Once and Future: The Union

Audio  During the fiftieth anniversary, the lead character in Doctor Who had a convenient number of incarnations for releasing a celebratory story a month.  Across IDW Comics, Puffin and BBC Audio/Big Finish that's exactly what happened with each version of the Doctor celebrated across the first eleven with the twelfth slot given over to some kind overall story resolution were necessary.  August was a big month for us Eighth Doctor completists, even if the audio, Enemy Aliens, was the only decent attempt of the three.

Since then the numbers have become a bit complicated and so licensees have gone for more of a general celebratory approach with Titan Comics largely keeping to participating in the Doom's Day crossover and a Tenth Doctor graphic novel by Dan Slott, BBC Children's Book rolling out three short hard covers featuring revival incarnation in stories set across the past three decades and Big Finish offering this seven parts and a coda, Once and Future.

Multi-Doctor stories are fine and Big Finish has produced some immensely entertaining versions over the years, but they're also aware of the stove hattedness of them so instead have gone for stories which feature a lot of different versions of the Doctor mostly not directly interacting with themselves.  At some point during the Time War, the Time Lord has been hit by a "degeneration" weapon which causes a shift backwards and forwards between different faces.  Who did this and how can it be stopped?

It's been a fun journey.  Some stories have worked better than others, shifting tonally wildly between average romp and curate's egg but it's mostly just been a good excuse to bring together combinations of Doctor, companions and antagonists which might not otherwise meet.  As "degeneration" suggests, this is some future version of the Doctor who happens to sounds like the 4th or 10th Doctor during that adventure with only the memories necessary for the plot.  So we see what happens when Sixth runs into Lady Christina and Jackie Tyler, that sort of thing.

Once and Future: The Union

Its with some trepidation I visited The Union because one of the key mysteries running through the series was in which incarnation the Doctor was originally zapped.  Depending on when it happened, I was either going to have to review the whole lot for the chronology or a few paragraphs to fit in the "Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the Eighth Doctor ..." section at the bottom and not having to worry about whether the third Doctor suddenly knows who Charley Pollard is.

Big Finish themselves rather gave the game away with their news page on the release with the line, "But which Doctor was shot with it? Was it the War Doctor? The Eighth Doctor? The Fourth?"  Given that the War Doctor isn't on the box art, it's clearly something they wanted to keep secret up until recently so it was clearly going to be him.  Big Finish may love stories but sometimes they're not big on surprises (which is why you should also ignore the cast list for this one until after you've listened to the end).

What we have here is the old "Trill" theory of the Doctor writ large, that there's a core being that calls itself the Doctor which is then hosted by the various incarnations and personalities like a biological desktop theme.  When there's a regeneration that host dies and another emerges who like the Trill in Star Trek is a new individual that is connected to the metaphysical creature whatever and wherever that is, a creature which sometimes communicates with the out shell more directly by choosing a particular face.

In The Union, the Eighth version of the Doctor effectively becomes the spokesperson for the other faces.  He's the one who gets to do the big speeches about how no matter what they look like the core elements of what make the Doctor remain, that he is a good man.  You can tell McGann loves this mythologizing of Doctor Who.  Quite rightly he's inarguably become a relevant and vital part of the franchise despite a shaky beginning in 1996 and being the connoisseur's choice in successive years.

There are some surprises especially in the b-plot which offers some squinty homages to a numerous elements from the history of the franchise.  But this is mostly about explaining mysteries set up earlier in the overall story mostly, it has to be said due to the interventions of River Song who due to the Doctor's condition is more of an active participant, which as you know is fine by me especially hearing this blazing invocation of the revived series interacting with Susan, the one who started it all.

Elsewhere, The Union is a marvellous creation and Maureen O'Brien's performance really sells the batshit insanity locked within her character.  There's also a lovely moment when this version of the Eighth Doctor and Susan finally make amends over the events in To The Death (Cass was recorded at least two years after this) and other cameos have similar notes but they're for other completists to cover (although its implied that no one will remember any of this anyway but they're nice sentiments).

Placement:  "Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the Eighth Doctor ..." unless something unusual happens in Coda and I have to rethink all of this again.