MR 057: Arrangements for War

Who is this newcomer who just comes out of nowhere and knocks it out of the park with a political thriller on the first try? Project: Lazarus, take notes. This is how you do grief. I said in that review that a better author could do something really interesting with the idea of Cassie dying, and they have. I definitely see what Doctor Who and the Pirates and Project Lazarus were doing to lead into this one, but Doctor Who and the Pirates and Arrangements for War did it way better.

After losing two young people that Evelyn cared very much about in Pirates and Lazarus, she needs a break. Not a break, exactly, but more time away from the Doctor to think and reflect. She wants to go somewhere they don't have to get involved in any way. Somewhere they can just sit for a few moments. The way the Doctor just brushed off Cassie's death really bothered Evelyn. He tries to make it better. He offers her chocolate cake and asks where to go next, but Evelyn can't just move on like that.

This was one of the reasons why Pirates was so much better than Lazarus. Pirates had the Doctor taking the time to allow Evelyn to grieve. Indeed, that was the entire point of that story. The Doctor recognizes Evelyn's grief and they go back to her school to allow her to take the time she needs. Project Lazarus allows no such time. The Doctor is ready to move on almost immediately. He substitutes the earlier setting aside time to grieve for offering a slice of chocolate cake.

Arrangements for War, now, is the Doctor setting aside that time in the same way he did in Pirates. They arrive on the planet Világ. The Doctor chooses this planet because there's a celebration going on. There are three countries on one landmass. Two of those countries are at constant war while one is neutral. The two countries at war: Galen and Malendia are about to ally with each other because of an arranged marriage between their monarchies. Kozepén, the neutral country, is a republic and is just here to support the other two. There will be an invasion later on from an offworld species called the Killorans, but by that time the alliance will be strong enough to repel the invasion. For now, the Doctor and Evelyn can just enjoy the celebrations, wander around, and don't have to get involved in anything. Sounds lovely.

Only, of course they're going to get involved. Evelyn goes off on her own leaving the Doctor to wander by himself and who else do they bump into? Princess Krisztina of Galen and Governor Rossiter of Kozepén. Obviously! Evelyn quickly makes friends with both of them while the Doctor bumps into a soldier, corporal Reid. (As an aside, I love how the Doctor calls him a "geologists' nightmare" because he throws stones back into the water after they've taken years to get onto the shore.) Corporal Reid seems conflicted. He wants to confess his love to someone, but knows he can't, for some reason. The Doctor encourages him to confess, asking if he can live with the consequences of his inaction. He agrees and so vows to confess his love... to Princess Krisztina! Uh oh. Looks like the Doctor has interrupted the arranged marriage. Wah wah.

The Doctor ultimately agrees to help them maintain their affair in secret, but there's a problem. The official from Malendia, Plenipotentiary Suskind, is against this alliance and is trying to undermine it. He has the Doctor bugged and followed and so finds out about the affair. This is the fuel he needs to undermine the alliance and hostility begins again, the war starts anew.

Meanwhile, Evelyn has become a "special advisor" to Governor Rossiter. She has no official title or anything, they just enjoy spending time together. This is where we get a lot of the character development for the story. Evelyn was recently reminded of her own impending death when she fell to the ground in front of the Princess, presumably of a heart attack. And she talks with Rossiter on the beach about how she felt losing her two young friends and what that meant for her. Rossiter relates to her when he talks about losing his wife. I love this conversation so much where Rossiter says that the Doctor does grieve, in his own way, maybe he just doesn't show it all the time. Evelyn agrees but feels like he can be so cold sometimes. Maybe that's just how he grieves. He wants to move on. He doesn't want to dwell on it and so it feels cold to her. It's just a question of whether she can accept that about him. The background sounds of the waves crashing and the wind howling are so good for this conversation. It makes it feel so genuine, I think.

When hostilities continue, though, both the Doctor and Evelyn get arrested. They're seen as political conspirators, helping the Princess to have an affair. The Doctor puts it into Suskind's mind that a military alliance might be a good thing. He can't completely tell him about the invasion, of course, revealing knowledge of the future, but he plants the seed. Meanwhile Evelyn tries to get Rossiter to ally with one country or the other as a bulwark against the impending invasion that she can't tell him about. Galen tries to get Evelyn extradited. Rossiter can't stop it and so she gets arrested, taken on a train. But she JUMPS FROM THE TRAIN! (!!!!???!!)

Of course she ends up in a hospital and here she confesses what we, the audience, know but the Doctor doesn't. She tells Rossiter that she's dying of a heart condition. But he fell in love with her and he doesn't mind, he still loves her. Yet again we have a fantastic conversation here. She realizes that this is probably why the Doctor's reaction has bothered her so much and why she doesn't want to tell him about her heart condition. If he can brush off Cassie's death with a cup of tea and a slice of cake, how would he feel to see her die? Surely he'd just move on very quickly. Even confronting her own mortality and the Doctor's reaction to death, Evelyn knows that she's not going to leave him, despite Rossiter asking her to stay.

It's a huge step for Doctor Who to talk about this. Classic Who's companion exists are usually fairly arbitrary low key. There's no real time to grieve losing a companion, we just find another one and move on. Yet here we are, in this story, talking about what that really means. We did this quite well in Scherzo as well. Losing a companion has to hurt the Doctor a lot. You can't spend so much time with this person, thinking of them as your friend, only to just nonchalantly forget them the moment they leave. New Who is the way that it is because of these audio stories. We've spent a long time in the wilderness years actually acknowledging that pain of losing a companion and what it must mean and how we can't just move on from it. I love that so much.

