Hogan Reviews

I was looking forward to “Unknown Soldiers”, as I do for pretty much any War Doctor story, to be fair. The boxset has its moments and some of the cast really shine but others, um, not so much, especially a “Rocket Raccoon you have at home” that gets FAR too much attention in the last half of the story. Still, is there more good than bad? Well…

The story’s first part focuses on a Movellan who has access to emotions and jokes about a lot called Ormarelle (Amanda Shodeko) teaming up with a rogue Time Lady called Pars The Traitor (Isla Blair) because she has used her Movellan computer to find a single point in the Time War where if one person is killed then the war will actually end with the universe still intact and she needs a crew to do it. Together they wrangle Regent Lunium Alius Rorg (Phillipe Bosher) a gelatinous alien who once ruled his planet until he was deposed but he knows where his planet’s riches are kept, which is handy as they need money to get access to a specific piece of tech. Pars also hires the Ogron duo of Og-1 and Og-2 (both voiced by Andrew James Spooner) as the muscle of the team. While they successfully break into Rorg’s vault (though at the cost of Og-1) The Doctor (Jonathan Carley) has isolated himself from the rest of the war (again!) because he’s obsessing over trying to save one specific planet, running simulation after simulation to try and find a method that works, an AI version of himself taunting him as a means of motivation.

As you might imagine Ormarelle and co. then use the equipment they brought to track and eventually tether her Movellan ship to The Doctor’s TARDIS and forcefully board it, and just as The Doctor asks for answer on screen Rorg seemingly ejects the part of the TARDIS The Doctor is on into space before getting killed himself. This confuses Ormarelle and Pars as The Doctor wasn’t the target as Part 1 was written to make you think but luckily the Doctor that was killed was just a projection of the AI Doctor and the real Doctor soon appears and asks what exactly their plan is. Pars tells The Doctor that they plan to find “The Blind Bomb Maker” and assist his efforts in destroying a Dalek fleet above a planet (whose name escapes me, sorry!) which will cause a ripple effect and end the war, and while he’s not convinced he’s told he can use Ormarelle’s Movellan computer to calculate a way to save the planet he’s been obsessing over, so he agrees. What Pars is keeping from him is that actually they plan to assassinate the Bomb Maker and make use of his latest bomb to create a ripple effect that will disable all time travel technology across the universe, something she assumes The Doctor would be against due to his connection to his TARDIS. She also doesn’t tell him her real identity as he apparent traitorous deeds would mean an instant “no” to anything she says.

Some more new Dalek designs are always fun, unlike more floaty blue circles…

After losing Og-2 after a reconstituted Rorg appears they pick up one more new crew member in Bevvakk the Squirm (Simon Kane), who is the previously mentioned Rocket Raccoon copy complete with being a small talking animal who likes firing guns with an amusing accent, and even has a far-too-long scene where he’s shooting loading of people in a row and a sad emotional scene where we find out his tragic backstory. Simon Kane does a good job with what he’s given but it’s not only such an obvious copy and paste of such a currently-still-popular character but he also talks really fast and is generally obnoxious in a supposed-to-be-funny way but I just found it aggravating. Anyway, they arrive on the planet beset by bombs and laser fire from the Dalek and Time Lord fleets locked in battle above and eventually get captured by the locales.It looks like they’re all going to be shot (or destabilized by magnets in Ormarelle’s case) but they get out of it by a suddenly revealed ability that Pars has to perceive the future at the cost of her non-regenerating body aging further. Sadly the magnet-ing has nearly killed Ormarelle and despite The Doctor’s best efforts she eventually shuts down, leaving just The Doctor, Pars and Bevvakk to approach the Bomb Maker (played by Adam Martyn), and once they’re let in Bevvakk does his real job and kills him, then The Doctor is mortally wounded in the scuffle and starts to regenerate but points out it doesn’t matter because their plan won’t stop time travel crafts it will explode them, leading to countless black holes and generally the end of the entire universe…

Now there’s a cliffhanger! Anyway, the story is definitely fun in places, the dialogue as a whole is great, the plot keeps moving and I really like the character of Pars, but yeah Bevvakk brings the mood down for me, I have to admit…

The Continuity:

Not a lot really. Movellens first appeared in Fourth Doctor TV story “Destiny of the Daleks” and have made several book, comic and audio appearances since, and likewise the Ogrons appeared first in Third Doctor TV story “Day of the Daleks” and then a season or two later in “Frontier in Space” before only making page and audio appearances since.

Overall Thoughts:

“Unknown Soldiers” was a good, solid story with lots of fun dialogue and a good pace with lots of location moving to keep things interesting. Sadly as mentioned several times Bevvakk let a lot of the story down in the second half, not just being such an unashamed copy of a popular Marvel character but also by being really annoying in the way he spoke and how he was used in general. Not a major effect at least, I’d still recommend the story as a whole on the merits of the rest of the story.

The final part opens with The Doctor noticing Pars aged so must have accessed the future and she stops Bevvakk from the assassination attempt, so that great cliffhanger was actually her future-sight, which I’d be upset about if it weren’t for the obvious fact that the universe wouldn’t actually end randomly in the middle of a regular old boxset. Anyway, The Doctor is filled in and while he and the Bomb Maker are obviously upset they realise that they’ve still changed history as the bomb is damaged and it can’t be let off at the right moment, so the two fleets will fire on each other and create the same universe-ending chain reaction anyway. They manage to hatch a plan where two specifically-placed bombs going off at the exact same time in both the core Time Lord vessel and the Dalek’s main saucer will wipe both fleets out without ending the universe, so Pars and Bevvakk head to the Time Lord one while The Doctor and the Bomb Maker head to the Dalek ship.

Pars and Bevvakk have to pass through a mental field that shows them visions to slow them down and stop them from entering, with Bevvakk its his lost children still being alive and for Pars it’s the haunted faces of the countless millions, if not billions of lives that died when she apparently detonated a system of planets, hence why she was branded a “Traitor” and left to rot with her one remaining regeneration (that’s apparently a thing for Time Lord secret agents, of which she was one, obviously) As this is going on The Doctor and the Bomb Maker travel through the Dalek saucer which is stuck in a time freeze of some kind, making it hard to move but at least the Daleks can’t move at all… except that a new type of Dalek is on the ship, a “Phase Dalek”, that can exist and freely move and teleport around in frozen time… typical! The duo manage to stop it but the Maker is injured. Eventually they reach the right place but its behind a wall of immediately-deadly-to-Time-Lords energy so the Bomb Maker sacrifices himself to get through it and plant the bomb. Meanwhile Bevvakk sacrifices himself also to plant the bomb on the Time Lord ship, and Pars could have teleported out safely but she instead accesses some files on the Time Lord craft and finds out she was set up and actually someone else was at fault for what happened with those planets exploding, screaming with joy that it wasn’t her and finally feeling guilt-free before blowing up with the ship.

A sombre Doctor is then heard recording a final message thanking all the people who died during the course of the mission, and also lamenting that after all that the Movellen ship was now too damaged for him to use…