The early War Doctor adventures continue with another trio of stories and this time the middle story, Berserker, is fantastic. Being the middle story I couldn’t separate it into its own review but it really does deserve more spotlight, not that “A Mother’s Love” is bad either. So let’s take a look at both stories and act surprised by a rare case of returning Big Finish continuity!
“A Mother’s Love” sees The Doctor (Jonathon Carley still absolutely nailing John Hurt’s War Doctor) arrive at a state-of-the-art Time Lord field hospital called Haven as it was sending out a distress call only to find it in working order, but suspiciously empty. The A.I. for the hospital, the “Medbay Operation Mainframe” (voiced by Georgia Mackenzie) or M.O.M. (how American of them!) is still fully functional and has no memory of sending a distress call and given The Doctor is healthy would very much like him to leave. The Doctor stays however by the request of the single living person in the facility: Runa (Tiegan Byrne) the daughter of Haven’s founders who is waiting for her parents to return from their latest trip. Things then pick up when a crashed ship arrives carrying occasional Time War audio story character Veklin (Beth Chalmers) and Case (Ajjaz Awad) who appeared a few boxsets ago as a woman whose body was transformed by the Daleks into a living weapon but managed to break free of their programming.
Veklin, being a Time Lord, is taken for treatment right away but Case is nearly destroyed on sight due to the Dalek tech in her body. The Doctor manages to convince M.O.M. to only imprison her, which taps into Case’s paranoia that she’s only being kept alive by Veklin because she’s a handy weapon, not because she sees her as an ally. This dynamic along with the mysteries of M.O.M and the empty hospital carry the rest of the story, which I’ll get to in the Spoiler Section. It won’t blow you away but in terms of reintroducing Case and telling a simple but enjoyable story it does its job well.
I’m not sure why Veklin is trying to use psychic powers, but otherwise another great War Doctor painted-look cover.
“Berserker” on the other hand overachieves and then some. It’s actually a pretty standard sci-fi set up as The Doctor and Case are posing as a Dalek Killer and Squire hired out as mercenaries to a small group of people from a planet called Sunspire (or is that a location on an otherwise unnamed planet? Can’t remember but that makes more sense…) who wish to save their race from extinction by collecting from a race bank stored deep in a bunker. The only issue is that a Berserker Dalek, left from when their planet was wiped out 400 years earlier, is still roaming the facility going more and more insane. Berserker Daleks, in case you don’t know, are Daleks who are even more driven to kill and are nearly indestructible, but due to their low level of intelligence they’re only dropped off on planets Daleks have no interest in keeping, allowing it to destroy everything on the surface with little care as to what happens overall. The Doctor and Case are actually only going there because they think something in the facility can help Case overcome her Dalek physiology and occasional mental block.
So as you can imagine a lot of the episode is a cast of forgettable characters and our lead duo making their way down an underground bunker facility slowly being taken out by an insane and powerful Dalek, a simple set up but it’s done so well. Plus the dynamic of The Doctor and Case is great as Case begins to think the Doctor is more of a heartless killer than she is as he seemingly feels no guilt over knowing full well the remnants of the Sunspire will never make it out and restart their race and that they’re just using them to gain access to the facility, but that leads to The Doctor giving a brilliant impassioned speech where he claims he keeps instinctively trying to save races and worlds like his old self but he describes himself as “a musician desperately trying to play the same tune on broken instruments”. He’s beginning to see that the Time War really does make it impossible to be The Doctor and is starting to become the cynical man we see in the older, end-of-war War Doctor. It’s so well written and a really good look at the character in its early stages, a.k.a. something the “War Doctor Begins” series was always supposed to be doing…
The Continuity:
Case was last seen (or heard, I guess) in the War Doctor boxset Warbringer, first appearing in “Consequences” and leaving with Veklin in “Saviour”. Veklin on the other hand was one of those Time War era character introduced in the actual John Hurt-starring War Doctor audio sets (debuting in the very first story, “The Innocent”) and then was retroactively added into the latter era Eighth Doctor stories like Doom Coalition’s “The Crucible of Souls” and “The Side of the Angels” in order to give a bit more of a connective tissue to the era.
The Berserker Daleks have made one previous appearance, in War Doctor Begins story “Rewind”, also written by Timothy X Atack. I guess he’s proud of that one, and to be fair Rewind was a fantastic story as well, so fair play to him!
Overall Thoughts:
“A Mother’s Love” is a perfectly fine story, with some predictable elements but a does a good job reintroducing Case. “Berserker” on the other hand is something special, and a genuine treat to listen to. A split score then, but both in the high end!
“A Mother’s Love”:
“Berserker”:
“A Mother’s Love” goes for the rather obvious reveal that Runa’s parents weren’t still away but rather her mother was dead and her father had been frozen in stasis by M.O.M in the A.I.’s desperate bid to stop people from dying, it’s main objective. The only issue is her desperate parents begged M.O.M to always look after their daughter and due to that Runa’s safety overrided anything else, causing it to keep her happy and healthy in the facility alone while everyone else is kept “safe” from death. During the course of their escape it’s made obvious that Veklin was happy to leave Case behind and not care about her being destroyed, confirming Case’s worry so she ends up leaving with The Doctor instead. M.O.M. is turned off and reset to factory settings and Runa and her father begin work of unfreezing everyone. Like I said, perfectly fine, even if the rogue A.I. angle isn’t exactly fresh…
“Berserker” on the other hand ends in The Doctor and Case seemingly on the verge of death and only two Sunspire survivors alive, but they make it to the vault. At this point The Doctor knows the information they actually came for is gone but he assumes he’s not going to get out of this alive so he tries to see the Sunspire lot escape. In order to survive Case actually merges with the Berserker Dalek after it is shattered around her, and she becomes an even more powerful Dalek Cyborg weapon. As is often the case The Doctor finds out his companion isn’t actually dead and then the two escape at the last moment along with the a survivor of the Sunspire race complete with archive all due to the sacrifice of one of the Sunspire…ians who had spent the whole story hating on The Doctor and Case for being mercenaries who didn’t really care about them. We then get a tease that the now super-Case has appeared on the radar of the Daleks…
Hogan Reviews 