1.1 The Innocent
As the Daleks mass their time fleet for a final assault on Gallifrey, something ancient is waiting for them at Omega One. And a sacrifice must be made.
Arch-manipulator and Time Lord strategist, Cardinal Ollistra receives shock news of the Doctor’s death.
Meanwhile, on the planet Keska, a parochial war has returned to plague a peaceful civilisation after decades of tranquillity. But how can such a war have any connection with the great Time War which, at any one moment in the whole of eternity, could threaten to tear the universe apart?
If only the Doctor were still alive.
1.2 The Thousand Worlds
With the high-ranking Time Lord Seratrix behind enemy lines, the War Doctor finds himself assigned to a rescue mission. But any room for manoeuvre is severely restricted by an area of space known as the Null Zone.
Times have changed on Keska, and a countdown to destruction is beginning.
But who are the Taalyens and what is their part in the great and terrifying Dalek plan?
1.3 The Heart of the Battle
Trapped in a citadel swarming with Daleks, the Time Lord rescue force must find a way to overcome insurmountable odds. With the Daleks apparently planning to rule the Null Zone, perhaps their thirst for universal conquest and victory has been quenched…
The War Doctor doesn’t believe so — but how can he prove it without destroying any chance of peace?
As the countdown to the destruction of Keska proceeds, a deadly choice must be made… A choice that will define this Doctor, and perhaps forever cast him in the role of ‘monster’.
THE WAR DOCTOR: ONLY THE MONSTROUS
Despite shaping the entire revived Doctor Who series around the aftermath of an eternity-spanning Time War between Time Lords and Daleks, Russell T. Davies consistently refused to show the war on screen, arguing that any representation would underwhelm when compared to the audience’s imagination. But now, years later, Big Finish has secured the services of John Hurt and his War Doctor, and the first box set, “Only the Monstrous” from Nicholas Briggs, is set right in the middle of the Time War. And unfortunately it turns out that one of the most celebrated TV dramatists of all time was, shockingly, correct.
My biggest problem with “Only the Monstrous” has nothing specifically to do with the plot, or the characters, or anything like that. Rather, my biggest problem has to do with its almost total lack of imagination. Have you heard Briggs’ own Dalek Empire series? Then you’ve heard this, except this isn’t as good. Every military action we see, every strategy discussed, is done in entirely linear terms. There’s a brief mention of Time Lords “slaughtering” a faction of Daleks who can’t travel in time, but we never get to see how. There are Dalek fleets moving toward Gallifrey, transduction barriers, battle TARDISes – all hallmarks of a big, galaxy-spanning war, but absolutely no indication that this war is taking place through all eternity as the characters claim. We see Time Lords sent on a covert operation into Dalek territory, and they behave exactly like human soldiers armed with conventional weaponry. The Daleks are said to be hiding in a “null zone” where time travel is impossible, but this idea isn’t actually put to use, as all the scenes there are the same as all the scenes set elsewhere. Even the moment at the beginning, when the Time Lords earn a great victory against the Daleks, just uses the Time Destructor from “The Daleks’ Masterplan.” Sure, this reference tickles the fan gene, but all we hear is a giant explosion when it goes off. This is a huge opportunity for Big Finish to tell stories that we couldn’t see on television, and all we get from the first set is a bog-standard war epic. Great?
Of course, the other huge draw is the War Doctor himself. John Hurt is absolutely fantastic, but then you’d expect nothing less from an Oscar-nominated star – he gives this Doctor a fantastic combination of grumpiness, softness, and weariness. We’re rapidly faced with the difficulty of not using the name “Doctor,” but he defaults instead to John Smith, which is satisfying enough. Naturally, much of the story is devoted to demonstrating how different he is from his other incarnations, but I found that it mostly flagged up similarities. Part of the problem is the undergraduate pontification on war – “war is the embodiment of hypocrisy” and so forth – but a bigger part is that the Doctor doesn’t seem all that different. Briggs sets up a scene where the Doctor is forced to choose between two distasteful options – and it’s so obviously a riff on “The Parting of the Ways” it’s groan-worthy! I mean, really, a Dalek yelling “coward or monster?” – and the Doctor chooses the less distasteful of the two. Yes, this is different from the modern portrayal of the Doctor, who normally rejects the choice entirely and finds a way to save everyone, but what it does more than anything is make the “normal” Doctor seem like an irrational pacifist. This was addressed with much greater depth and sensitivity in “The Resurrection of Mars” two-part Eighth Doctor Adventure, but even there the Doctor’s heightened morals were shown to be specific to that incarnation. What it boils down to for me is this: is there anything in “Only the Monstrous” that you can’t see the seventh Doctor doing? Because if not – and the answer for me is “no” – then what’s so different about this Doctor?
There’s also a long segment about a faction of Time Lords who are so weary of the war that they want to negotiate peace with the Daleks. Everyone assumes that the Doctor is going to associate with the pacifists, but they were wrong, because this is the War Doctor! He’s much different from his other selves, and in a shocking revelation, he doesn’t want peace with the Daleks! Except, again, this is entirely consistent with his previous (and future) characterization, which has always shown him to be willing to kill Daleks without a moment’s hesitation while considering them utterly irredeemable. Add to that the fact that the peace plan involves the deaths of untold billions of people across a thousand worlds, and what other reaction did they expect? Instead of being shocked that the Doctor was unwilling to sue for peace, I was shocked that the Time Lords were so totally ignorant about the Doctor’s motivations and experiences. This makes Ollistra (Jacqueline Pearce) seem stupid, not cunning.
Otherwise, everything about this is generic and predictable. We see an idyllic society and then revisit it years later as a ravaged disaster under Dalek rule, we have the Daleks going back on a deal just like they always do, we get a cliffhanger with Daleks chanting something bizarrely out of character, and so forth. There’s even a second race of genocidal killers, and we know they’re genocidal because the Doctor says the word “genocidal” about five thousand times in the first episode alone. All we need is two rebels to fall in love and we’ll complete the bingo card. The production, from director Briggs and sound designer Howard Carter is pretty good – it certainly feels epic – but there are definitely moments where the sound design is confusing. The theme is also about the most generic thing imaginable – it sounds like a test version of the TVM theme. Overall, “Only the Monstrous” is exactly what I feared it would be: entirely lacking in ambition. It’s not terrible or anything – it’s solidly entertaining as these things go and holds the attention throughout – but it takes staggering concepts like the Time War and the War Doctor and does the bare minimum possible with them. Hopefully future War Doctor sets will make more of an effort – the new series license should be taken as more than just an opportunity to grind out generic Doctor Who stories with slightly different trappings.
Thoroughly, but expectedly, disappointing.
5/10