The Crucible of Souls

Doom Coalition #3.4

Released: 22 September 2016

Listened: 12/13/21

After Matt Fitton’s big adventure in the last two stories, we shift to a smaller-cast John Dorney story in which pretty much everybody is hiding something, and nobody is what they seem. In the last story, we learned that Brother Octavian was actually the Eight (the good one), but now he’s regenerated into the Nine (the kleptomaniac one), and bluffing Helen and Liv that he’s actually the Doctor. Honestly, his initial reactions aren’t much different than the times the Doctor has had post-regeneration trauma, so the bluff isn’t too hard to pull off. Much like Tim McMullan in the last story, John Heffernan does a pretty good job of voicing the multiple personalities – Big Finish made a good decision in having the actor use their natural voice for each persona, just changing the personalities. Dorney has the deception hold up for just long enough to be interesting, without requiring Liv or Helen to be stupid. The Doctor is traveling with River, and he seems to be accepting her mostly at face value. Other Doctors likely wouldn’t do that, but the Eighth is a more trusting Doctor (at least for now) and he’s happy to leave the issue of River’s identity for later. There’s also Beth Chalmers in what seems like a tiny part, but she’s clearly playing Veklin, although we don’t know what she’s up to yet, because this is Veklin’s first appearance chronologically, if not in release order. Everybody ends up at the Crucible of Souls, a typically grandiose Time Lord weapon that does horrible things because its creators really believed it was necessary. Once all the lies are exposed, the Doom Coalition’s true purpose becomes clear. That seems like it should solve some problems, but in fact it ends on a whopper of a cliffhanger. This is the first time a box has ended on such an obvious cliffhanger, and waiting six months of real time to get the resolution was kind of annoying in 2016.