Love and War

 

Love And War by Paul Cornell and adapted by Jac Rayner

Love and War is the prototype for Human Nature. Completely different stories, of course, but both relying on the same themes, the same emotional depth and slow burn lack of villains for the majority as it builds up a setting and character, before then setting it on fire, as the Doctor fricks it all up. Love and War is similar to my praises of family, in that it is a mastery of pacing, and while I don’t believe that it’s side characters (the nearly yikes but not quite Christopher for instance, very much borders on nearly bad) live up to the brilliant ones in Human Nature, but a lot of them are pretty great, especially Jan, and for the most part, well, I was enjoying it. I was however wondering what the point of Love and War was for the runtime. But therein lies its brilliance, for as I said, the follow up at the end is masterly written, and definitely justifies the slow burn, for guess what, the writing is heartbreaking, and Sophie Aldred is even more so! Sylvester McCoy is at his best too, and well, Lisa Bowerman doesn’t get to do much more than a character introduction (we’ve seen so much more from her since) but she still gets some really, really, great spotlight. Love and War has some real great sound design, and whatnot, and although as it usually is, the book is better, still, this is some high quality audio with a heavy emotional punch. 10/10