The Side of the Angels

Doom Coalition 4 leaped into action immediately, but it took the first two stories to bring the Doctor, Liv, and Helen all back together. Now they’re traveling back in time with Veklin (a recurring character in the War Doctor stories) who had been a plant spying on Padrac’s coalition, to meet up with Cardinal Ollistra in her secret hiding place… in 1970’s New York City.

And she’s not alone; the first Time Lord we actually hear there is Reverend Mortimer, an incarnation of the Meddling Monk. Although the Monk is not forthcoming about his past incarnation(s) and experiences with the Doctor, we know from The Secret History that this is an incarnation later than the one whom the 8th Doctor already dealt with – so they both have some bad blood with each other, both having lost people they cared about. Their difficult past bubbles over as soon as they cross paths, and things prove very intriguing very quickly.

To the Doctor’s horror, Ollistra is not planning to stop Padrac from destroying the universe; she’s written that off as non-preventable. Instead, she and the Monk are building a Time Lord enclave in NYC, essentially building a backup Gallifreyan citadel, from which to launch a takeover of Gallifrey so Padrac at least won’t rule after his plan succeeds. Even worse, the Time Lords have made an arrangement with the Weeping Angels: they provide power for the Time Lords, they feast less on people for now, but will get a feeding frenzy just before the universe is destroyed. But can they be trusted to withhold their appetite for potential temporal energy?

So we’ve got multiple parties at play, now. There’s a local politician who’s just trying to make NYC a better place. The Doctor, Liv, and Helen want to enlist help to stop Padrac from destroying the universe. Ollistra and her company simply want to wait it out and overthrow him after he’s done. The Weeping Angels just want to eat, and will make a deal with whomever has a decent offer. The Eleven shows up, sent by the coalition to stop the Doctor from interfering at the last minute. The Monk is caught in between – ultimately he just wants to protect his own interests – so he shifts between Ollistra and the Eleven as circumstances dictate.

The Weeping Angels are surprisingly creepy in audio form. A little bit of spoken observation about their movements, careful use of the music-based sound effects that accompany their advance, and the listener can visualize exactly what we’ve seen on screen. I’m aware that there is one other audio story that use the Weeping Angels (I think it’s from one of the Classic Doctors, New Monsters sets), and I bet it’s handled similarly in that story. Nevertheless, the Angels are primarily a visual scare, both in-universe and for the audience, so they’re not a foe that can really continue to be effective in an audio medium. It was fun to encounter them here, and their nature played into the scenario perfectly, but I also hope they don’t get too much more use in Big Finish.

In all, this story was very fun to listen to and brought together a lot of characters and ideas without feeling crowded. If you’re not familiar with the Weeping Angels then this story must be pretty confusing – they get a little bit of explanation for the benefit of Liv and Helen, but for the most part the audience is expected to know about them already. The appearances of the Monk and Cardinal Ollistra, however, are not so reliant upon prior knowledge. In fact, neither the Monk nor the Doctor explicitly talk about their past (saving run-time and avoiding getting bogged down in continuity that the listener may or may not know about). And Ollistra is in an earlier incarnation! Indeed, her appearance is almost more of an easter egg for those following the War Doctor series. You don’t need to know anything about her, this is basically the Doctor’s first time ever meeting her, but for those who do know the War Doctor stories, this gives us a bit of backstory to how Ollistra came to be the woman we know during the Time War.

In the end, the Doctor, Liv, and Helen have to zip away back to Gallifrey through a collapsing time vortex in a last-ditch effort to prevent the destruction of the universe. The end is nigh…