Hogan Reviews

The War Doctor returns to our scre… audio-playing-devices with “Fallen Heroes”, a story I was really looking forward to not just because I really like the War Doctor range but because it was said  to be inspired by the likes of the X-Files and definitely Alan Wake, which is a unique idea for Doctor Who but especially the War Doctor, who tends to be all Daleks and blasters. Did it live up to my expectations? Well…

The story starts off like a space-set version of the X-Files as two agents, in this case “Wyatt Smith” (Jonathan Carley) and Louisa Trickson (Daisy Ashford) of the “GIB”, who are sent to the planet Falk, where not only has a vast majority of the sea life mysteriously washed up dead but the local Mayor has been found dead on the same beach with a clock drawn around him in the sand. To make matters more annoying for our grumpy agents the local sheriff, Beatrice Stewart (Maria Teresa Creasey) is the wife of the deceased, and even though they haven’t gotten along in a while she’s still naturally upset and has the man who was running against him, Alistair Donovan (Christopher Naylor) as the obvious culprit. As they begin their investigation proper they find out that all the clocks in the town have had their hands removed, which makes tying people down to where they were at a specific time rather challenging, and soon after meeting nice secretary Sandra Yates (Kerrie Taylor) she also winds up dead with a clock drawn around her body.

This is where things get crazy. While waiting in a pub Louisa sees a TV show pop on where a man who looks identical to Wyatt called “The Doctor” is on a quiz show where the topic is “Who killed Sandra Yates?”, with The Doctor giving the answer based on the evidence that Wyatt and Louisa knew but it they were being called the wrong answer and a different one is given as correct. As she asks other people about they have no knowledge of the show being on even if they’re in the same room, and the name of the quiz and its host matches someone who used to hold a pub quiz on Falk with the same name but hasn’t been seen a good while. When trying to follow through with this line of thought (and being called crazy by Wyatt) the duo find out that Beatrice had a son who was killed by The Doctor and that she has been restraining herself from attacking Wyatt because he looked so similar. Both GIB agents start seeing the show and spacing out in general so they investigate “The Doctor” further and find a location called “UNIT 26” that ends up being where a group of people were based who used to defend Falk from frequent alien invasions, the group pictured included The Doctor…

Some great photoshopping here, especially given young War Doctor images don’t exit at all in the first place…

So in case you haven’t caught on with some of the character names and some of the actors/actresses involved, there’s a distinct 70s UNIT theme going on here and we eventually find out why. The Doctor was on a mission to Time Lock a planet that had extremely dangerous reality altering tech and that same tech ended up on Falk where it trapped The Doctor in a false reality based on his time exiled to Earth, something extremely pleasing to the war-weary Warrior, but upon breaking free from that false world he was trapped within a pocket dimension disguised as a game show instead, and once The Doctor breaks free from that all hell breaks loose…

It’s such a great story. Lots of fun characters and Carley and Ashford make such a great and believable buddy cop duo for the first two thirds-ish. When it all starts going to pot it does get a little confusing and therefore not as fun, but the ending… wow, such a great ending that properly shows us the kind of man The Doctor had to become during the Time War, more than most of his stories. For three hours it all flew by.

The Continuity:

With the exception of some Pertwee era UNIT references in names and such, not really any connections at all.

Overall Thoughts:

“Fallen Heroes” managed to exceed my already high expectations and deliver a story that started off fun X-Files / buddy cop parody, slid into Alan Wake weirdness and the end with a hell of a Doctor Who time war / travel bang. Can’t recommend this one enough, and I’ll be surprised if this isn’t my #1 Who story this year.

The Doctor does eventually get out and the UNIT-a-like personalities start to reaffirm themselves, although Louisa is gravely wounded and ends up regenerating into Beatrice’s husband, past Mayor Mortimer (Paul Panting), which was a thing. The return of the UNIT false reality also creates an entire race of aliens to invade the planet, which despite not having existed previously were now a fully alive group of aggressors. The artefact in question appears as a Jukebox where the selectable tracks refer to different local time periods that can be selected, which leads to some more shenanigans with some of the cast reliving various events, plus Mortimer, who was another Time Lord sent to help The Doctor when he didn’t check in only to become caught up in the narrative, heads back in time to meet Beatrice in the past and live the life he’s already apparently led, until he’s killed for good on the beach (no wonder he was described as grumpy in his later years!)

By the end of the story The Doctor has no other choice but to sacrifice those few people still living on Falk as well as the entire just-made-up race of aliens (who are very much alive in every sense, the machine was that powerful) in order to destroy the machine and complete the Time Lock on the other planet. He tries to save some of the aliens and some of the Falk residents, but the latter at least hate him and all the terror and death he brought to their planet (it’s why people subconsciously removed all the hands from the clocks, it was a statement against Time Lords…) and so refuse his help and choose death instead. This leads to The Doctor delivering one hell of a speech essentially confirming that he’s a terrible person and not trying to justify it due to the Time War necessarily, just being someone who’s doing something that has to be done. Top marks for Jonathon Carley for his delivery of the speech, and the scene in general was more what I imagined the series of boxsets to be. Great bittersweet ending.