Judge Dredd - Jihad

Continuing my way through the complete Big Finish range of 2000AD stories here is Judge Dredd: Jihad from 2004, written by James Swallow and directed by John Ainsworth.

Dredd has his work cut out trying to run the security for a conference of senior Judges from all around the world, and investigate a weird religious cult that has sprung up in the undercity. A threat from Mega-City One's past has returned again to threaten Judge Joe Dredd and the millions he protects.

James Swallow's last contribution was Dreddline which I did not like at all but this is a far superior audio drama which has lots of nods and references to some of the classic epic storylines from the comic. If you are familiar with 2000AD then the villains of the piece are rather given away by the cover art, and once again listeners will figure out what is going on before Dredd does. The Judda are a cult of cloned Judges who want a society dominated by their clone brothers and sisters. Dredd had previously wiped out most of them but a few crazed survivors are back to menace the big Meg.

Toby Longworth is given a lot more to do in this script and his performance gets even better. Teresa Gallagher makes a good Chief Judge Hershey, and Garrick Hagan is the convincingly deranged villain, Jonah. These 2000AD stories are about an hour long and they rattle by pretty quickly in comparison to the Doctor Who Range. The direction, sound design and theme music are all top notch, and I loved all the mentions of classic Dredd stories.

Jihad doesn't quite do as well as Death Trap or Get Karter but it's a good Dredd story that gets 4 out of 5 clone DNA strands.