• John Hurt & Jacqueline Pearce. Hurt is, of course, the star attraction of the story and deservedly so. He chomps into the role with gusto, returning to a role that technically never should have existed and sliding easily back into character. But Jacqueline Pearce is also great, helped by her relatively low level of "screentime" - that means they take what they have and really make it work, and every scene she is in is obviously important with consequences to come down the road. Her interactions with the War Doctor are excellent, from her seemingly genuine (if harsh) personal remembrance when he's thought dead, to her careful manipulation of a showdown in the knowledge that he'll kick back at the idea of being puppeteered.... and thus do exactly what she wants, to their final conversation where they break down the story, decode each other's actions, and lay out each other's foibles. Pearce could easily have played it one note, but she's not just simply a bad guy doing mean things because she's a villain - she's doing what she genuinely thinks is necessary for the preservation of Gallifrey and victory in the Time War, and she simply refuses to allow morality, kindness or sympathy to get in the way of doing what needs to be done. She explicitly draws the obvious parallel between herself and the War Doctor, which gives him the chance to lay down the fantastic line about the one key difference between them. Hurt gets (obviously) the bulk of the screentime, which means we get to see a good bit of range from him. From the tired old warrior who starts the story, to the energetic scamp who thumbs his nose at the Time Lords after they try to force him on-mission, to the horror of realizing where he is, to the spluttering disbelief when he learns about the diplomatic "cult", to his seething rage and grief when he's forced to make a horrible decision, to the way he collects himself with a sigh and prepares to march on into the uncertain future at the end of the story.... John Hurt is excellent all the way through.
  
  
• The moral conundrum(s). While it might be aping Day of the Doctor just a bit too much, and skimming on the edge of overstating the point, I did enjoy the moral conundrum that the War Doctor ends up facing, and the way the end of the story echoes the beginning. This is all about peace vs war, but also about what cost is acceptable for both and who has to pay the price. At first the War Doctor is very much willing to be the one who pays that price, forcing out two young Gallifreyans chosen for an obvious suicide mission and standing in their stead. Following this, he finds himself on a little planet facing a rather "quaint" invasion and takes it upon himself to create a situation to end the war.... but is adamant that he will not be the one to push the button, that is something the leaders of this planet must do themselves. He almost seems to be goading the pacifist inhabitants, refusing to tell them what he has done or what will happen, making them make that decision without knowing what the true cost will be. It's actually almost a cruel thing, and certainly when the shoe is on the other foot for the War Doctor at the end of the story it is very much painted as a cruel thing. But then much of the first half of the story is about the fact the War Doctor is trying to be cold-hearted, he's trying to be the Warrior the universe apparently needs even though it so clearly goes against his true nature. The solution he forces on the aliens is ultimately a peaceful one, in stark contrast to the death caused by the solution at the end. The story opens with the War Doctor saving others from their "noble" deaths by pushing a button, and it ends with the War Doctor killing others at their behest and giving them a "noble" death that, like the first, saves countless lives. But if the first half is about the War Doctor attempting to cover up the fact he's not the cold, callous monster he feels he needs to be, then the second half is about the War Doctor's horror when he realizes he is arguing against the idea of peace and diplomacy, and mocking those who refuse to let death and despair overwhelm them. The Time War has changed him, and even if he has tried to accept that while clearly still being, at heart, "the Doctor", the realization of just how far he has still fallen is a sobering moment.
  
  
• The structure. The story is divided into three parts, and they work very well as pacing out the story. It starts with a big bang, of course, but then much of the first story is about the War Doctor's convalescence on an idyllic world, being nursed back to health by somebody who would clearly become a companion in any other era of the show. She almost gets that privilege anyway, before the realities of the Time War bear back down and end the hopeful dreams of young girl and old man both. The first part also sets the stage for part two, providing a reason beyond the intellectual to care about what the Daleks and their thralls are doing. That also leads into one hell of a cliffhanger, as the War Doctor learns everything isn't quite what it seems, ending in the Daleks screaming in unison a very familiar Neville Chamberlain quote. So in part three, everything wraps up as it should. It's not entirely a satisfying ending, but the structure has been laid out competently and given plenty of room for the story to breathe.
  

• The resolution. As mentioned, the resolution relies on callbacks to both earlier events of this story as well as obvious callforwards to Day of the Doctor. These stories have to eventually get the War Doctor into position to be desperate enough to steal The Moment, but it feels like Big Finish (or Nick Briggs in particular) just couldn't resist the allusion. It runs dangerously close to being overplayed - the fact that so often everything boils down to pushing a button just smacks of ripping off Moffat or at least relying on the emotional weight of that marvelous 50th Anniversary special to carry the listener through this story. The side on the ascendant (for now) sweeps in and cleans everything up with ruthless efficiency, feeling more like Briggs remembered there were a lot of hanging threads to be dealt with once the main plot was resolved and quickly zipped out a couple of paragraphs explanation of,"And then all that stuff got dealt with off-screen!" The Daleks are negated with surprising ease, with a reference to the Path Web feeling more like it's there because they're allowed to use revival-era stuff now so why not shove it in.
  
  
• How conventional it all is. This is the Time War, but while technically there is a lot of weird stuff going on, none of it really comes across as weird. The biggest and strangest things in the story are both actually callbacks to classic Hartnell-era stories - the Time Destructor from The Daleks' Master Plan and a little something originally from The Dalek Invasion of Earth that also popped up in season 4 of the revival. The idea of the Daleks jamming giant engines into planets and blasting them like gigantic bullets directly at Gallifrey is actually kinda perfect in terms of Dalek lack of subtlety - it's just a gigantic, crude weapon that happens to require incredibly complex technology to pull off such a "simple" idea. But the war is fought conventionally, space fleets and infantry battles, proxy species doing the grunt work, races being moved about like pawns by Gallifrey and Skaro both. It's war on a gigantic, mind-bending scale.... but it's nothing particularly odd or off-the-wall, it's just.... war.
  
  
• The sub-baddies. A race of "bad" aliens are discussed but never seen in the first part of the story, then show up in the second and get a larger role in the third. They are, unfortunately, very generic and uninteresting. So the fact their leader is the one who ends up getting to have the big verbal confrontation with the Doctor falls pretty flat. At first there is the barest suggestion in some of the dialogue that things aren't quite as binary as they first appear - that maybe the good, peaceful, isolationist aliens may have done something pretty horrendous in their distant past to earn the undying ire of the bad, warring, expansionist aliens. But nope, when they finally show up they're just straight-up jerks who read like quasi-Klingons.
  
  
• The scene on the lake. It's so bad it stands out on its own. Near the end of the first part of the story, the War Doctor takes a break out on the lake with quasi-companion Rejoice. There she refuses to accept his insistence that he is a terrible person, and in his desperation not to allow himself that notion, he flies into a rage. The whole thing becomes a confusing mess, it sounds for all the world like he is legitimately beating the poo poo out of her while screaming in her face.... but then she jumps into the lake and he appears confused by her actions, and she and he start cracking jokes about how she's decided to swim back to shore. They're absolutely cheerful, with the War Doctor if anything sounding embarrassed to have made such a performance.... but what was he actually doing? Clearly he wasn't beating her up, but was he just.... slapping the wood of the boat? It's an incomprehensible mess, and a rare instance of Big Finish absolutely screwing up their audio.
  

qntm fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Dec 20, 2015