The War Doctor: Infernal Devices

 

The War Doctor: Infernal Devices

Infernal Devices is the second set of War Doctor stories ever produced, one of the original four sets (or three of the twelve episodes) starring Sir John Hurt as The War Doctor and Jacqueline Pearce as Ollistra. In none of these reviews will you ever hear a bad word out of my mouth about either of them -- if you're going to have two actors to lead your series, you might as well have those two. They're fucking excellent. The only thing I'll be really discussing in these reviews are the writing and sound design itself because really when you hire someone like Sir John Hurt you might as well not bring up his performance in the review of the thing because it just automatically equates to a certain outcome. What a goddamn career. No, these sets always have fascinated me because of the character they star, and the environment they star in -- it's a very difficult thing to get working from a writer's standpoint at all. I wrote an essay about this.  The Time War is such an awkward thing to have to work with for the typical story, but despite that, there's nothing better for the atypical story to work with. You'll see exactly what I mean when I begin to look at the stories.

Legion of the Lost by John Dorney

Much like the Ninth Doctor Adventures, the War Doctor stories tend to live and die by their guest cast, and Legion of the Lost has it all going for it. It's got a lovely guest cast with great performances, is dripping with fun time war stuff, and is just in general a quite strong episode of Doctor Who. After a surprisingly exciting opening with the War Doctor meeting a girl named Collis, she then dies rather horrifically to a bunch of Varga Plants. (It is both stupid and awesome that Varga Plants are in the time war.) The Doctor then immediately meets her again, having been brought back from the dead by the ominous Shadovar, played exceedingly well by David Warner. If you're just going to have a one-dimensional snarling Doctor Who villain, you might as well have it be played by David Warner. 

 Millions of people are being brought back from the dead to fight in the Time War without rest, and something called the Horned Ones are behind it. It's an excellent pitch, but I think what really sets this one up above your average time war story is that the weirdness of the Time War is used as a way to get an emotional hook in about the loss and return of a specific character. 

It never skyrockets to utterly supreme heights, but it's a massive step above the first release, and is a comfortably enjoyable hour -- this was a perfect choice to broadcast on Radio Four, it's very approachable as a good if basic Doctor Who story. It may not go all out with the time war concept, but it doesn't need to go peak weird for the story it's telling, even if I wish it would take a few more risks. At the very least it keeps the right amount of the Time War out of sight, just like the best description of it in Russell T Davies' first era. This may not be revolutionary, but it is what I desperately needed after Only The Monstrous.

A Thing of Guile by Phil Mulryne

I hesitate to even discuss A Thing of Guile because I am not sure what it is even really going for, and if you don't have anything nice to say you probably shouldn't say anything at all but oh well we're doing this huh 

The Doctor is forced by Ollistra at gunpoint to investigate a Dalek weapon except we don't even know what the Dalek weapon is until basically the last third. This is the primary problem I have with A Thing of Guile. I have no stakes in the conflict whatsoever, which is strange, considering my ability to invest itself into a war of all things should be quite simple. But there aren't really any characters to latch onto in A Thing of Guile outside The War Doctor and Ollistra themselves -- with Ollistra sort of letting War just get on with what he's doing for most of the time. There's no real conflict or conceit between having these characters tied together. 

 It's a very action flick idea. I don't think the Time War is the right sort of place for exciting action flicks, but even that aside, action is very difficult to get working on audio. A Thing of Guile has a better go of it than most stories do, with excellent sound design, but really, it's still an action story without anything to see, which is strike one, and it can't get away from it's odd pacing.

Much of the first half of the story is concerned with War and Ollistra running away from a space worm. This has very little to do with what the story ultimately is about. The 'breaking into the compound section' of the story takes up the entire first half, which should be the fastest part of the story so we can get to the story's meat, a Dalek experiment relating to un-mutating some of their test subjects back into Kaleds, and some discussion of mind control and free will as a weapon in the time war. 

There is not enough time to explore this idea which interests me slightly because it is so out of character for the Daleks (Why'd they do it? Questions are a great place for stories to start) because half of the story has been concerned with just getting into the base where this happens and avoiding the space worm. And I hate to be so blunt and cruel about this, but I don't give a shit about the space worm. 

A Thing of Guile has a checklist going for almost everything I don't like about a specific breed of time war stories -- not only is it an action story about Daleks but the Daleks are a bit out of character thanks to the plot hardly being explored, the pacing itself being horrid, and the military side-characters which never show any ounce of humanity or inhumanity to be invested by. 

The Neverwhen by Matt Fitton

The Neverwhen is almost an insult -- it's the same quality level of a relatively average Doctor Who story, but it so completely and utterly understands what to do with the territory of the Time War it can't help but offend you that they never attempted anything else like it with Hurt. Only this story truly understood the assignment, which despite it being pretty good, still feels somewhat irritating. 

The things that it is doing are effective and simple sci-fi ideas that befit the nature of a war where time is in flux, and are that brilliant mixture of breathtakingly obvious, why didn't I think of that, and enjoyably original. In short: Good ideas. Strong characters. By hinging the story on the adversarial relationship of the War Doctor and Ollistra without much else, there's a science fiction concept and an ethical dilemma. It's the sort of bread and butter thing that Star Trek and Doctor Who have done for years, just transposed into a setting that's all about time, and made fresh by the nature of that and some damn good writing. The fun this story has with time travel is magnificent. 

I have very little to say about the Neverwhen because there aren't really many moments of it where it goes wrong. The inclusion of Valis -- a character from A Thing of Guile -- doesn't even hurt it that much. It's not like Valis gets any development, but even still -- this is well executed sci-fi drama with a unique concept, Big Finish's bread and butter. You really really have to wonder why this is the only story of the original twelve Hurt plays like it. 

This is likely the best Big Finish set starring Sir John Hurt, and the one I'd probably recommend if you're an immense Hurt or War Doctor fan looking for a fix. A Thing of Guile may be my nemesis, but largely, two out of the three stories are good, and that's a better batting record than the other sets. While I'd much more readily recommend other Big Finish series, this is a fairly decent set if you're all that interested in Big Finish's earlier War Doctor work.