The opening chapter of He Who Fights with Monsters is probably the weakest of the three, it's certainly the slowest but it's done so deliberately to set the Doctor on his journey to seek out and assassinate the Barber Surgeon. It's still a powerful opener, showing just how much damage the Barber Surgeon has wrought on the universe, not just to the Time Lords but Daleks as well and we see how his carnage has affected the Doctor, we also get some evolution of the War Doctor's character showing how weary he's starting to become of all the fighting and how the last remnants of the old Doctor is slipping away. As I said, altogether He Who Fights with Monsters is one of the War Doctor's all time best and I highly recommend it.

The Neverwhen closes the second volume of The War Doctor Adventures where the Doctor is flung into one of the earliest skirmishes of the Time War, a planet where Daleks and Time Lords clashed in a straight up battle but fell victim to a new Time Lord weapon called the Neverwhen. A weapon that has sealed them off from the rest of the universe where both sides are subjected to various degrees of evolution in their species and technology, and death provides no escape as the casualties are brought back to life and all are forced to fight an endless battle for all eternity.

Now when it comes to “the horrors of the Time War”, that’s pretty high up in terms of one of the worst events to be portrayed from the Time War, the idea of being trapped in a never-ending battle where yourself and your weapons change various states and death just sends you back to the beginning to fight all over again is terrifying. The Neverwhen makes good on delivering such a horrific setting and how it affects the War Doctor. If there’s any War Doctor story from John Hurt’s tragically short tenure you should listen to make it this one.

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.

This is my first Target novel review in quite a while with the novelisation of Doctor Who’s first episode of the revived era, Rose. I always found the original episode to be massively overrated, everyone holds this to such a high standard being the big return of Doctor Who and the start of a new era, and I think it’s just alright. I do see where people are coming from and there are things it does excel at, the scenes with Eccleston and Piper are excellent, I think it does a great job with the mystery angle around the Doctor being viewed mostly from Rose’s perspective and how her curiosity pushes her to look deeper and deeper into who the Doctor is. There is a lot to love about this episode, but there is also a lot of really stupid awkward moments; the belching dustbin, plastic Mickey and his…I don’t even know what the hell that was in the restaurant scene, the Nestene Conciousness being a roaring blob of CGI that makes faces, the Autons themselves moving around like they’re in a disco during their rampage through London scene, not even close to being on par with the original invasion scene from Spearhead from Space! The music is also really corny with some odd choice of instrumentation. Also I’m just gonna say it, I don’t like Rose, she has so many moments during her time in the show where she’s just so unlikable. She hangs up on her terrified mother without saying anything after a city-wide massacre then leaves her boyfriend literally in the gutter to run off with the Doctor. But I can let a lot of it slide with it being the early stages of Modern Who, there’s always that finding your feet period with any new show.

So with that summary of how I feel about the first episode of the revived show, the novelisation is a much improved adaptation. I talked about this earlier in my previous reviews of the Target books, while at their most popular during Classic Who, the Target novels are at their best when adapting Modern Who stories. Because of the shorter runtime of the episodes, the writers really have to think outside of the box and properly build on the original work. Here we have the original writer himself Russell T. Davies, his first written work for Doctor Who since Torchwood Miracle Day, and he really ups the development from the original episode.

Some highlights of what makes this stand out from the original, obviously being focused on Rose we get some insight into her way of thinking and some of her previous mistakes in life like how she originally cheated on Mickey and dropped out of school for another boy. Our opening prologue centres on Wilson, the chief electrician who died offscreen in a very cold line from the Doctor, revealing that he was not quite an innocent man himself. Russell even addresses and rewrites some of the logic holes in the episode like why the lift doors didn't open during that first chase scene. We get some new characters and friends of Mickey and Rose who are starting out a band that they debate on the name of, eventually settling on Bad Wolf cos oooo subtle.

