The last part of the “Reign of Taylor” Trilogy. Our final bow-out for Steven. So, what are we dealing with?

After the events of the previous part, Steven and Sida have gone their separate ways. Sida has used her reputation to become the president and lead the people, meanwhile Steven has focused on his special research project, which seems to be in his final stages.

Thankfully, this story decides to break the “story in story” format the previous stories in all of Guerrier’s trilogies used. While there’s nothing directly wrong with the way it’s used, it has become a bit too routine. Especially for this trilogy, where the added value of the format got a bit lost.

Aside from the obvious advantages, like fewer worries about timelines, the main appeal for this kind of storytelling is that it can use the past to inform the future. We look back at what has happened, so we know what will happen next. Which, if used well, can feel like a subtle, yet surprising twist. Like the obvious answer was always bubbling just below the surface. Look at the Sara Kingdom Trilogy, where the stories informed every choice made by the main characters. Every decision those characters made were based in the stories that were told.

Except this trilogy never seems to have gotten the memo on those possible benefits. In this trilogy, the format mostly feels like it was expected, rather than a choice made from a creative standpoint. At best, Steven’s motivations are loosely based on the story he tells. At worst, it feels like it is completely irrelevant to what’s going on.

So good on “The Locked Room” for dropping it, because it has more than enough to stand on its own. We have already spent 3 stories in his former kingdom. Yet we know absolutely nothing about it. We also haven’t really explored the deeper emotions of our main characters. We haven’t peeked below the surface. So let’s grab that spade and dig!

Except, well, we still don’t know anything. At the start of the story, we follow Sida as she meets up with her dear old granddad Steven. He has built a room out of lead and is using it in his experiments. When the stars are in the correct position, and he locks the room, he can make contact with the Doctor. The real one. But only barely. So he locks himself and Sida into the room and locks the door, which will only open when the night is over.

Now we have a setting where our 2 main characters are literally locked in a box together. Nothing around them except the other person. But the focus on character is still not there. We move right on to the plot, rather than just letting them talk a little bit. We wait for the Doctor to appear, so Steven and Sida can catch him out of midair. Which doesn’t work. So they try again the next night and it works.

They have managed to grab the Doctor out of time and space and pulled him into the room. We learn this version of the Doctor is at the end of his life. On the North Pole awaiting the inevitable. But how did Steven manage to find him there? After all, there was quite a bit of time and space between them.

It turns out there was a Vardan partially living within both Steven and the Doctor. The same Vardan that killed Oliver in the previous trilogy. It needed them together to be whole again. This twist didn’t really land for me.

Let’s rewind a little bit. First off, Steven was apparently possessed by this Vardan, which inspired him to build the room and find the Doctor.  It says something about Steven in this trilogy that we never noticed this possession. We never experienced the older Steven on a deep enough level to know that anything was wrong with him. So when the Vardan pops out of him, we don’t see it as a revelation. There’s no sense of the pieces falling into place. It just feels random.

Instead, we kind of saw the opposite in Steven. He was planning and scheming for the good of the people in part 1, and proved he was still a moral hero in part 2. So where did this “evil influence” factor in? We have had absolutely no indication that we should worry about his behaviour.

So out pops the Vardan. The same Vardan that killed Oliver. The identity of this Vardan is so unimportant, that I didn’t even mention it in my original Oliver Harper review. It isn’t a Vardan with an interesting character or desire, it’s just one in a million. The fact that it is the same one again is completely insignificant.

You know what would’ve made it better? If the Vardan was the former Oliver. There would even be a precedent for that. The Oliver Harper Trilogy describes his journey as a piece of energy in the time vortex. It even describes a final meeting between him and the Doctor on the North Pole. All the pieces were in place to use him as the primary villain. Corrupted by his new Vardan transformation.

We know Oliver relatively well. We know his personality, his life before the Doctor, his secret. Compare that to this Vardan, which doesn’t even have a name! It’s just “The Vardan that killed Oliver”. It shows precisely why it is important to have depth in your characters. Why would we care that this is a recurring Vardan?

Eventually, the Vardan escapes, only to be locked up in the computerized mind copy of the Doctor, as was hinted at in the last story. So yeah, that odd bit of storytelling was setup for this. Not natural In the slightest, but it does the trick. All is well again, the Doctor is sent back, and the story end.

I think I’ve made my problems with this trilogy pretty clear. It does not focus on the actual characters it presents. Only showing superficial, flat sides of both its protagonists and its antagonist. Because of this, the listener’s investment is pretty low and events that should feel impactful, feel random instead. We listen to the Doctor and Steven reunite, which does nothing to them emotionally. We learn that Steven was apparently acting out the will of an enemy, but it was unnoticeable because of his lack of character. We see Oliver’s killer return, but it has no impact because that killer has no personality.

As a whole, the “Reign of Taylor” trilogy is like a blank puzzle. All the pieces do fit together well enough, but once all is said and done, it has nothing to show off. Regardless of quality, the previous trilogies always had a goal to work towards. Whether that be exploring Sara Kingdom as a character or learning how Steven and the Doctor dealt with trauma. This one does not have a goal. Nothing it really wants to show itself. So instead, it tapes some stories together, calls back to what came before, and calls it a day. And since this is the final Steven Taylor story, it leaves him behind on a sour note. And that part hurts the most.