We’re back, with another Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama review! This week, we’re continuing our look at the first War Doctor box set, Only The Monstrous. Last week we listened to the first entry, The Innocent; this week, we’re listening to The Thousand Worlds. Let’s get started!
Spoilers ahead for anyone who has not listened to this audio drama!
After the Doctor’s extraction from Keska, Rejoice meets with her father, and tells him that the Doctor is gone. She mourns his loss, but her father is glad she was left behind.
From the Doctor’s perspective, the story continues immediately. He meets with Cardinal Ollistra, who orders him onto a strike team led by Veklin, the agent who came for him on Keska. Also on the team are Bennus and Arverton, the two agents whom the Doctor rescued from the Time Destructor before landing on Keska. Ollistra wants them to go behind enemy lines—that is, into an area of space called the Null Zone, which is held by the Daleks. The area is so called because time travel is impossible inside it; only spaceflight can be completed. They will be looking for a missing Time Lord strategist named Seratrix. The Doctor—who still declines to be called by that name—insults Ollistra and Veklin, then summons his TARDIS and escapes, refusing to be part of any team. Veklin, Bennus, and Arverton follow him in a Battle TARDIS. Meanwhile, the Daleks are preparing to execute their plan.
The Doctor hits the border of the Null Zone, and is forced to land on Keska, although he doesn’t know that’s where he is. He finds himself in a slave camp, and meets a man named Garv, who informs him of the planet’s identity, leaving him stunned. The Taalyens have somehow conquered the planet; and now, a massive drilling machine is being built. But why? And how? Moreover, there are a thousand worlds in the Null Zone, and all of them have received the same treatment. Meanwhile, Veklin’s team also lands, though not nearby, and finds several life signs: Keskan, Taalyen, Gallifreyan…and Dalek.
The Doctor promises Garv that he has fought the Daleks before, and will defeat them here. When asked for a name, he calls himself John Smith. He is separated from Garv’s slave group, who are sent down to the drill level. The Daleks mention a pre-launch sequence, sparking the Doctor’s curiosity. Veklin and her team pursue the Doctor—and, hopefully, Seratrix—into the machinery, carrying demolition packs.
The Doctor meets a Taalyen guard, and passes himself off as a slave elite. The guard challenges him, but he is saved by a real slave elite, the woman in charge of that group of slaves. Once free of the guard, she becomes emotional, because she recognizes the Doctor, though he does not recognize her at first…it is Rejoice. They bring each other up to date, but Rejoice thinks he cannot save the planet this time, as the Daleks are supporting the Tallyens—in fact, it was the Daleks who helped them get inside the planetary shield. The Doctor assures her that there is a connection between the situation here in the thousand worlds and the greater Time War…and he intends to figure it out.
Veklin’s team infiltrates via the fuel-pumping tunnels of the machinery, but they must hurry; periodically, fuel is purged through the tunnels, and will kill them. They are detected by the Daleks, who send a Taalyen squad in after them. They defeat the squad, but are caught by a fuel purge; Arverton sacrifices himself to get them to safety. He refers to Bennus in his last moments as “brother”; this piques Veklin’s curiosity. Bennus attributes it to a unit they served in, under Seratrix and Ollistra. Meanwhile, the Daleks think they were all killed in the purge.
The Doctor and Rejoice help serve food at a celebratory feast for the Taalyen leadership; the Prime Dalek is also there, with the Taalyen commander, Traanus. Seratrix is also there; the Doctor learns, to his horror, that Seratrix is working with Traanus and the Prime Dalek. He is outed as a Gallifreyan, but Seratrix vouches for him and saves his life; he knows that if the Daleks recognize him as the Doctor, they will kill him.
The drilling machine is launched. It will drill into the planet’s core, and destroy the core; it’s a plan the Doctor has seen before. Seratrix insists that he is working for the greater good; this plan will lead to peace with the Daleks, who now rule the Null Zone. The Doctor is shocked to silence, as the Daleks chant “Peace in our time”.
