Susan (Carole Ann Ford)  and her mostly reluctant handler Veklin (Beth Chalmers) are called back into service by Cardinal Rasmus (Damian Lynch) to help the Time War Effort. In ‘The Lost Son’ they’re dispatched to a neutral world to help its leader find their child, kidnapped by the Daleks. In ‘The Golden Child’, Susan and old friend Andolar (Tania Rodrigues) try and find out why a hero of the Time War has been erased from history and discover they aren’t the only people on the case…

This is my first real entry into the Time War stories and I couldn’t have chosen better. The two stories presented here embody not just the complex, protean nature of the conflict but something deeply poignant about Susan herself.

Ford, extraordinarily good in both stories, gives her a colossal amount of emotional weight and calm which offsets the frantic nature of the war. You understand, basically instantly, why Susan is fighting the Time War the way she is. She isn’t a soldier and has no compunctions about that. She’s a diplomat, a deeply, profoundly empathetic woman made even more so by the loss of her son Alex. That loss is what unites her with Priestess Vesselina (Heather Bleasdale) and drives the story along. The war is present, and impending. But the real threat here is grief. Vesselina, to be crass for a moment, needs a Doctor. Who she gets is better. Susan embodies everything her grandfather has abandoned at this point in his life and does so not despite her loss, but because of it.

Everyone fights a different way. Everyone grieves a different way. Sarah Cassidy’s story explores both and is peppered with some compelling supporting characters. Sonny McGann’s Alex is wonderfully off kilter and Chalmers gives Veklin some subtle emotional growth here while still playing her as a delightfully angry human switchblade. But the key performances here are Vesselina, Chief Shethan (Rosalyn Landor) and Luux (Sophie Bleasdale). These three give us a snapshot of the world, and the political choices it’s had to make and the costs of those choices. The Time War is devastating, and it’s not just devastating physically.

This is a ridiculously strong opening and Peter Anghelides’ ‘The Golden Child’ is just as good. The delightful central riddle is expanded out into a story that explores and explodes both time loops and the Doctor’s hated ‘long way round’.

Struggling to understand why future (or is that past?) hero of the Time War Maxor is in fact a member of the interstellar Bullingdon Club, Ford and Rodrigues do excellent work. The two, very surprised, temporal detectives are joined by the always excellent Jonathon Carley as the War Doctor and the themes of family are brought to the fore in a very different way. Here we see Susan confronted not with the perceived moral failure of the 8th Doctor but the actual moral compromise of the War Doctor. Carley does great work as the grumpiest Time Lord, trying to both protect the timeline and his granddaughter and he and Ford have an instantly believable, spiky family dynamic.

The supporting cast are again excellent, as is the direction by John Ainsworth and sound design by Andy Hardwick. All of them come crashing together into an ending that honestly completely surprised me, Anghelides elides slotting the last piece into place and showing us just what the War Doctor’s real agenda was and how, oddly, heroic and kind the horrific central concept really is.

Verdict: It’s an incredible closing to a vastly strong duo of stories. I don’t envy the writers of the next volume – this feels like an element of the show’s history that rewards, and demands, further exploration. Especially from a cast and crew this good. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

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