The Horror

He’s the man who sees the threads that hold the universe together and knows which threads to break. And then, he breaks them.

The Constable

Synopsis

The Doctor is missing in action. As Gallifrey and Skaro face total destruction, Time Lord and Dalek forces converge on the realm of the Barber-Surgeon. From his junkyard fortress in a lost dimension, the renegade warmonger is about to create his ultimate weapon… Who or what can possibly stop him?

Review

The Horror is the final part of this War Doctor  Begins trilogy, finally bringing the action into the Barber-Surgeon’s dimension. With the Daleks and Time Lords in hot pursuit, the War Doctor must find him before they do.

Is…this…death?

The War Doctor

Robert Valentine caps off this box set with a cracking story that manages to balance the skirmishes of the Time War as well as the quieter moments. Having built up to having the Doctor meet the Barber-Surgeon allows Valentine to dig beneath the surface and explore the War Doctor a bit more. A common complaint I have seen about the War Doctor is that his behaviour is not sufficiently different from the incarnations of the Doctor who have come before and after him. The War Doctor has to accept that there are situations where he must act at odds with his previous selves’ moral scruples and that he isn’t going to magically fix the Time War. He is ultimately an incarnation born to end the Time War by any means necessary, but he still has to be redeemable by the time he meets the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor meet him in The Day of the Doctor. Valentine seems to understand the motivations and character of this incarnation really well. The audio design also captures the mania of the Time War well, as well as the peaceful, quiet state of the Barber-Surgeon’s pocket dimension.

The Barber-Surgeon is played really well by Nicholas Le Prevost. He is a weary Time Lord, who was used by his own people as a weapon in the Time War. He himself says that he is “sick of sin”. He has been taking creatures from the time vortex and turning these into weapons to be used in the Time War. There is more than passing reference to the fact that the Barber-Surgeon is a version of the Doctor who has taken another path, but the story is more interesting if they are distinct characters, another Time Lord manipulated by his own people, like the Doctor and the Master. Speaking of the Master, the Doctor and the Barber-Surgeon discuss his murder, and the latter tells the former that he did this to expose the Doctor’s previous selves’ hypocrisy. Le Prevost plays a heartless villain with gentlemanly menace; offing the Companion and the Constable with barely a second thought. The character has not featured much in the previous two parts, and sometimes foes are built up like this are underwhelming, but the Barber-Surgeon lives up to the hype. The Unforgiving Minute, his ultimate weapon to end the Time War, is a good idea too, and ultimately is used to save the day. Whilst it may seem like a reset button, it is almost the only way the story could ever end.

Meanwhile, the Daleks are in the midst of a civil war, with the Emperor leading one faction and the Time-Strategist leading the other, instructing the unstoppable Hunter-Killer to find the Barber-Surgeon. Nicholas Briggs sounds as though he is having a ball doing all these voices, with the addition of D9, the Dalek equivalent of the Doctor’s companion K9. The Daleks are as ruthless as the Barber-Surgeon, even torturing the Doctor to the point of regeneration to try and find out where the weapons factory is. I do like the fact that the Daleks are the main point of this – they serve as a motivation for the story to keep moving – but they are not the main focus of the story. They are a nice little distraction in a story that is more about showing the despicable actions the Time Lords are willing to take to win this war.

I’ve heaped a lot of praise on Jonathon Carley’s performance as the War Doctor. He, and the Big Finish writers, have certainly gained confidence in his abilities over these box sets, as they give him more and more facets of the Doctor to play. He continues to meet the challenges the script asks of him with aplomb. Here, he is reminded of his purpose, to end the Time War and the Barber-Surgeon refers to him as his final weapon to try and achieve that aim. The Barber-Surgeon also reminds him that, whilst he has renounced the name, he is still at heart the Doctor. Given the nature of the war, and war in general, it is easy for the Doctor to lose sight of this. They share an aim whilst their methods to achieve that end are different. Both are aware that this is an unwinnable war and that a stalemate is inevitable, but have very different ways to do this and whilst the events ultimately end up not happening, I’m sure the Doctor won’t forget what he has learnt during this adventure.

Verdict: The Horror wraps up this story really nicely. Le Prevost plays a great villain, and Robert Valentine shows a good understanding of the nature of the War Doctor. 9/10

Cast: Jonathon Carley (The War Doctor), Ken Bones (The General), Nicholas Le Prevost (The Barber-Surgeon), Jason Merrells (Dalek Hunter-Killer), Richie Daysh (The Constable/Comms Officer), Paksie Vernon (The Companion/Time Lord Navigator) & Nicholas Briggs (The Daleks/D9).

Writer: Robert Valentine

Director: Louise Jameson

Music and Sound: Howard Carter

Release Date: 13 December 2022

Cast Notes

• Paksie Vernon has also appeared in The Love Vampires, The Incherton Incident and The Iron Shore.

Best Quote

Replaceable things, companions. They come and go like clouds. Once I throttled one to death, I seem to recall, right on the floor of my TARDIS. I don’t remember why.

The Barber-Surgeon

Previous War Doctor review: The Abyss

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