The War Doctor Begins: Warbringer

 

The War Doctor Begins: Warbringer

I certainly wasn't a fan of Only the Monstrous, and while I was willing to try again with Forged in Fire, while that was a step in the right direction, I wasn't very attached to it either. When listing the individual aspects of Warbringer on paper, it's also something I was unlikely to enjoy - a three hour long Dalek story starring The War Doctor?? I was skeptical. Three hour long stories rarely work for me in general, and even in my favorite ranges - the Fourth Doctor Adventures, Torchwood - they can indeed just as easily falter as triumph. Warbringer is a joyful surprise, and from the very beginning however, it proved to me it knew what it was doing, and that The War Doctor range was finally starting to show a quite interesting direction indeed. 

Consequences by Timothy X Atack

I really like Consequences as an opener. It gives the War Doctor range it's first audience identification figure in the form of Case, and then explores and does some worldbuilding for an unique alien planet. Alien planets can so often be quite dull if you only have audio to work off of, so the fact that a large swath of Consequences is focused on character and worldbuilding pleased me immensely. Case is a large aspect of why I found Consequences such a gripping opener, but both The War Doctor and one of Big Finish's recurring stalwart time lord characters, Veklin, I've never much cared for Veklin before this story, but she's INCREDIBLY effective here as an antagonistic force that the War Doctor has to work with, ostensibly also a companion role but with a lot of teeth to her. The dynamic that she has with The War Doctor really works, as does Case's. There's a lot of just plain good character and worldbuilding stuff, and I really don't have many complaints, especially in terms of a first episode. The story just gets better as it goes on, the entire long ending scene where The War Doctor has to convince this place that he is their prophesized Warbringer and how Veklin tries to build him up, clearly to his distress, is an absolute highlight of characterization for this Doctor in general. I don't have many complaints, minus a character that has a truly abysmal American Southern accent. I would advise Big Finish either hire Americans to do American accents or perhaps not include such characters at all. Even if the accent is good, the only american character in the story being a wild west woman with an obsession with guns is a little reductive. Regardless, an inspired first episode, and my favorite War Doctor hour so far. 8/10 

Destroyer by Andrew Smith 

I have to give credit to Andrew Smith - you really can't tell that a completely different writer wrote this episode to the previous one. It's a difficult feat to so excellently meld two acts of the same story together when completely different people were responsible for writing them and have it not immediately show. Destroyer is the point in the story where the Daleks enter the main focus as what the story is sort of actually about. This is somehow really really good Dalek writing, something I have not seen in a really really long time. I love their implementation to the plot, they are suitably cruel and callous, and their plan is quite creative. Tamasan also appears in this episode, and I am quite a fan of that character too. There's a lot of fun in having some really callous Time Lords in the series as "good" guys, and seeing how they play off of The War Doctor. He has a really entertaining dynamic with both Veklin and Tamasan. That being said, the same reason Consequences is a good episode is the same reason Destroyer is a good episode. Case is just a really gripping character that is an excellent protagonist to get latched onto, and the exploration of her character, her finding out more about herself along with us, is quite moving. Ajaz Awad really pulls this character off. She's marvellous. The balance of personality trio is a somewhat basic thing, the id, ego and superego, or if you're nerdy, Kirk, Spock and McCoy dynamic has been done before. It's one of the easiest things to fall back to when writing. Several companions classify under these metrics. But there's this adversarial tension with these three that's really impressive. Veklin and Case both balance out eachother's more frustrating character traits. The thing that makes this set so invigorating is these characters and their chemistry, this dynamic is so truly exciting, and finally gives War Doctor fans some concrete companion characters to lock onto, aside of course, from the memorable book only companion Cinder. Continuing the excellent work, Consequences and Destroyer form an exquisite duo: 8/10

Savior by Jonathan Morris

Savior is such an odd way to end the set, because it's actually the beginning of the set that we didn't see. This doesn't really give us much information that the previous installments hadn't already doled out, minus the sudden existence of a character named Albert. Albert doesn't have much time to make an impression, and furthermore, due to the ordering of the set, his fate is already sealed from the moment he opens his mouth. I don't really care for Savior much, I don't think it's really necessary for the previous two stories, nor does it accent them under a new light with sudden and cool new information. The reason to make Savior a prequel to the other two sort of feels like it was made in order to give the set a more experimental outlook. But Consequences sort of opens perfectly, and the in medias res nature sort of gave the set it's point, it's direction. When other shows do stories in reverse, the reason they save the first part for last is usually in order to conceal some sort of twist or to make an emotional beat from later stronger. Savior doesn't have any of that, and it's sort of a dull add-on as a result. Carley, Chalmers and Awad are still good enough to keep this over anything they produced in Forged in Fire, but it's still disappointing. It seems that so far, it wouldn't be a War Doctor set without at least one massive misfire. But despite Savior being, well, quite bad, it being a prequel doesn't actually dullen the impact of the prior two excellent stories, which still work exceedingly well as their own piece. I'm greatly excited for set 5 of this series to continue the adventures of War and Case. Hopefully Veklin will hitch a ride too, because this is, and I can't believe I'm saying this, a War Doctor thing that has me truly excited for what the future holds for this character. 5/10