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shivverThe final audio of Big Finish's 60th Anniversary series, "Once and Future", came out one or two months ago, nearly a year after the actual 60th Anniversary. The previous audios had been released once a month during 2023, with the last one in November as expected, and then months later, they announced this one. I listened to it a couple of weeks ago and here's my take on it.
This audio was a little unusual because the series had already been tied up last year, so what more did they have to add to the story? Also, the big announcement that this would be the War Doctor meeting up with the Fugitive Doctor - her audio debut, actually. Okay, that could be really problematic, especially with the Fugitive Doctor coming into the middle of the Time War, a major, universe-flipping event that's far in her future, but it could also be fun.
Now, just to remind you about how I felt about the rest of the series... I wasn't very fond of it. It lacked coherence. The core situation was that the Doctor had been hit by a weapon that caused them to "degenerate" into other incarnations, both past and future. These incarnations weren't stable, so the Doctor had to find out who had done it and how to fix it. The problem with the series was that they were separate, unrelated stories except that at the end of each one, someone would tell the Doctor to go somewhere, which basically just got them to the next audio. In other words, the audios were largely unrelated to the overall story arc.
(In contrast, consider "The Legacy of Time", the series that BF put out for their own 20th anniversary. Each audio, featuring different Doctors, felt like unrelated stories until the point in each audio that it became apparent that something had caused the situation, and in the last audio, the Doctor figures out what that something was and solves the overall problem. Thus, it had a number of good stories that stood on their own but also built the story arc.)
The individual audios in "Once and Future" weren't all that great either, but I won't rehash them here. The last one, "The Union", however, was actually not bad, though I forgot to review it here. In it, the Doctor (I forget which incarnation, though) finally finds the villain, a Time Lord called the Union who was the only stable incarnation of the Nine (yes, if you know who the Nine is, then this sentence makes sense). The Union had hit the Doctor and some other Time Lords (including the Master) with the degeneration weapon to drain their regeneration energy to power her nefarious schemes (what they are exactly is unimportant here). With the help of Susan and River, the Doctor defeats the Union. During the climax of the audio, it's revealed that the Doctor that was hit by the degeneration weapon was not mid-Time War Eight, as it had been assumed all through the series, but instead, was the War Doctor.
So, it wasn't a great audio, but it was good enough and entertaining, and a better end to the series than I had expected. With the announcement of the War Doctor in "Coda - the Final Act", it looked like it was going to explore the fallout of what the Union had done and how the War Doctor dealt with it. Also, the name of the audio, using the word "coda", hints at a conclusion to the series, perhaps a restatement of an important theme, if you're using the musical term.
Unfortunately, it was none of that.
The short summary of the story: the Fugitive Doctor is tasked by her bosses to hunt down and kill "the most dangerous criminal ever" - the Doctor, of course, but she's never told the name of her quarry. The War Doctor manages to evade her first attack and they agree to fight on a planet called Coda. He goes off to amass an army to defend himself, going to Queen Elizabeth I (Why is it always her? Weren't there any other competent monarchs in the history of the world that the Doctor could approach?) and persuading her to provide him with an army by promising her that England can claim Coda when they're victorious. To get them there, he modifies an English galleon to make it spaceworthy. Meanwhile, the Fugitive Doctor hires some Voord mercenaries to fight for her.
They meet on Coda and the armies start fighting, and when the Doctors meet up face-to-face, they realize that they're both being stupid. The War Doctor realizes it was stupid to have 16th century soldiers fight advanced aliens and wonders why he's fighting in the first place (remember, the War Doctor doesn't actually fight in wars). The Fugitive Doctor realizes that she has already quit the Division and wonders who it was that actually told her to hunt down her future self. They figure out that someone has been psychically manipulating them, and they discover that it was some race that was neutral in the Time War, who was trying to summon Ouroboros by having the Doctor fight themself (apparently, a Time Lord fighting themself summons this thing) so that it would go on a rampage and end the Time War by... eating Gallifrey and Skaro? Something like that. So, the Doctors work together to send Ouroboros back from whence it came and heal time, and of course that causes them to lose their memory of having met.
