Time Lord Victorious was an ambitious multiplatform story that got the unfortunate distinction of occurring during a once in a century pandemic.
The Review
Here’s the scores for the stories:
The Fractured Universe: 9/10
The Dark Times: 9/10
The Victorious Days: 8.1/10
Time Lord Victorious‘ bad reputation among the fanbase saddens me. You did have to put more effort than usual into keeping up with the topsy-turvy release schedule, but I felt it really paid off and genuinely does add to the Doctor’s story. After The Waters of Mars, this just adds a lot to the Tenth Doctor’s character arc. There are a lot of superfluous things added in there, really, a lot of the Victorious Days does feel like it was added on later. Still, the new ground being broken was genuinely interesting. Overall, a great experiment.
Time Lord Victorious‘ ambitious conclusion is a melancholic mix of stories.
The Review
The Dalek that goes on a hell of a journey.
Time Lord Victorious has a bad reputation among the fandom, for being confusing and hard to access. I think a lot of this is due to covid screwing up release schedules, but it is true that there were some bits of the stories taking place in games, escape rooms, immersive performances that people just aren’t going to get to see. If you’ve followed the story, you know that those were all superfluous to the main plot, and I commend the ambition. The Victorious Days begins with The Hollow Planet, a rather fun take home game from Escape Hunt. I first played it with three people, doing it by myself I was too stupid to get some of it but honestly it’s a pretty good take-home game with good interaction and an unseen Thirteenth Doctor.
The Dalek chamber in a version of the Escape Room
Next up was a bonus audio supposedly serving as an Escape Room prequel, Genetics of the Daleks. A really great Fourth Doctor story which was a late add to the story. Serving as an escape room prequel, it’s really a great start/ending (depending on your point of view) to the saga. In many ways it’s a classic Tom Baker story, getting into a scrape, not being trusted, and saving the day but being the only one to make it out alive. The ominous declaration from the Dalek that he will become the Time Lord Victorious is pretty great, as is the Doctor’s flippant dismissal. Really, it’s a good way to spend an hour. This leads into the escape room itself, A Dalek Awakens, which wasn’t mind-blowing but it was a lot of fun, three people seemed the perfect amount. It was fun to hear Jodie Whittaker’s voice again, she was so good at hosting these games and things. The room was well-paced, and a lot of fun. I got to sonic screwdriver a Dalek! Again, if you didn’t know, this room has nothing to do with Time Lord Victorious but it was fun to give me an excuse to go the escape room.
One of many worlds I didn’t get to see
Sadly, unless a miracle happens, I never got to experience Time Fracture. Beset by a once in a century pandemic and then flooded not once but twice, it was cursed from the start. The best we have now is the lovingly created show companion, giving a sense of the passion that went into this production. Again, it’s basically not related to Time Lord Victorious so no worries there, but it sure looked beautiful. There even were the Torchwood offices! Really hope this maybe gets turned into a Big Finish audio in ten years or something. We then got Canaries a lead in to the wonderful anthology by Dave Reudden. Still, I can’t help but love this story. It’s told so beautifully, and you find yourself caring about Anke, the old woman running her impossible store. The idea of her getting out of order phone calls from different Doctors and always recognizing them is fun.
We do get the voice of David Tennant in this!
Lastly, the second half of Echoes of Extinction. I always liked this audio because it provides a suitably melancholy conclusion to the whole arc. Hearing David Tennant back on peak form is a ton of fun, and the crew of raiders is all played by stalwarts like Mina Anwar, and Arthur Darvill and his wife Ines de Clerq. (I will say, de Clerq gets less convincing as the profit hungry Captain Fry when her plan goes to dust). After everything, the Tenth Doctor manages to do better and it loops back around to him regretting everything the Eighth Doctor is going to go through. The psychic monster from part one agrees to imprisonment to finally feel peace, and we can only hope the Doctor gets that too. That’s The Victorious Days, essentially a postscript long after all of the shouting from the meat of the story is over.
Really, The Victorious Days was a super-ambitious bit of real life immersive theater that just wasn’t able to come together due to the pandemic. Despite all that, the stories are so good and compliment the overall narrative well.
8.1/10 I did ding it points for not being able to experience all of it, but sometimes that’s okay.
