Echoes of War

The Time War #1.2

Released: 26 October 2017

Listened: 1/17/22

This story follows directly from the previous, as all of the stories in this box are pretty tightly connected. Having just escaped the Theseus in a Dalek time ship, the Doctor, Bliss, and a pile of refugees are now stranded on a planet undergoing terrible pockets of temporal instability. Their only hope is to find their way to the wreck of the Theseus and hope they find the TARDIS there. As it happens, there’s a Dalek standing in their way…an amnesiac Dalek, who doesn’t know what he’s doing here or what his purpose is. It’s kind of fun to have the Dalek be amnesiac for a change, although we’ve seen plenty of “is this Dalek actually good?” stories many times before. And oddly enough, we’ve seen “The Doctor refuses to admit that a Dalek could ever be good” stories before, at least two of them with this Doctor, so it doesn’t ring entirely right that he’d see something in this one. Bliss gets a turn in the spotlight as the Doctor vanishes partway through the story. She proves herself to be the kind of companion who probably would have done fine on her own, even if she’d never met the Doctor (see also: Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith). She’s uncomfortable with being in charge, but rises to it. As with the last story, it doesn’t feel entirely complete, and the ending is kind of sudden, but taken together, it’s pretty good?