Dark Gallifrey is real. Dark Gallifrey is a fiction. Dark Gallifrey has been found. Dark Gallifrey has disappeared. Bernice Summerfield has made the discovery of a lifetime. But whose lifetime?

At first glance, this could not be more different to the just-concluded Morbius story. That was a buttoned down, John Carpenter-esque exercise in paranoia. This is a clammy handed nightmare, one part Beyond the Mountains of Madness and one part Waiting for Godot. It provides a clear answer to the question of Dark Gallifrey, then buries that answer amid a cloud of feverish action.

But look closer and you can see patterns starting to emerge. Morbius ended with an elegantly realized time loop. The War Master opens with time in pieces, David Warner’s Doctor and Lisa Bowerman’s Bernice finishing an adventure they can’t remember and perhaps shouldn’t be allowed to. It then falls backwards through time, giving us consequence and context for everything as they arrive back at the start. Which is also the end.

You’re going to worry, for a while, that this is style over substance. It’s not. James Goss’ script is intensely clever but it’s also intensely personal. This is a character drama above anything else and Warner’s Doctor is a gloriously spiky, mercurial axis for everything to revolve around. He’s curious to a fault, liberated from universe, time and causality and one bad step away from being the exact sort of menace he fights. He is, as the interviews talk about, the rescuee not the rescuer and that subtle dynamic ties into and magnifies the deep seated unease in the story.

The same is true of Lisa Bowerman, whose Big Finish work continues to be exemplary on both sides of the mic. Her Bernice is a fundamentally cheerful, calming presence and that presence is also challenged by the colossal shadow of Dark Gallifrey. Bernice carries the emotional weight of the story, and as she walks backwards (or is it forwards?) through her life we see the weight of every choice and the toll it takes.

The supporting cast also impress, especially Tariyé Peterside’s work as the Imbomination, the creature that is either Dark Gallifrey or is wearing its skin. This feels like an escalation from the last story, where the villain was a rogue Time Lord. Here the villain is the embodiment of every bad choice made about time, a concept so huge and so murderously angry you can barely perceive it. It’s a great idea, and Rob Harvey’s sound design accentuates the subtle, unsettling vibe of the script, the performances and Scott Handcock’s direction.

You get answers for everything by the end of the story but those answers feel nested inside some much larger questions. There are two more parts of this and I have no idea where it goes. Honestly that’s thrilling, doubly so given the discussion in the interview section that this is apparently the coda to the whole Dark Gallifrey story.

Verdict: Intense, sweet, horrific and clever. There are, somehow, two more parts to this. I have no idea what’s going to happen and I cannot wait to find out. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

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