Doctor: Eighth Doctor, Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Eleventh Doctor
Companions: Rose Tyler, Brian
The meat of Time Lord Victorious sees the collision of three Doctors as the Tenth Doctor makes a desperate bid to defeat death.
The Review
The Ninth Doctor in the vampire war
Other than a short story which we’ll discuss in a minute, The Dark Times kicks off with at last the Ninth Doctor’s entry to the story. Although sadly we get no Eccelston on audio, it is nice to see this short-lived Doctor get some more play. As well, he’s along for the ride with Rose. The Doctor finds himself in the Time Lord, well ‘Space Lord’ war versus the Great Vampires referenced in State of Decay. The Gallifreyans are still unused to death and functionally immortal, and we meet the original Rassilon, who surprisingly turns out to be a woman. Rose briefly becomes a vampire, but the Doctor frees the vampire underclass. It’s a fun story to get a very rare peak back into Gallifrey. Of course this came out after The Timeless Children where Tecteun was said to be the first space explorer, but if Gallifreyans were immortal at this time, hey, she could’ve been exploring an extremely long time. Series 1 Rose is definitely better than what her character became, so it’s fun to see her.
The Tenth Doctor arrives in the Dark Times
The title of this blockbuster story obviously comes from The Waters of Mars, where the Tenth Doctor declares himself the master of time with the Time Lords all dead. He’s in a false chipper mood in the first novel The Knight, The Fool, and The Dead as he arrives in the Dark Times. The book is well-written by Steve Cole, and definitely reads as the Tenth Doctor as opposed to just a generic Doctor. The short story Dawn of the Kotturuh gives more background, but the Kotturuh are a race that give the gift of death, artificially determining the lifespans of previously immortal races. The Doctor tries to come up with a way to stop them, get them to give up, but after they kill a previously immortal girl Estinee, the Doctor reflects their gift and starts a genocide of the Kotturuh. This turns out to be the cause of the massive changes in time felt by the Daleks in the Eighth Doctor who turn up to stop him along with the Ninth Doctor and free vampires in a pretty epic cliffhanger. Two Doctors fighting their future self? Now that’s fun.
The Time Lord Victorious and Brian
The confrontation between the three Doctors does not disappoint at the beginning of All Flesh is Grass, really the climax of the whole story. There is a sizable gap where-in fits The Minds of Magnox where Jacob Dudman delights with his great Tennant impression and shockingly prefect Matt Smith in the coda. The Doctor visits Magnox, a famous place of knowledge to ask if he did the right thing, but the Kotturuh come and kill almost everyone. One woman, Peschell he saves and sends to Islos, where she founds its archive seen in Daleks! in a charming coda where the Eleventh Doctor returns to apologize to her. There are some comic strips, but the heart of the action is the Daleks secretly combining Daleks and vampire DNA to try and destroy Gallifrey before the creation of the Time Lords. The Tenth Doctor finally admits he went too far, and with the help of the last Kotturuh who destroys the hybrid Daleks with her judgement, save Gallifrey. Interwoven through the previous book and Una McCormack’s work here is the Brothers Grimm fable that you are unable to cheat Death. It’s a very well-written story, and perfectly fits the Tenth Doctor’s dramatic character arc at the end of his life.
The Eighth Doctor is a lot more dynamic than this, I swear
The Eighth Doctor is a fun inclusion in the story as he has no knowledge of the Time War to come, or how precious Gallifrey is. He causes an explosion on the Dalek Time Ship as they flee the Kotturuh’s judgement simply saying “apparently, in the Time Lord Victorious.” Mutually Assured Destruction the best of the Eighth Doctor trilogy, with high-stakes, a wonderful McGann performance and Nick Briggs working overtime giving texture to all the Dalek voices. The Doctor outwits them all, and the ship disintegrates through space. Exit Strategy, a final short story, has the Strategist escape, plotting the Time War meaning this whole arc leads right into that. Overall, The Dark Times is both well-plotted, and has excellent character development and thematic resonance. It’s really all you can ask for from Doctor Who.
The central hub of Time Lord Victorious does have the Daleks attacking Gallifrey (again), but it is really about how far one should try and go to fight death. The Kotturuh were evil, but the Doctor should’ve found in the better way. Also, I didn’t talk about him much, but the dry sartorial quips from Brian keep the whole thing lively.
