The Rutans use a stolen Battle TARDIS to strike a Time War outpost and Chancellor Blaxill (Debbie Korley) vows revenge. But how did the Rutans get aboard? And what was the TARDIS doing at Sontar?

This series has always been fun but there’s also been a growing sense of the banner title being just that; a banner. There’s nothing wrong with that, standalone stories are great! But these stories also felt oddly staccato. There was a sense of bigger events being glimpsed in the background, that unique cerebral tickle only excellent Doctor Who can deliver that tells you to pay closer attention than you think. This story is the payoff.

This is, to borrow a phrase, Doctor Who with added guitars. The Time War narrative already gives the story a different feel but director Ken Bentley, writer John Dorney, sound designer David Roocroft and composer Joe Kraemer steer all the way into that. There are distinct themes for every race, some fun audio tricks with the Rutans and a driving sense of urgency and energy to the sound design. That urgency powers the story through the very big job it has to do and it’s a pleasure to listen to Bentley, Dorney and the cast do the near impossible in what shouldn’t be enough room.

Multiple people pull double duty here. Dan Starkey (who gets a deserved shoutout as the new gold standard for Sontarans in the interviews) is especially good and it’s nice to see both Skole again and what Skole  and Starkey represent. The Sontarans have always been something of a one-note, warrior species tend to be, but Starkey’s consistently funny, consistently nuanced performances have changed that. The Sontarans feel like an actual species here, and it’s really powerful listening to some of the scenes the Doctor and Skole share. Skole, and the other Sontarans, feel both more sympathetic and more threatening because of the nuance they now have and those scenes crackle with a very different kind of energy than they would have even a decade ago. Christopher Ryan too is excellent in a similar minor/major role combo. Vrell too has some complexity and depth and you find yourself liking the universe’s most violent potatoes even more after this story.

But it’s not just them, and the Time Lords get a very good showing here too. Korley is brilliant as Bexill, a chancellor with blood on her hands and a hunger for more. But just as the Sontarans are shown to be more complex than we’ve thought, the Time Lords we meet here are consumed by dangerous simplicity. Bexill is a war criminal with funding and resources, singing her battle hymns to herself as she marches off to war. John Banks, pulling triple duty here, shows us a very different side of the war but and a very different kind of cost. The Time War is an existential crisis and the Time Lords haven’t let themselves see that. Or the brave ones haven’t. The cowards know and just don’t care.

Which brings us to Jonathon Carley’s superb turn as the War Doctor. Aside from the uncanny vocal impersonation, Carley, Bentley and Dorney show us a War Doctor who can’t quite commit to the horrors even now. Bexill’s choice is so horrifying, he can’t go along with it, even here. There’s a bitter, black coffee streak to his lightness of tone and refusal to conform too, and the War Doctor spends most of this story as a deliberately light-hearted Yossarian. He has no intention of complying. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t damned too.

This fantastic team come together here to tell a story which is both a conclusion and a first chapter. It’s intense, and intensely clever and you’re going to get a different view on very nearly everything that came before it. Or after it. Or both. Regardless, the colossal narrative of these four stories is revealed here in dizzying speed and detail and it works. Not just as a series of four stories but as a stark demonstration of the horrors of war, the moral collapse that all too often follows it and of just how terrifying the Time War was. A cthonic, vast bow wave of destruction breaking over the universe again and again. The War Doctor can see it. But that doesn’t help him at all.

Verdict: Densely packed and smart, this is a story that demands and rewards attention and will make you want to re-listen to every other part. Massive, and massively impressive. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

Click here to order from Big Finish