It must be mentioned up front that this story, unlike The Innocent, can’t stand on its own. It very clearly represents only half a story; technically it’s the middle third of a three-part story, but parts two and three together can stand reasonably well as a unit. As such, it’s fairly short on action, and consists of a considerable amount of setup for what is to come; it relies more on dialogue than its sequel. Again, obtaining a precise date is impossible; in local terms, it’s a few decades after The Innocent, but in terms of the overall war, it’s impossible to say. From the Doctor’s view, only hours at most have passed since he left Keska, but from Rejoice’s perspective, it’s been many years. It’s a stark contrast, given that he spent nearly a year on Keska in the previous story; here, it all happens in hours at most. Keska itself is a study in contrasts; it was peaceful, sunny, and pastoral in the previous episode, but here it has been rendered an industrial wasteland. One gets the impression that this story takes place at night, but that can’t be confirmed.
My character sketches from the previous entry still stand, and I won’t repeat them here; however, we begin to get more information about everyone. There is more than meets the eye with the Time Lord soldiers Bennus and Arverton; there’s a shared history that we haven’t discovered yet, with only the barest hint given. (If I may be allowed a small spoiler: when the first of these characters dies, there’s no hint of any chance of a regeneration, which may indicate that they’re Gallifreyan, but not Time Lords–if, that is, the theory that common Gallifreyans don’t regenerate like fully trained Time Lords is true.) Their team leader (and Ollistra’s agent) Veklin, meanwhile, is not as shallow as previously presented; she’s still very straightforward, ambitious, headstrong, and rude, but she’s also clever, though not nearly on the level of the Doctor. We get a new character in the Time Lord strategist Seratrix, who only briefly appeared in The Innocent; we don’t get enough about him here to say much, but he has the air of a cult leader, charismatic and totally sold on his vision. What exactly that vision is…well, wait and see.
The Dalek chant at the end, “Peace in our time”–which isn’t much of a spoiler when taken out of context like this–would instantly trigger any history buff. It’s a misquotation of former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (the original line is “Peace for our time”), who used the line in a famous speech regarding the 1938 Munich Agreement. That agreement, of course, fell apart within a year when Germany invaded Poland, leading the UK to declare war. Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement toward Germany, much ridiculed in history, is mirrored here in Seratrix’s peace efforts with the Daleks. We’ll have more about that in part three.
The Doctor continues to reject that name; throughout this box set, anytime he is addressed as “Doctor”, he has an angry outburst. Those moments are notable; they are played up with sound effects, and the effect is similar to Gandalf’s angry speech to Bilbo Baggins in the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring, where Gandalf seems to grow more imposing. The Doctor doesn’t comment on it much here, as he did in The Innocent; but he still believes himself to be a monster. Eventually, in Engines of War, he will come to apply that view to the Time Lords as a whole, considering them no different from the Daleks.
As with The Innocent, references are few and far between; this story refers back to The Innocent a fair bit, but not so much to stories outside the Time War. The “John Smith” nickname dates back to The Tomb of the Cybermen, and has been used in many stories since. The drilling plan was used by the Daleks previously in The Dalek Invasion of Earth; this occurrence is also addressed in audios Lucie Miller/To The Death and The Mutant Phase.
Overall, my only real complaint here is that this story feels very short. That’s to be expected, I suppose; after all, it is only a connector between parts one and three, where the real action takes place. Still, it seemed to go very quickly, with not much happening. Otherwise, it’s not bad; it’s a greater window into the character of the War Doctor, but doesn’t add much.
Next time: We’ll wrap up the first War Doctor set with The Heart of the Battle! See you there.
All audio dramas featured in this series may be purchased from Big Finish Productions; this audio drama’s purchase page is linked below. The Thousand Worlds is not available separately, and may only be purchased as part of the listed box set.
The Time Lord Archives 