That was it. How did the story relate at all to the rest of "Once and Future"? It occurred during the fifteen-hour window right after the War Doctor recovered from the degeneration weapon, so he was still in that unstable state and that allowed the neutral race to psychically manipulate him. The story otherwise had nothing to do with the series.
I think the most disappointing thing about the audio, though, was that the story was designed so that both Doctors would behave abnormally and that was the major part of the audio. From the get-go, the War Doctor especially felt off and kept getting worse as he made stranger and stranger decisions. Yes, we do eventually find out why, but by that point, the character was soured. For the Fugitive Doctor's part, it was actually interesting to see her pre-fugitive, working for the Division as she must have done... and then it turned out she wasn't and all we had just seen was smoke and mirrors.
Then, when they figure out that they'd been had, they had to work together to fix the situation, with no real time for the Division-scarred Doctor and the Time War-scarred Doctor to have meaningful interaction. That's what I was hoping for with the announcement of this pair-up, but there wasn't a bit of it.
So, unfortunately, I have to say that this audio, and much of the series, is a waste of time. There were a couple of good ones in there:
* "A Genius for War", with Davros promising the Seventh Doctor that he really does want to destroy the Daleks, was excellent;
* Missy in "The Martian Invasion of Planetoid 50" should not be missed (the story was weak, but she was amazing, and I'm someone who didn't like Missy much overall); and
* "The Union" is not bad, and you get to find out why all this happened in the first place. The Union's plan and her reasons for it are actually fascinating.
But I would avoid all of the others. The stories themselves aren't good, and they don't contribute to the overall story so you won't miss anything. If you're really in an anniversary mood, listen to "The Light at the End", which was BF's 50th Anniversary audio and one of my favorite audios. "The Legacy of Time", which I mentioned earlier, is also great.
This audio was a little unusual because the series had already been tied up last year, so what more did they have to add to the story? Also, the big announcement that this would be the War Doctor meeting up with the Fugitive Doctor - her audio debut, actually. Okay, that could be really problematic, especially with the Fugitive Doctor coming into the middle of the Time War, a major, universe-flipping event that's far in her future, but it could also be fun.
Now, just to remind you about how I felt about the rest of the series... I wasn't very fond of it. It lacked coherence. The core situation was that the Doctor had been hit by a weapon that caused them to "degenerate" into other incarnations, both past and future. These incarnations weren't stable, so the Doctor had to find out who had done it and how to fix it. The problem with the series was that they were separate, unrelated stories except that at the end of each one, someone would tell the Doctor to go somewhere, which basically just got them to the next audio. In other words, the audios were largely unrelated to the overall story arc.
(In contrast, consider "The Legacy of Time", the series that BF put out for their own 20th anniversary. Each audio, featuring different Doctors, felt like unrelated stories until the point in each audio that it became apparent that something had caused the situation, and in the last audio, the Doctor figures out what that something was and solves the overall problem. Thus, it had a number of good stories that stood on their own but also built the story arc.)
The individual audios in "Once and Future" weren't all that great either, but I won't rehash them here. The last one, "The Union", however, was actually not bad, though I forgot to review it here. In it, the Doctor (I forget which incarnation, though) finally finds the villain, a Time Lord called the Union who was the only stable incarnation of the Nine (yes, if you know who the Nine is, then this sentence makes sense). The Union had hit the Doctor and some other Time Lords (including the Master) with the degeneration weapon to drain their regeneration energy to power her nefarious schemes (what they are exactly is unimportant here). With the help of Susan and River, the Doctor defeats the Union. During the climax of the audio, it's revealed that the Doctor that was hit by the degeneration weapon was not mid-Time War Eight, as it had been assumed all through the series, but instead, was the War Doctor.
