Disgusted by his recent actions, Valarie (Safiyya Ingar) demands the Doctor (Jacob Dudman) let them out of the TARDIS. When the Doctor agrees, they find themselves on a deserted world ravaged by a strangely familiar catastrophe. Decades previously, two rescue robots realize they’re the last beings alive.

Producer Alfie Shaw and Ingar talk at length in the always excellent interviews about how they felt Valarie needed one more story to get closure, even after this particular season had wrapped recording. Shaw made the pitch, it was accepted and writer Lisa McMullin and director Helen Goldwyn got the call. The result is, and this isn’t a word I use lightly, a classic.

Shaw makes a lovely point in that interview about how this story makes it feel like a complete Eleventh Doctor season, with six volumes, a special in the middle and a Christmas episode and that speaks to the deep understanding this team have of what makes Eleven so compelling. He’s an incarnation I’ve always struggled to like, his emotional distance and occasional flighty callousness as alienating here as they would be with Thirteen a few years later. But this season, and this story, is brave enough to look that straight in the eyes and make it not a feature but the literal landscape the story happens across.

It’s not much of a spoiler, especially if you look at Caroline Tankersley’s typically excellent cover, that a Doctor has been here before. When you see who it is, you’ll have a good idea what happened. This is where McMullin and Shaw’s genius lies, setting some familiar Doctor Who beats (Including the always fun ‘there’s more than one of you?!’) in a story which hits in the middle of a season and which never stops moving. Valarie has been treated horrifically by the Doctor, is grieving her losses and feels justifiably murderously angry at him and her situation. That distance gives her the chance to see the Doctor from an external perspective and call this most mercurial modern incarnation on some of his worst traits. This alone would be welcome and interesting. But McMullin is one of the best writers Big Finish have and she isn’t close to done.

The second plot here, following rescue bots Lionel and Augustus, sits heavy with tragedy on the other side of the scales to the main plot. Valarie’s justifiable anger is contrasted with two brave digital lifeforms facing up to an unimaginable tragedy and finding the strength to move through it. Having Dudman and Ingar pull double duty is inspired and the shifting power dynamic between the robots harmonizes with but never repeats what’s going on with the Doctor and Valarie. Dudman’s Augustus evolves from northern and conservative to compassionate and determined. Ingar’s wonderfully chopper Lionel battles the incredible ambient trauma of being designed to save lives and living on a planet-sized graveyard. You worry, viscerally, for the pair of them and Borna Matosic’s gentle, sad score heightens both that and the tension.

It also circles back to making this a quintessentially Eleventh Doctor story. Dudman nails Eleven’s exhausted, elderly compassion and there’s a real sense of this Doctor feeling the weight of his years here. The final, blazing argument he and Valarie have gives both performers a chance to really cook off and Dudman embraces the horror and the guilt at the hearts of Eleven and expresses both with no mercy. Ingar’s Valarie goes toe to toe with him too, and by the end of this story it’s clear that Valarie’s true strength isn’t in her cybernetic components but in her iron will. She’s a survivor Donna Noble would be proud to know. No tolerance for nonsense. a sense of right and wrong a mile wide and a heart nailed to her sleeve. Both performers have been great throughout their season. Here, they and every other member of the team turn in all-time great work. Direction, writing, acting, sound design, art. There is nothing here that’s less than exemplary.

Broken Hearts has a final piece of resonance up its sleeve. This is the last time Dudman and Ingar played these characters and it was recorded after everything else was finished. The deep love everyone has for the work shines through in both the play and the closing interviews and I cannot think of a better sign off for an all-time great TARDIS crew.

Verdict: Broken Hearts is a deceptively simple story that does a dozen complex things and does them all superbly. Deeply touching and kind-hearted, it’s not just the best part of this range so far, it’s one of the best Eleventh Doctor stories so far. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

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