Pursuit.

Audio  The title above the blog post in these Eighth Doctor Time War releases is really starting to vex me. Pretty much every other release has a single title, with or without a number—for example, Connections or Ravenous 2. That was even the case with the first four in this series: Time War 1, Time War 2, Time War 3, and Time War 4. The next set along was Cass, but on Big Finish's website, it is listed as Time War 5: Cass, even though it seems like it is starting a whole new strand of stories. Okay, fine—even though it only says Cass on the front cover: Time War 5: Cass. This should lead to Time War 6: Reflections and now Time War 7: Pursuit. Instead, we now have Time War – Uncharted 1: Reflections and Time War – Uncharted 2: Pursuit, even though the spine numbers also list them as parts 6 and 7. Anyway, I am just going to stick with the short titles for these stories, if it is all the same to you.

Spoils of War

There are shades of Alien Bodies here, as Alex and Cass become wrapped up in an auction between alien foes over a mystery artifact. Said MacGuffin is rather more abstract than the Doctor's mortal remains, and it is arguable that if this had been a straightforward Doctor Who story, it would have been slightly less interesting. Instead, we have the Doctor's—not exactly great—grandson trying to do things differently than his "old man," even though he inevitably falls into the same patterns. The story does much the same to Cass; she has essentially been kidnapped and should be quite cross about it, but because of the needs of the narrative, she is somewhat forced to fulfill the companion role. Honestly, I found the sniping between the Doctor and Hieronyma—as they try to hold her ship together while pursuing Alex—to be more my cup of tea.

The Tale of Alex

This serves as a complicated synecdoche for the whole conflict, as the Doctor and Alex move backward and forward in time trying to fix an original sin. They remain suspicious of each other's motives, causing a colony to become temporally unstuck as competing causalities fight for supremacy. Finally, the two meet, and it is clear that their irreconcilable difference is down to the betrayal of the Doctor wanting his great-grandson back in the universe, yet keeping Alex's true origins from him. Meanwhile, the Doctor covertly makes Cass aware of her own origins and how her death is in flux. This also presents the intriguing idea that when she and the Eighth Doctor met "for the first time" in The Night of the Doctor, she might have been well aware of what was about to happen—and what needed to happen—which explains why she refused to fly away with him in the TARDIS.

See-Saw

This is superficially similar to Head Over Heels, the 1980s computer game by Ocean Software (or at least the opening part of it), with the competing TARDIS teams on different time tracks solving the same mystery and helping one another. How have they managed to land on Earth, a time-locked world which no one should be able to visit during the war, and what is the significance of the nursery rhymes? This inevitably leads to the same discoveries being made by both groups, which is tricky to do on audio without becoming repetitious, but it mostly happens simultaneously for various reasons; cross-cutting between groups of characters largely prevents annoyance from setting in. Something I only noticed on a second listen (don't ask) is that Hieronyma is recast in this installment, with Lizzie Hopley filling in for Niky Wardley, who plays the character across the other three episodes. Was it a scheduling issue, perhaps, or an illness?

The First Forest

After two stories that hinge on two realities occupying the same space and time, here is a tale about a place where numerous time zones are occurring in the same area—à la Voyager's brilliant "Shattered"—featuring a Tom Bombadil-type character who spends his life trying to avoid bumping into himself (rather like the Doctor). Caught in the middle of all this is Sharon, one of the Time Lord Sontarans, who has found himself lost in the forest; goddamn if Dan Starkey doesn't once again manage to give us yet another very individual example of the clone race, using the same voice as the others but remaining perfectly distinct. I particularly love how, when the Eighth Doctor and Alex finally do (sort of) reconcile, it is like many family members after an argument: calmly saying the things they may have said when bawling at each other, but previously lacked the ability to listen to.