So, it wasn't a great audio, but it was good enough and entertaining, and a better end to the series than I had expected. With the announcement of the War Doctor in "Coda - the Final Act", it looked like it was going to explore the fallout of what the Union had done and how the War Doctor dealt with it. Also, the name of the audio, using the word "coda", hints at a conclusion to the series, perhaps a restatement of an important theme, if you're using the musical term.
Unfortunately, it was none of that.
The short summary of the story: the Fugitive Doctor is tasked by her bosses to hunt down and kill "the most dangerous criminal ever" - the Doctor, of course, but she's never told the name of her quarry. The War Doctor manages to evade her first attack and they agree to fight on a planet called Coda. He goes off to amass an army to defend himself, going to Queen Elizabeth I (Why is it always her? Weren't there any other competent monarchs in the history of the world that the Doctor could approach?) and persuading her to provide him with an army by promising her that England can claim Coda when they're victorious. To get them there, he modifies an English galleon to make it spaceworthy. Meanwhile, the Fugitive Doctor hires some Voord mercenaries to fight for her.
They meet on Coda and the armies start fighting, and when the Doctors meet up face-to-face, they realize that they're both being stupid. The War Doctor realizes it was stupid to have 16th century soldiers fight advanced aliens and wonders why he's fighting in the first place (remember, the War Doctor doesn't actually fight in wars). The Fugitive Doctor realizes that she has already quit the Division and wonders who it was that actually told her to hunt down her future self. They figure out that someone has been psychically manipulating them, and they discover that it was some race that was neutral in the Time War, who was trying to summon Ouroboros by having the Doctor fight themself (apparently, a Time Lord fighting themself summons this thing) so that it would go on a rampage and end the Time War by... eating Gallifrey and Skaro? Something like that. So, the Doctors work together to send Ouroboros back from whence it came and heal time, and of course that causes them to lose their memory of having met.
That was it. How did the story relate at all to the rest of "Once and Future"? It occurred during the fifteen-hour window right after the War Doctor recovered from the degeneration weapon, so he was still in that unstable state and that allowed the neutral race to psychically manipulate him. The story otherwise had nothing to do with the series.
I think the most disappointing thing about the audio, though, was that the story was designed so that both Doctors would behave abnormally and that was the major part of the audio. From the get-go, the War Doctor especially felt off and kept getting worse as he made stranger and stranger decisions. Yes, we do eventually find out why, but by that point, the character was soured. For the Fugitive Doctor's part, it was actually interesting to see her pre-fugitive, working for the Division as she must have done... and then it turned out she wasn't and all we had just seen was smoke and mirrors.
Then, when they figure out that they'd been had, they had to work together to fix the situation, with no real time for the Division-scarred Doctor and the Time War-scarred Doctor to have meaningful interaction. That's what I was hoping for with the announcement of this pair-up, but there wasn't a bit of it.
So, unfortunately, I have to say that this audio, and much of the series, is a waste of time. There were a couple of good ones in there:
* "A Genius for War", with Davros promising the Seventh Doctor that he really does want to destroy the Daleks, was excellent;
* Missy in "The Martian Invasion of Planetoid 50" should not be missed (the story was weak, but she was amazing, and I'm someone who didn't like Missy much overall); and
* "The Union" is not bad, and you get to find out why all this happened in the first place. The Union's plan and her reasons for it are actually fascinating.
But I would avoid all of the others. The stories themselves aren't good, and they don't contribute to the overall story so you won't miss anything. If you're really in an anniversary mood, listen to "The Light at the End", which was BF's 50th Anniversary audio and one of my favorite audios. "The Legacy of Time", which I mentioned earlier, is also great.
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Date: 2024-12-15 01:25 pm (UTC)I have only listened to Coda once, and while it still has that ‘ we got this from a Random Pairing Generator ‘ feel ( I wondered about Elizabeth too!) , I just treated it in my head as its own thing. I am still looking forward to what BF does with the Fugitive Doctor.
One of this audio’s bright spots for me is a moment between Benny and the Fugitive (… that sounds like a band name) that made me laugh and I listened to twice