Gods and Monsters

Main Range #164

Released: 19 September 2012

Listened: 1/10/21

And here we come to the climax of the trilogy, and to the Doctor’s continued meddling with the Elder Gods. The force behind all of what the Doctor’s been experiencing lately is revealed to be Fenric, because of course it is. Except, to the Doctor’s surprise and chagrin, he’s not Fenric’s opponent. That’s another god named Weyland, weaponsmith to the gods, who has also been pulling strings for a long time -- he claims to have influenced the creation of the Forge. It all gets a little high-concept, as there’s not a lot that a handful of humans can actually do when the gods are playing chess in their own pocket dimension. Sally and Lysandra see a vision of the future in which the world is destroyed, and Hex discovers he’s been a tool of Weyland’s since Scutari, in the same way that Ace was once a tool of Fenric. There’s also a lot of haemovores, Vikings, and Saxons running around, and a Persian prince who has a talisman that doubles as a teleporter, so that’s handy. We get a lot of background on how pieces of previous stories all lead to this one, but unfortunately this story doesn’t seem like a grand jigsaw on its own. In the end, though, the stakes are high, and somebody was always going to have to pay the ultimate price. The story ends pretty much immediately, so there’s no time for reacting to it; that’ll have to wait for the next story.