We rejoin the War Doctor with his second box set, Infernal Devices. And oh my God, the first episode, Legion Of The Lost, is probably the creepiest Doctor Who story I've ever experienced.
WRITTEN BY
John Dorney. I'm not familiar with Big Finish writers, but let me tell you, this guy is awesome.
PLOT
After destroying another Dalek superweapon, the Doctor is saved by a remote Time Lord base, where he discovers that the High Council has allied themselves with demonic sorcerers who resurrect their dead soldiers.
ANALYSIS
It's terrifying. The Doctor is essentially without an ally, as even his companion stand-in is under the influence of the technomancers' magic, and the Time Lords are blindly eager to do anything that will help them win the War. Morality is completely abandoned in favor of religious fanaticism and murder. And because of the near-supernatural power of the technomancers, the Doctor's usual tricks are largely useless. It's a very oppressive story.
CHARACTERS
John Hurt does a great job portraying the Doctor's outrage at how low the Time Lords have sunk, and sheer terror of the technomancers. It's largely his pained reactions and monologues that really sell the threat here.
His companion is Zoë Tapper as Collis, a resurrected Gallifreyan, whose personality becomes disturbingly different as a result. She has a lovely, small character arc about overcoming the evil within her which leaves hope for the Time Lords' future(that will be up to the new series).
David Warner(I didn't even recognise his voice!) is excellent as the villain, Shadovar. Rather like the Daleks in Power Of The Daleks, he promises to serve the heroic side whilst also blatantly taking advantage of them until they can do nothing about it. I like how unthreatening he sounds initially, before ramping up the requests and frightening dedication to his evil masters.
Jamie Newall's Co-ordinator Jarad is slimy in the best of ways. At times, he comes across as an intelligent man and at several points, I expected him to join the Doctor yet he persisted in bowing to the technomancers with an excuse akin to "I was just doing my job". Even after they're defeated, he still has the audacity to whine at the Doctor for saving the universe.
The only odd thing about this character is his use of human proverbs like "Voila!" and "Straight from the horse's mouth."
Jacqueline Pearce only has a short appereance at the end, but I've already grown to love her as a recurring character. She's kind of like an edgier Brigadier, sending the Doctor on assignments and getting him out of trouble.
NOTES
*Why doesn't the Doctor use the Annihilator on the Varga plants? Is plant life that much different from Time Lords and Daleks that it wouldn't work? Or does the Doctor think that wiping out mindless, genetically engineered plants of terror is genocide? Either way, I'd have liked to have heard a reason.
*As in the previous box set, the story opens with the Doctor getting knocked out hard and offered a lovely drink upon waking up. Damn, Hurt made that juice from Keska sound so delicious that I still want one.
*I was almost afraid that they weren't going to explain away the source of the technomancers' powers, because bringing the supernatural into Doctor Who for real would be a big no-no.
*Like his other incarnations, the War Doctor is particularly fond of tea. Good for him(coffee can go to hell, though)!
*More of the nicer side of the Gallifreyans: I liked the inspiring speech given by Captain Scolex to his men. It's that right kind of military where we got the Brigadier from.
*So, the Horned Ones are creatures from a dimension before this universe, that now wield massive power because of their alien nature here. With this, and the Celestial Toymaker, isn't it just weird how the Tenth Doctor refuses to believe the Beast might be from a prior universe in The Impossible Planet?
*I really liked the War Doctor's insistence upon leaving the dead deceased, even if bringing them back would only have positive consequences, pointing out that regeneration alone is traumatic enough. I much prefer this characterisation of the Doctor to Hell Bent's.
*The incidental music is sometimes pretty jarring in this episode, due to some poor editing. Tsk tsk.
*The undead Gallifreyan army, enslaved to the will of the Horned Ones is creepy af.
*At one point, it's mentioned that the minds of Gallifreyans past(and not just the Time Lords, which is interesting) are all saved in the APC net. I presume that is the Matrix?
*Apparently, "disorientating" is a real word. Funny, I've always heard "disorienting". I guess it's because I watch American shows?
*The argument between the Doctor and Collis about the ethics of resurrection is incredibly well-written. I especially liked the comparison to meat-eating, and considering that the victims of the process were already wiped from time. Bravo.
CONTINUITY ADVISOR
1) The Daleks still use the Varga plants against their enemies, like they did in The Daleks' Master Plan. I kind of wish they reappeared in the new series again too, they're creepy.
2) The Doctor reverses the polarity as he takes apart the Annihilator. Cute, but not necessary per se.
3/4) The Doctor tries to get access to the base's restricted area by pretending that Cardinal Ollistra gave him a warrant of authority after the Keska Incident. This later turns out to be psychic paper.
5) The concept of the same people dying repeatedly in the Time War was first mentioned in The End Of Time. I'm not certain if this story is referencing that or if that's where they got the idea, but it's an interesting callback regardless. I always thought the intention in that story was that temporal weapons(causing time loops) were used in the War.
6) I'm not sure if it's just widely used in meditation, but "Ohm!" was also used by the Buddhists in Planet Of The Spiders.
BEST QUOTE
"It stirs the echo of a memory, yes!" - Just a really great line in my opinion.
CONCLUSION
I love sci-fi horror. This series continues to impress me.
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