Clive's segement is another notable highlight, I remember watching the episode thinking it would be cool to have shown at least one or two photos of Classic Doctors, but looking at what Russell adds in this scene, I honestly think it was better having it be a subtle line about the title of Doctor being passed down. It was neat for the book to have all these photos of the different Doctors (including post-Nine Doctors and even a couple new Doctors Russell creates), but it would've been a bit much for a show acting as a reboot and predominantly catering to a new generation. It does go into what inspired Clive's obsession with the Doctor and his tragic life story.

The plastic Mickey scene was much better in this one, less awkward and more unnerving. I'm surprised just how much the story goes into the Time War and the Doctor's "bad day" which he speaks to Rose about, it almost makes a Target novel for The End of the World kind of redundant. But I do like that Russell addresses why the Nestene is so different compared to previous depictions as a result of the war devolving it. Where this story really shines is the creativity around the Autons, previously just being bland shop window dummies, a horrible CGI dustbin and plastic Mickey being goofy. Not to mention the original invasion scene being a lame and sanitised remake of the iconic scene from Spearhead from Space. In the book however there's a lot more variety with the Autons, separated top and bottom half of shop dummies taking on a life of their own, living statues you see all over London, plastic Mickey even comes back with a vengeance, plastic dogs, and the invasion is so well adapted, it's downright gory in some places! It's like Russell also felt the TV version was so lame and he wanted to compensate with a bloody massacre! And he gets more creative with the invasion showing how it plays out in different parts of the world with different plastic objects coming to life and becoming homicidal, collections of plastic water bottles coming together to form a giant! Then he writes about the plastic inside people, and my mind immediately flashed to Rose's line about breast implants and while the sadistic side of me was relishing the notion, I also let out a "Oh please god no Russell you sick bastard!", thankfully it doesn't go down that route. There's even a quick cutaway and a cameo from Donna Noble in one of her "Donna missed the whole thing" moments.

This book is a lot of fun to read, it's so alike yet completely different from the original episode, it does have some of that Russell self indulgence and ego, as well as being over the top and stupid as Russell usually is with his writing. I still think the episode is overrated but I did come away from the book appreciating more from it. If you're a fan of Series 1 it's well worth the read

The second chapter of He Who Fights with Monsters takes the War Doctor into the darkest parts of the Time War with the Barber Surgeon almost toying with him through various mind games. I said previously that this story collectively was Jonathan Carley's best work as the War Doctor and this chapter in particular is where he's at his best. The journey he goes on that brings him to his mental breaking point is just astounding to listen to.

I remember when going into this when it first came out not sure what to expect. I never really thought they’d ever revisit the War Doctor after John Hurt’s passing and frankly his run of adventures was hardly the most exciting and it ended on a disappointing note. So, I wasn’t really that enthusiastic about relaunching the series as I felt we’d be in for more of the same issues. Today I look back on this and the other War Doctor releases that we’ve had since and I’d say I was both right and wrong, this series does still have its massive flaws with the War Doctor’s characterisation, but I have enjoyed this new run of adventure more than the previous iteration, and Light the Flame is where it starts.

The story picks up literally from where Night of the Doctor ended with the new Doctor getting used to his new form, working out who he is and preparing to march off into the Time War to do what none of his other selves would ever conceive of doing. And that’s it really, there’s some conflict thrown in about halfway but it’s very minimal, the focus is predominantly on the War Doctor preparing to go to war.

Jonathan Carley in his first outing hits the ground running as he won me over instantly with his voicework, we even get a great stand-in for Ohilla from Veronica Roberts who sounds indistinguishable from Clare Higgins. There is a bit of a casting mistake made though with two characters who get paired off with each other for a significant portion of the story, the issue is that the two actresses sound so similar that at times I couldn't tell which one was speaking. And I do mean it's a significant part of the story as their scenes reveal one of them to be the villain and the other is killed, but again, it's tricky to tell which one's which