9/10 Time Lord Victorious keeps its level with both epic and poignant moments.
Yes, even the Doctor Who Comic Creator got in on the action
They really should’ve taken more photos of Paul McGann
Time Lord Victorious Part 1
Doctor: Eighth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Thirteenth Doctor
Companions: Brian
The first third of Time Lord Victorious stars the Dalek Empire and the Eighth Doctor as they try to uncover why everything in the universe has changed.
The Review
The Dalek Emperor
For a story as expansive as Time Lord Victorious, it helps to have the story order guide divide it into categories. The first section involves a mystery: there are changes in time, and we learn from the opening short story that a lone Dalek claims the Doctor is responsible. This leads into Daleks!, an animated series whose highlights are Nicholas Briggs’ hammy performance as the Dalek Emperor and sly one as the Dalek Strategist. Having a story built around the Daleks is a lot of fun as they encounter the Mechanoids running from an extra-dimensional entity. It does seem to drag a bit watching it all in a row, but it was my third or so time watching it so I knew most of what happened. Next up is Defender of the Daleks, a short graphic novel of the Tenth Doctor getting recruited by the Daleks to help save them. While it has some excellent art, this is the most disposable piece of the whole saga: it is an earlier Tenth Doctor than who will show up later on and honestly could be skipped. The Thirteenth Doctor shows up which is fun, but it does tie into other Titan comics which I can’t in good conscience recommend.
The Masters and the Kotturuh
Although as inessential as Defender of the Daleks, I still wholeheartedly recommend Master Thief and Lesser Evils, two stories about the classic series Masters on the periphery of this crisis. Jon Culshaw’s impressions of both Delgado and Ainley are excellent, and the stories are well-written and atmospheric. In the first, the Master ‘devolves’ his enemies but turns them into ancient creatures that feed on his personality and guilt. In the second, we first meet the Kotturuh, an ancient species who judge races and change their lifespans. The Master has been exiled to a jungle planet and tries to pull a fast one on the Kotturuh but ultimately fails. Just as quality is the Eighth Doctor’s side of Echoes of Extinction, where he beats back a psychic entity accidentally turned into a genocidal monster. Big Finish’s reputation for quality is well-earned, and it shows in their contributions to this epic.
On the planet Arthana with Brian
Paul McGann in his work gives what I would call an excellently restrained performance. Through He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not and The Enemy of My Enemy he never gets totally furious or has a big ‘Doctor moment’, but is quick to do everything he can to help whatever predicament he’s been thrown into. The first of these two stories I think is maybe the weakest but still good Big Finish entry, too much reliance on weird accents trying to recreate an old west gunfight. Silas Carson returns to voice the Ood assassin Brian, and is absolutely a delight as Brian is history’s most polite killer. In the latter, the Dalek time squad picks up the Eighth Doctor and they investigate Wrax, a planet that has devolved hundreds of species using their devolving gun (the same one the Master will knick). The scope is excellent, and we get more Briggs voicing the Strategist leading to the cliffhanger where the Doctor and Daleks mutually take the plunge to the Dark Times to find the source of the time distortions.
The upcoming star: the Tenth Doctor
A final short story shows the TARDIS reacting to the shocking events of The Waters of Mars sending the Tenth Doctor to the Dark Times along with the Ninth and Eighth incarnations. Time Lord Victorious had horrible timing releasing during the pandemic, causing much to end up releasing out of order. Listening to everything for the first time in order, the build-up of the mystery around time is a lot of fun. I like the Master stories for their quality even though they don’t really matter, but Defender of the Daleks is just a weird fit, especially with how it’s a pre-Waters of Mars Tenth Doctor versus who we’re about to get. I also enjoyed getting different Dalek varieties, we also have the Time Commander, Executioner, and Scientist, all given different voices by Briggs. Overall, it’s a quite enjoyable time even if we still don’t know what’s going on.
Questions abound about mysterious distortions to time as the BBC attempts a multi-platform epic. Unsurprisingly, Big Finish continues to be the crown jewel in quality.
9/10 Some well-placed connections and great audio design bump this up just to a 9.
The Thirteenth Doctor makes this really annoying to place in the overall show watch order
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 