The Once and Future series comes to a belated conclusion, marking Doctor Who's 61st anniversary, which a nice enough idea I guess. I lost interest in this special series, intended to mark the 60th anniversary last year, and never caught the original ending. I grew tired of the increasingle arbitrary combinations of characters and creatures that Big Finish were throwing in. When it reached a team-up between Jackie Tyler and Lady Christina, I stopped ordering them.
This extra little story was far more tempting, though. For one thing, it's not really a chapter of Once and Future's degeneration story, but a prelude to the upcoming Fugitive Doctor series. You'd call it a backdoor pilot if the series hadn't already been recorded and made ready to go. We still haven't had Jo Martin play the Doctor alone, as here she's sharing the limelight with the War Doctor (spoiler alert I guess, but he's the one was degenerating up and down his timeline). This is an interesting pairing; the two outlier Doctors, both inserted into the continuity retroactively. The numberless Doctors, both of them not quite the Doctor we're used to.
It's a pity, of course, that John Hurt is no longer with us, as having him actually take part in another anniversary story and act against yet another Doctor would be a treat. It's never going to be the same having an impersonator standing in for the real deal. Hats off to Jonathon Carley, though; his impression of Hurt is exceptional. This is the first time I've actually listened to Carley beyond a couple of clips and his appearance on Doctors Assemble during lockdown. It's uncanny, by far the most convincing of all the new-old Doctors. Of course, being a good impressionist isn't enough; fortunately Carley's a solid actor as well.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that he's better here than Martin in. Not that she's bad, but there are certain lines where her delivery is a little stilted, where it sounds like she's reading from the script. (I know she is reading from a script, but it shouldn't sound like that.) For the most part, though, she's a pleasure to listen to, and while she has to share the limelight with another Doctor, she gets plenty of time to lead the story and show us what her Doctor can do.
The story is simple but rather great. The Fugitive Doctor is sent by her superiors in the Division to track down a time-travelling war criminal and take him out. The War Doctor, from his perspective, is being targeted by a time-travelling assassin. Neither Doctor is aware that their enemy is another version of themselves. They're ideal incarnations to pit against each other: one has let go of his moral code in order to fight the Time War, while the other has yet to develop that code. Neither is quite the Doctor as we've gotten to know them, and are more similar to each other than their many other incarnations (that we've met so far, at least).
Indeed, the alleged ruthlessness of the Fugitive comes across far better here than in her introduction, where she just carried a big gun and played the sort of dirty tricks the Doctor always plays. This is a Doctow who'll raise an army to get the results she wants. The Warrior does the same, although it turns out his judgment and aggression has been affected by outside factors. This is the one element of the story I really didn't like. That's what the War Doctor should be like, he shouldn't need to be pushed into doing it.
Fixing these Doctors up with Benny is a stroke of genius. She's become perhaps the archetypal audio companion, and knows the Doctor just about as well as anyone. I'm fairly sure she's met more versions of the Doctor than anyone now, even if only briefly (I count fifteen - the first nine numbered Doctors, the Twelfth, the Valeyard, Muldwych and Unbound, and now Fugitive and War). She's the best person to hold both these iterations to account when they stray from what, to her and to us, the Doctor stands for.
Lisa Bowerman is as great and as sardonic as ever, Isabel Stubbs makes for a fine Elizabeth I (who recognises a younger version of the Doctor she met at the 50th, but he doesn't know her) and even Chase Masterson doesn't sound out of place in her random, but welcome, appearance as Vienna Salvatore. As for the decision to include the Voord... well, I'm always partial to a bit of Voord, and while their about the least interesting sounding creatures, they work well enough in the story. Their involvement even ties into the Four Doctors comic event, where we learned that they were involved in the Time War and had their histories tampered with. (Whether this was a deliberate link or just a case of a similar idea cropping up twice, I don't know, but it's a nice touch either way.)
The agency that eventually turns out to have set the Doctors against each other is apparently already well-established in the Time War audios, but the dialogue suggests they're being set up to tangle with the Fugitive Doctor again in her own series. If this release can indeed be viewed as the beginning of that story, then it should be a lot of fun.
Placement: The Fugitive Doctor has already cut ties with the Division, so this is after Doctor Who: Origins. For the War Doctor, it's after the rest of Once and Future, right in the middle of the Time War. For Benny, it's after her adventures with the Unbound Doctor.