Meanwhile, the Princess goes to the jail and helps break the Doctor out after a brief confrontation with Suskind's minion: Pokol. They finally find a place where the Doctor can contact Minister Mortund of Galen, but it's too late. The Killoran invasion has begun. Suskind is absolutely open to an alliance now, of course. The Doctor was right. The alliance was important to repel the invasion. Instead, now, the invasion is brutal. In the process, Reid and Krisztina actually get killed in each other's arms, a classic Shakespearean love story.

This time, though, it's the Doctor's turn to respond angrily. He can't accept this. He won't accept this. He's gotten to know these two and has worked so hard to keep them together. He won't let them die. This time the Doctor sees himself as directly responsible for their deaths. If he hadn't gotten them together, the alliance wouldn't have fallen apart and the invasion wouldn't have killed them. He wants to go back in time to prevent them from getting together so that they don't die. He's so overcome with rage and grief that he forgets about Evelyn. He would have left her there, but she comes in with him and changes the coordinates.

Instead they end up five years ago when Krisztina and Reid first fell in love. Before Reid left to join the military because he didn't think they could ever be together. Evelyn convinces him to leave it. They died, but they died together. If he changes it, they wouldn't get to be together. They would live out their lives probably grieving their lost love.

This final conversation is the heart of this story. I even feel bad summarizing it because it's so powerful when you hear it. The Doctor and Evelyn sit together and watch the two of them play in this park. "Tears from the depth of some divine despair rise in the heart and gather to the eyes looking on the happy autumn fields and thinking of the days that are no more."

The Doctor tells her that he doesn't just switch his emotions on and off. As much as it may seem like it. It hurts him to lose someone but sometimes he doesn't show it because that's just who he is. He can't change. I LOVE that Evelyn acknowledges this and says that she wouldn't want him to change. She likes him just the way he is. Which is honestly beautiful. She's ready to move on even though she'll miss Rossiter. The Doctor tells her that it's a challenge to be with her. He's loved every one of his companions ("It's not just anyone I let into the TARDIS." "And it's not just anyone who could put up with your mood swings." "Indeed."), but they're usually very young. Evelyn is more well rounded, more experienced. The Doctor usually has the upper hand, but with Evelyn not so much. Other companions would have accepted the Doctor's response and moved on, but for Evelyn it triggered a crisis of faith.

The Doctor talks about how Evelyn was able to control the TARDIS and how Evelyn must mean a lot to the TARDIS as well for her to allow Evelyn to mess about with the controls like that. It's very like this Doctor to end this incredibly emotional and passionate conversation with "Your boots need a bit of a clean don't you think." And then immediately we jump to the ending theme. I swear, I was really emotional and tearing up at this conversation and then he says that and I rolled my eyes and chuckled. That's my Doctor and I love him for it.

This is absolutely fantastic from start to finish. This story does a fantastic job of really diving deep and examining the emotion of grief. Not only the grief that you feel in someone's passing, but how everyone grieves differently. Even if the way you grieve doesn't match someone else, it doesn't mean that they're unemotional or a stone. Maybe they just don't feel it the same way you do and that's ok.

Not only is this a great emotionally introspective story, it's a very fun political thriller as well. The Doctor and Evelyn getting involved in the political situation on this planet, when they were not trying to, feels very natural and organic. They become intricately a part of it almost by accident. Suskind's continued attempts to undermine the alliance are quite fun as well, until they work and we see the consequences. The beginning and the halfway point are framed by news broadcasts as well which I found fun.

This story is expertly performed by Colin and Maggie, of course. They are the dream team for a reason. Maggie Stables brings an emotional maturity and groundedness to Evelyn that is so rare and so adult in a Doctor Who companion. While Colin absolutely expresses his full range here. He's comical, lighthearted, serious, careless, and ultimately shows how much he cares about the people around him. His outburst of grief at the end feels like such a natural outpouring of this story as Evelyn gets to see what happens when he doesn't bury his grief deep down for once. Evelyn's relationship with Rossiter, too, feels so natural and organic as they start to develop feelings for one another.

Ultimately, this is an extremely powerful story that develops so naturally those feelings of heartbreak and grief that were addressed all too rarely in classic who. Stories like this one and Scherzo were immensely influential on tv who after this point and for very good reason.

I love, so much, how this story has Evelyn confronting how she feels about the Doctor. His flippancy and nonchalance. His avoidance of serious topics. How he kind of moved on after Cassie died. And she doesn't know if she can accept him. But she comes to the conclusion at the end that she can accept him. Even when the Doctor says he can't change Evelyn says "I wouldn't want you to. I like YOU."
That's so powerful. I accept you for who you are. That's how you know they love and respect each other. Because she's willing to accept the Doctor for who he is. Not just for who she wishes he was.

That's so powerful, for the Sixth Doctor. Because it's a lot of the traits that were most pronounced in their worst forms in the show that made everyone hate him. And Evelyn has helped mellow them out. They're absolutely still there and I wouldn't want them to not be there. But here she is saying that she accepts those things in him. She still loves him for who he is even though it's all those things that the audience hated about him. It's like the writer telling us that we can accept him too, just like Evelyn accepts him.