malcolm, who has previously penned a couple of SG-1 print novels, tells an intriguing tale that has controversial implications for the nature of Dr. Jackson during Season 3 and beyond (though it does borrow quite heavily, consciously or unconsciously, from the Star Trek: Voyager episode Deadlock).

Long may this series continue.

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Richard McGinlay