Read by Colin Baker.
Tony goes back to the
front.
Fortunes of War is the
third and – no spoilers, but probably final – part of a story which has taken
three Doctors at different times in their lives to solve. As such, if you haven’t
heard both of the earlier parts, Men of War and Horrors of War, you’re going to
be just a little lost coming into this one.
The first two parts were
read by former companion actors Peter Purves and Katy Manning, but neither of
them were written from the point of view of those companions, though Steven
Taylor and Jo Grant were accompanying the First and Third Doctors respectively.
Here we’re blessed (general rule of thumb – this man’s presence on a project is
always a blessing) by having Colin Baker read the final part of the story, and
as such, we’re allowed a particular treat – a story written from the Doctor’s
perspective, and narrated in the first person, in his voice.
If you react to that with
a ‘So what?’ you’re missing the point. The Doctor we see on screen is almost
always illuminated for us through the prism of his companions, and it depends
how well they understand what’d really going on in that confounded brain of his
how good an illumination that is – at the risk of infuriating the Classic Who
fans, look at Amy Pond explaining the Doctor’s choice of where to stand in
Asylum of the Daleks and Clara Oswald searching for a Doctor in the haystack of
history for some of the best in over fifty years. But here, we’re right there
in his mind, which means when the Sixth Doctor, now in rather more control of
his Tardis than either of his predecessors, decides to return one final time to
the trenches of World War I, we see him hesitate before opening the door, and
hear him admit to us what he would never admit to a companion or the world –
his trepidation at what he knows he has to do once the doors open, once events
are set in motion.
What he has to do is put
things right. Time has been bubbling in all the wrong places and in deadly,
horrible ways in the trenches, firstly infesting the mud with the lifetimes of
soldiers who ‘should’ be dead, and secondly through a kind of possession in a
field hospital, with soldiers dying again and again, like a ghastly precursor
of a great and terrible time war. This time when the Doctor goes back, he has
to put it right, aware as he is of the consequences his actions will have.
Consequences?
Consequences, because if
time is put right, the friends he made on his previous visits, Captain Mark
Steadman and Nurse Annie Grantham, will have to die. Can the Doctor knowingly
condemn them to death for the sake of the bigger picture, the web of time and
his solemn duty as a Time Lord?
It’s a story that’s set up
to tug the heartstrings right from the off, and it does that more than
somewhat, especially when the source of the temporal disturbance is revealed,
showing in turn the utterly ambivalent nature of the universe – it doesn’t care
who lives or dies, only what is ‘right.’ Only what happens.
Baker’s performance here
feels like a later, off-screen Sixth Doctor, one whose flame of moral outrage
has grown a little circumspect, if not in all circumstances, then at least when
faced with the impossible dilemmas not only of the First World War, but with
the tangling of time and the pull of duty and compassion. What ultimately
emerges is a less self-satisfied Doctor than the on-screen version ever had the
chance to be, but one who faces a very ‘New Who’ dilemma, and argues it through
with himself in our hearing, before proving he is the same person he’s always
been, and always will be – he is the Doctor, with all that that entails. Never
cruel. Never cowardly. Always clever. Always kind.
Colin Baker as an audio
Doctor has been wowing audiences for more than a decade now, most especially at
Big Finish. Justin Richards here gives him a chance to be perhaps more New Who
than he’s ever been, and Baker eats it up with a spoon. The result is a release
that you’ll devour eagerly too, for all its moral and temporal complexity, but
ultimately for Baker in one of many moments of ultimate audio triumph as the
Sixth Doctor, that flower of moral outrage at things that are wrong infused
with an equal flood of compassion for ordinary people, and both tearing him
apart, and forcing him to go to places inside himself that are uncomfortable,
and do things he probably shouldn’t do. It’s a remarkable performance that’ll
sweep your emotions ahead of it, and a fitting conclusion to a story that has
at several points confronted us with the challenges of being the Doctor. Baker
and his Sixth Doctor give us a lesson in what sets the Doctor apart from every
other would-be meddler in time and space. You have to be the cleverest life
form in the room, absolutely. But you also have to be the kindest.
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