It’s 1964, many years after Jago & Litefoot dealt with the nefarious Mr Rees and his Mind Games, and a couple of kids are seen playing where they shouldn’t be playing.  The ground beneath them is unstable, and they fall through.  In the hole, they find a curious device.  A little musical box.

JENSON, GILMORE, WILLIAMS

For the uninitiated, Counter Measures is a group OF people thrown together in the aftermath of the televised adventure Doctor Who : Remembrance of the Daleks.  Set in 1963, Group Captain Gilmore (Simon Williams), Professor Rachel Jensen (Pamela Salem), and Alison Williams (Karen Gledhill) aided the mysterious “Doctor” in his efforts to prevent Earth from being the latest casualty in the Dalek civil war.  Following that adventure, Earth needed a group of people familiar with otherworldly events to defend it.  In the future there would be U.N.I.T. but, before that, there would be Counter Measures.

The Reesinger Process is the second of four adventures in the Big Finish set The Worlds of Doctor Who.  It opens with Sir Toby Kinsella, who oversees the Counter Measures group, in a meeting with Sir Harold Moorcroft of the treasury.  They’re discussing the financial viability of Sir Toby’s group when Sir Harold suddenly has a funny turn and, before Sir Toby can react, he shoots himself.

GILMORE, JENSEN, THE DOCTOR, ACE

Kinsella discusses this with Gilmore, Jensen, and Williams.  He has a file full of similar such startling cases.  Strange events such as a respected General pushing a complete stranger under a train.  A Senior civil servant who, just last Thursday, went on a series of Post Office hold-ups.  The Captain of the Guard who was stepped in front of a taxi.  Cabinet Office minister Johnny Jenkins who stepped off Waterloo Bridge.  There seems to be no pattern, but there are dozens of other cases in his file.

Gilmore and Jensen are currently finishing up other cases, so it’s left to Alison Williams to begin the investigation.

Once Gilmore has completed his previous investigation, in which his team arrested Conniston of Conniston Industries and have impounded a plutonium extractor, he’s told about Colonel Swinton.  Recently appointed to NATO, Swinton got his lunch in the mess hall, calmly set it down on a table, then started a fight with everyone in the mess hall before shooting himself.  Fortunately, Swinton isn’t dead but, unfortunately, he is in a coma.  He’s the only one who’s survived so far.

Group Captain Gilmore intends to talk with Swinton’s colleagues, while Professor Jensen offers to go to the hospital and talk with Swinton’s doctors.  She has a device that monitors brain functions that she hopes will raise any anomalies.

After Sir Harold’s funeral, Alison Williams talks to his widow who indicates that there had been nothing wrong with her husband.  They’d been happily married for 30 years and the only thing that annoyed him recently was what he’d called a waste of time and money – being sent on a character building personal development course.

Gilmore learns more about this course from a minister that tells him that all senior officers either have or will take the character building course at the Reesinger Institute.  All people on Gilmore’s list have attended.

In Mind Games, we learned a lot about Mr Rees and his motives in the exposition towards the end of the story.  In The Reesinger Process, we’re given most of the information we need “up front”.

THE WORLDS OF DOCTOR WHO

We’re not really given too much information about who the Counter Measures members are.  I’ve seen the televised adventure and have listened to The Assassination Games in which they featured, but even I know very little of the set-up beyond the characters of Gilmore and Professor Jensen (largely because these were the two most visual characters in Remembrance of the Daleks).  So, if you’re coming into this expecting an introduction, you’ll probably be dissatisfied.  The Worlds of Doctor Who is seemingly more like a celebration of the different Big Finish ranges, not an introduction to them.  I don’t know how I’ll fare with the next story (I know nothing about “UNIT Vault”, whatever that is) but I’m only about 20 minutes into The Reesinger Process so far so I have plenty more of the adventures of Group Captain Gilmore to listen to.

If this is your first foray into Counter Measures following Remembrance of the Daleks, the main slightly-jarring difference is that Simon Williams doesn’t much sound like his boisterous self from that 1988 adventure.  Fortunately, Pamela Salem sounds exactly like she’s sounded in everything I can remember her in, so you do get some reassurance that these are the same characters.

I’m intrigued now to listen to the second half of the story, that will doubtless see the group delve more into the Reesinger Institute.