Sympathy for the Devil is a Big Finish Productions audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The Doctor Who Unbound dramas pose a series of "What if...?" questions.
What if... the Doctor had not been UNIT's scientific advisor?
The Doctor arrives on Earth for his exile, not in the 1970s but in 1997, on the eve of Hong Kong's handover to the Chinese government. He finds a world that has faced some three decades of alien invasions and other incidents without him to help, and old friends and enemies bitterly transformed.
It is revealed that under the alias Ke Le, The Master defected to China and used a machine with alien parasites (as in The Mind of Evil) to brainwash political prisoners into the zombie-like Ke Le Division soldiers.
The Doctor — David Warner
The Brigadier — Nicholas Courtney
Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood — David Tennant
Ke Le — Sam Kisgart
Ling — Liz Sutherland
The Abbot — Trevor Littledale
Marcus — Mark Wright
Captain Zerdin — Peter Griffiths
Adam — Stuart Piper
Other parts played by members of the cast.
Tennant's character Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood reappears in UNIT: The Wasting.
Without the Doctor being UNIT's scientific advisor, several stories in this alternative universe had different outcomes, mentioned in passing in dialogue. The Auton invasions of Spearhead from Space and Terror of the Autons were dealt with by the "plastic purges", which caused a shortage; Captain Mike Yates took a UNIT team back into the past with several nuclear warheads to prevent the Silurians from awakening, and half of present-day London suddenly became a crater; the "Probe 7 fiasco" lead to a line of radioactive craters across America; lives were lost whenever UNIT provided security at a peace conference (Day of the Daleks, The Mind of Evil); and Stahlman's Gas is considered a hot investment tip.
A sequel to this audio, named Masters of War, was released in December 2008. It featured David Warner's Doctor, the Brigadier, Davros and the Daleks.
In 2005, David Tennant became the tenth actor to play the Doctor on television.
David Tennant would be reunited with David Warner for the Tenth Doctor animated story Dreamland.
This is the first audio drama to feature a Time Lord regenerating.