As I said earlier The War Doctor Begins doesn’t really learn the mistakes with the War Doctor’s character from last time, we don’t see a more ruthless incarnation but they sure do tell us how much darker he is, which in a way is stupider in this story considering how he’s only been alive for an hour. We do get a hint of the War Doctor’s darker side where he threatens to destroy Karn to prevent it from falling into the Daleks hands (or suckers), but they make it very clear it was done to goad the Time Lords into taking a more peaceful solution. So yes, this story does fall into the same pitfalls as just about every other War Doctor story. Maybe I just need to accept that this is the War Doctor’s character and how it will always be portrayed and that I was wrong for hoping we would get a Doctor who truly goes against his moral principles, someone who’s more inclined to take the easy option because that’s what war turns good people into. I dunno, but like I said, this story is more focused on the War Doctor finding his feet and readying himself for the difficult road ahead and I really liked that, it’s a good reflection on how those who head off to war leave behind the person they were.

I'll be honest, it's a little difficult to write these reviews separately for He Who Fights with Monsters because it really is suited to being judged as a single story. Collectively it's one of my favourite War Doctor stories and at the time of release (shortly before announcing further box sets), it really did seem like this was it for the War Doctor in Big Finish, this story had an air of finality to it and it would've made for quite the epic conclusion. The third and final chapter sees the Doctor imprisoned and tortured before going through his final tests that will lead him to a final confrontation with the Barber Surgeon, all while the Daleks and Time Lords amass their fleets for a sure to be massacre all to gain control of the Barber Surgeon's stronghold.

The best part of this story is easily Nicholas Le Prevost as the Barber Surgeon, he's such a captivating character that keeps hinting that he's more than what he appears, the story builds him up as this all powerful villain only to reveal that he's just as mortal as the Doctor and only did what he did to test the Doctor's resolve and know if he's ready to bring about the end of the war. The behind the scenes interviews talked about how this story is meant to be set later in the War Doctor's life and even towards the end of the war. Now I don't need to point to the obvious title of the series and the younger War Doctor to tell you that's a pretty dumb statement, but it does lend itself to that air of finality the story has. It is a story that feels worthy of John Hurt which Jonathan Carley excels at. Carley's performance in this and the set in general is probably his best work as the War Doctor, he really sells this being the end of a long and exhausting odyssey. The climax may be a bit disappointing for some people, if you were expecting an epic battle between the Doctor and the Barber Surgeon, trust me this story doesn't even attempt anything of the sort! And some of the more meta lines were a bit on the nose, I kept thinking if this were onscreen the Barber Surgeon would wink at the camera every few lines like Mrs Flood from the new series. But it's a great ending carried by two powerful performances from our leads.

Out of all the stories set in the Time War, this one might be the most horrific in terms of its setting and premise. Focusing primarily on a woman called Ignis, an inhabitant of Lacuna, she along with all of Lacuna’s people are under attack by a force of Berserker Daleks tearing across their planet destroying everything and everyone in their path like a swarm of locusts. But at the end of the day just as the Daleks about to obliterate Ignis and the last of her people, the day resets itself and they’re forced to live out the invasion all over again. But what makes it worse is that Ignis and everyone on her planet remember, every day when time rewinds, they remember all the events that play out, all the casualty reports that come in, her boss receiving the same phone call everyday telling him his family are all dead, the same tactics failing against the Daleks. For over 400 days they’re forced to live out, die and remember the same day over and over again. Their only source of hope, and perhaps the source of their curse, lies in a nearby castle where a nameless wizard is working tirelessly to find a way to stop the Daleks, even if it means trapping this planet in a time loop until he finds that solution.

A very horrifying premise that’s beautifully articulated through the people of Lacuna and how they behave and cope with each rewind, how some have lost hope entirely and become completely docile while Ignis tries her best to hold on to hope that each day might be the last. Ignis is a fantastic character, I love the journey she goes through in this story and how she discovers that the Doctor is the one generating the time loop in order to buy himself more time to find a way of saving the people of Lacuna. It’s a great blur in the lines of morality, you know the Doctor’s doing this with the best intentions as his only other option is to leave and let the Daleks wipe out the population, but when you factor in the endless suffering everyone experiences every single day because of this, I mean good lord there’s a lot to love about this and it ends on a perfect semi-cliff-hanger, semi as they clearly don’t intend to follow up and leave the resolution to your imagination.

