Our next story takes us to the most recent iteration of the War Doctor Adventures, the War Doctor Rises. After the conclusion of The War Doctor Begins in 2023, all news on future War Doctor stories went relatively quiet until mid-2024 when Big Finish announced the next steps in the War Doctor’s life. This would be a series that would exclusively be told as single-story box sets, giving them these epic movie length scopes and depict the War Doctor’s evolution into the weary and battle-hardened warrior we saw in Day of the Doctor. To begin this new series, we have Morbius the Mighty, not only a sequel to The Brain of Morbius from the Tom Baker era but it also has close ties with another audio series that had just begun shortly before this release.

In 2024 Big Finish began another audio series titled Dark Gallifrey, as you’d probably guess, the series would centre on Gallifrey’s most notorious villains such as the Master (of course), the Monk and Morbius. But the format of the series was to release three episodes that formed a trilogy titled after the specific Time Lord villain. The series began with Tim Foley writing Morbius, and no, I know what you’re thinking….I’m not gonna say it. The trilogy had a clear influence from the story of Dracula, specifically the voyage of the Demeter section and it was a really strong trilogy with Morbius voiced excellently by Samuel West. Not his first time in the role as he’d actually played the character sixteen years prior during the original Eighth Doctor Adventures.

Morbius the Mighty also being written by Tim Foley has a few callbacks and nods to the Dark Gallifrey release that does help to have listened to it but it’s not essential. The setup goes, Morbius has once again been resurrected, and no….I’m still not gonna say it, hiding out in a region of space known as the Valley, a tear in the fabric of time that was warped and distorted many of its inhabitants who have now become followers of Morbius. He’s discovered by a Gallifreyan dreadnought patrolling the region and very quickly takes over and massacres a fleet of battle TARDISes. He uses his new fleet to broadcast a message across the universe, the first Time Lord, Dalek or other to bring him the Doctor alive will be given the means to win the Time War. The Doctor meanwhile has spent three years recovering on a forest world after having been poisoned with temporal toxaemia, even being in the presence of a time ship or time technology is enough to cause him great pain, and travelling through time could potentially kill him.

To sum up this story in a single word would be epic, this is just an epic story as the Doctor is forced to return to battle ahead of his full recovery to face the man who wants revenge on the Doctor, but he’s massively outmatched, at a huge disadvantage with his toxaemia and completely off his game, after a crushing defeat in the first third the Doctor has to go on basically a pilgrimage with his assigned healer, a former member of the Sisterhood of Karn. A journey where he can find himself again and find it in him to face Morbius one last time, a journey where the War Doctor will….well, rise. Meanwhile Morbius in his obsession to find the Doctor is using his fleet to destroy planet after planet in the hopes of drawing him out. But of course, so much noise and attention in the middle of the Time War, it’s not long before the Daleks themselves want in on the action leading to an epic battle between Morbius’s armies and the Daleks.

A common theme with Morbius is how most of his stories employ influence from famous literary works; his televised story The Brain of Morbius obviously using Frankenstein, his appearance in The Eighth Doctor Adventures, The Vengeance of Morbius, taking influence from Sherlock Holmes’s The Final Problem with the Reichenbach Falls ending, the Dark Gallifrey trilogy taking influence from Dracula and now this story uses Moby Dick where Morbius is barely hanging on to life through sheer willpower and his only motivation is to hunt down and kill the Doctor at the cost of all reason and sanity. That said though, the less cultured side of me recognises a lot of things used in The Dark Knight Rises; the Doctor being forced out of semi-retirement, being completely off his game resulting in a humiliating defeat at the hands of a more powerful foe, going on a journey to find himself again before confronting his enemy in a massive battle where he uses his wits to overcome his adversary. And I don’t know if it was deliberate but Foley even sneaks in a “I was born in the dark” line for Morbius.

While this is certainly one of the best War Doctor stories ever written, there is a part of me that’s disappointed it wasn’t his very best, and that’s honestly more down to me. As you’ve gathered from previous reviews, Tim Foley is one of my favourite Doctor Who writers, anything with his name on it instantly gets my attention and when I saw he was writing this story with his prior track record, the great premise, the epic scope, I really syked myself up thinking I was going to get the best War Doctor story of all time. It’s like when you go into a movie thinking it’s gonna be the greatest movie you’ll ever see and feeling a bit let down despite how brilliant it was on its own. But honestly it’s still a fantastic story that really doesn’t get many things wrong, the worst thing I can say about it is the idea of doing three hour box set stories for The War Doctor Rises would be a novel idea if it weren’t for the fact that this has basically become the norm for most Big Finish ranges and by 2024 and especially now, people are getting a bit fatigued with this format. But Tim Foley does thankfully know how to pace a story with this level of runtime and his gift for world and lore building make it interesting to stick with. The characters in this are all memorable with great development, especially our “companion” of the story who accompanies the Doctor on his journey. The climax is also a fantastic setting with the Doctor and Morbius, two men broken in different ways by the centuries battling it out in the Eighth Doctor’s TARDIS console room, yes it’s not just there for gorgeous cover art, the old gothic design actually plays a big role in how the Doctor ultimately defeats Morbius. Overall, this is a great start to the next chapter in the War Doctor’s life and has me intrigued as to where they go next.

Alright f**k it! I’ll say it, it’s morbin’ time.