Time Lord Immemorial

I call upon the collective force of temporal power to stop the sands of time!

This review contains spoilers. If you have not listened to Doctor Who: Once and Future: Time Lord Immemorial yet, go away and listen to it, and return once you have!

Synopsis

Slipping between bodies, the Ninth Doctor finds his TARDIS caught between universes as the cosmos starts to break down. A Doctor from another reality arrives and they join forces with Liv Chenka and the Lumiat to find the cause. Someone has desecrated the mythical Hall of the Time Lord Immemorial, where the sands of time from the multiverse are held. And those sands are running out…

Review

Whilst the novelty of having Christopher Eccleston back in Doctor Who has (mostly) worn off, I think having him involved in the celebration of the show’s 60th Anniversary is one that means that I certainly was a bit giddy when the news was announced. I will admit that I have not listened to any of the David Warner’s other Doctor’s Unbound range.

In her second script for Once and Future, Lisa McMullin provides a good story that does edge the overall arc along slightly despite a crisis involving the folding of the multiverse into criteria. McMullin balances all the characters well and splits them off from each other so that it feels that the majority of the cast get a chance to shine. Nicola Walker’s Liv Chenka may feel a little underserved, which is a shame for one of the best companions that Big Finish has created, but I think that she is a fun addition and gives McMullin a possibility to prick the pomposity of the four Time Lords in the story. I really like the scene where the Doctor and the Lumiat see scenes from their lives and encounters together replay in front of them in stone, whilst the final adventure is depicted in sand, fluid due to the infinite possibilities of the outcomes. I like the Time Lord Immemorial and the distortion on Robert Powell’s voice, which makes him feel like an imposing figure, worthy of the hushed tones that his fellow Time Lords speak about him in and ultimately his power is crucial to the conclusion of this story and repairing the multiverse.

That’s not to say that the story is without flaws. The story ultimately feels as though it is too easily resolved through the use of a prophecy and I’m not sure whether it entirely resolves satisfactorily. We are told that to summon the Time Lord Immemorial, there need to be five people; two incarnations of the same Time Lord, the oldest foe, a loyal friend and a witness. Through a contrivance of the plot, the Lumiat fulfills two of these roles, which almost feels like Liv Chenka is superfluous as she gets relegated to being a witness only. There’s a part of me that feels as though the TARDIS should have been worked into this prophecy somehow, definitely in the friend capacity.

The story does wrap up a little bit too quickly, and it is perhaps notable that the Unbound Doctor disappears just as quickly as he appeared. McMullin takes this opportunity to give the characters a coda to the story. Unfortunately, I feel like this is a missed chance to throw in some brief cameos for some other members of the wider Doctor Who universe and felt ultimately disappointed on my first listen that this didn’t happen. In short, the Unbound Doctor speaks to Bernice on his return to his universe, the Lumiat starts degenerating and the Eighth Doctor and Helen arrive to pick up Helen to resume her travels, but none of these additional characters appear. Even if a brief cameo, a la David Tennant in The Diary of River Song story A Brave New World could have made all the difference to this last section. Whether this was a brief conversation between Bernice and the Unbound Doctor, a cameo from a degenerating Master, such as Alex McQueen, Geoffrey Beevers or even Jon Culshaw as the Ainley or Delgado Master, or even just a brief cameo from Hattie Morahan as the TARDIS arrives. Ultimately, my hope for a cameo of this kind dwindled the more these codas came and went.

I’m the bringer of light now.

Yeah, right, and I deliver pizza.

The Lumiat and the Ninth Doctor

There are some characters and foes that I don’t think that the Ninth Doctor should meet in the course of his audio adventures with Big Finish, which includes the Daleks and the Master, as they would risk seriously undermining his character arc over his televised series. The story opportunities afforded by Once and Future, however, allow Big Finish to play around with this a bit more, as this is not really the Ninth Doctor. The Lumiat, played by Gina McKee, is of course an old colleague of Eccleston’s from Our Friends in the North, and the chemistry between the two is really strong. Eccleston’s Doctor has a searing distrust of the Master and is unwilling to accept that this is a personification of the good aspects of their personality, just like the Valeyard is a collection of all the bad traits of the Doctor.

Where McKee and Eccleston share good chemistry, this is nothing compared to that between Eccleston and the late David Warner. Eccleston has commented previously about not wanting to do multi-Doctor stories, so it is perhaps fitting that this is a story that features a Doctor from an alternate universe. Warner’s Doctor is curmudgeonly, which allows the Ninth Doctor to gently poke fun at him, but this always feels warm, due to the respect between the two actors.

Verdict: A solid enough entry in Once and Future which delves into the Unbound Universe. Eccleston, Warner and McKee particularly shine, but the story is let down by its conclusion. 8/10

Cast: Christopher Eccleston (The Doctor), David Warner (The Alternate Universe Doctor), Gina McKee (The Lumiat), Robert Powell (The Time Lord Immemorial) and Nicola Walker (Liv Chenka).

Writer: Lisa McMullin

Director: Helen Goldwyn

Producer: David Richardson

Music: Howard Carter

Release Date: 5th October 2023

Behind the Scenes

• The only story in Once and Future to not feature one of the ‘main’ timeline Doctors.
• The last story recorded by David Warner before his death on 24th June 2022.

Cast Notes

• David Warner’s most prominent role in Doctor Who was playing the Unbound Doctor in the Big Finish audio plays. He also played Professor Grisenko in the Eleventh Doctor story Cold War and Professor Boston Schooner in Deimos.

Best Quote

Wait, so you’re the Doctor…and so’s he?

I know, like buses.

Well, sort of. He’s more like a cheap knock-off. A kind of ‘if Time Lords fell of the back of a lorry’ Doctor.

Liv Chenka, the Lumiat and the Ninth Doctor

Previous Once and Future installments:

Past Lives

The Artist at the End of Time

A Genius for War

Two’s Company

The Martian Invasion of Planetoid 50

For more Ninth Doctor reviews, click here.