We journey all the way back to 2014 for the second War Doctor story ever written, I say second cos only a month prior the War Doctor featured in a short story in The Shakespeare Notebooks, so that’s a bit of a dampener on what ideally should’ve been his first. Engines of War depicts the War Doctor’s final adventure leading into Day of the Doctor as after a failed assault on the Dalek fleet massing near the Eye of Tantalus, the TARDIS crashes on the planet Moldox where the Doctor rescues a local resistance fighter named Cinder. Curious as to what the Daleks are up to, the Doctor and Cinder infiltrate their base and what the Doctor will find will truly be a horrific discovery, but more horrifying still is that once he brings this news to the Time Lords, events will unfold that will change the way he sees his people forever.

As a story meant to bring the War Doctor to life, this one's a massive success, a lot of people forget but this is one of the first written works to truly dive into the Time War, we get our first proper look at how the Time War has ravaged the universe and affected those involved. With some nods to references made in Modern Who but also throwing in a lot of its own creativity. We get our first look at the Time Lords and the war has altered their views on other life forms and how far they're prepared to go to survive. Although this is where some of the issues start to creep up. For one thing the story doesn't do a good job lining up with the War Doctor's decision to wipe out the Time Lords, admittedly it wasn't mentioned in Day of the Doctor either but the whole reason the Doctor was forced to kill his own people was because they were threatening to destroy the universe with "the final sanction". The Doctor in this story decides to commit double genocide because of what the Time Lords planned to do to stop the Daleks at the Eye of Tantalus and the collateral damage. Which is fine in the context of reading this in 2014, but here we are years later with well over a hundred more stories set in the Time War that have shown the Time Lords to do things just as terrible if not worse which begs the question why now did the Doctor decide to take action against his people. And the story itself even shows some Time Lords to still have redeemable qualities, I just didn't feel the story did a good job justifying the Doctor deciding to destroy his own world. We also get a side villain named Karlax who the story indicates has some history with the Doctor but we never actually know what that history is, and his reveal of being a clear antagonist just felt a bit sporadic, considering how it wasn't even him who suggested using the Tear of Isha, instead it's given to a different character who's later shown to be more cowardly and then helps the Doctor to escape. Just felt like the writing for Karlax and the Castellan was a bit back to front and Karlax's motivations and hatred for the Doctor wasn't well developed.

Aside from that, it is still a great read, it does the job of giving the War Doctor his own spotlight and marking the beginning of further work to be done with the character.

The War Doctor’s first audio outside of his series of adventures in the four-story mini-series, Sontarans vs Rutans. A series that celebrated 50 years since the first Sontaran story, The Time Warrior, set during the Sontarans ongoing war against their sworn enemies, the Rutans with each story featuring a different Doctor (Three, Six, Eight and War) but not necessarily in the right order.

In Name Only marks the culmination of events as a Time Lord station is attacked by an assault party of Rutans, prompting an aggressive response from a member of the High Council who proposes the invasion and destruction of the Rutan’s homeworld, as if they had never existed. Curious as to why the Rutans would risk their own genocide by attacking the Time Lords, the Doctor’s investigation takes him to Sontar itself and what he may discover not only connects to a few incursions throughout his previous lives, but the result of destroying the Rutans may bring about the destruction of time itself.

This is a story that absolutely requires the context of the three prior stories (The Battle of Giant’s Causeway, Children of the Future and Born to Die) as it connects the events surrounding this mini-series whilst using the complicated nature of the Time War to put a time paradox spin on things. It makes for an epic and clever finale that takes the Sontarans in a unique direction. The good news is that the series itself is solid all-round. As a celebration of 50 years since the first Sontaran story, The Time Warrior, this series does the ruthless clone warriors justice and In Name Only makes for a good conclusion with the War Doctor himself showcasing his more ruthless nature. There are moments where it resorts to tons of exposition explaining how the story arc fits together and some segments that were a bit confusing to follow. This is a good listen but do yourself a favour and listen to the rest in order first.