The War Doctor Vol.2: Infernal Devices - Legion of the Lost written by John Dorney and directed by Nicholas Briggs

What's it about: In a time of war, every means of victory must be explored. In the Time War, the unthinkable must be thought, and neither side can afford to be squeamish about their methods. When the destruction of an obscene weapon leads to the Time Lord once known as the Doctor uncovering a secret Gallifreyan initiative, he cannot believe what is being considered. Should victory be sought at any cost? Or are there worse possibilities than losing to the Daleks..?

Damaged: John Hurt is just so good as the War Doctor that he automatically raises the quality of this series. Even if this entire set was a clichéd and underwritten as the first it would still be worth a listen to enjoy Hurt's perfectly measured performance. I always feel as if there are thoughts and feelings going on beneath the surface with Hurt in the role, that he has secrets. Fortunately this set is a huge improvement, just as I imagined it would be with the names attached to it and Big Finish have delivered some very worthy material for Hurt to deliver. The Doctor considers himself on the side of the innocents, the collateral. He might be under stress but a good cup of tea will still sort him out. He breaks down when Collis is revealed to him alive because the idea of having to sacrifice innocents weighs heavily on him. The fact that he had to wrestle with his conscience and make that call and the consequences of it where undone is too much for him. The Time Lords conjuring up new and ever more obscene ways to win this conflict is eroding his sense of loyalty and respect for his people. He's starting to realise that it doesn't matter how beautiful or technologically advanced or worthy a species is, in this fight they can all be swept aside in a second. The Doctor is still convinced that you can walk through this battlefield of raging galaxies and make moral choices and he very much stands up for what he considers right, refusing to accept the horror of what the Time Lords are doing to the dead. I love that Ollistra comes searching for the Doctor at the climax and the promise of more adventures together. At the end of this story the Doctor is officially a War Criminal. Must be Tuesday.

Standout Performance: Unlike the TV series there doesn't have to be the presence of a pretty young thing to keep the audience interested. Hurt, Warner and Pearce are all beautifully seasoned performers and the story is all the better for their presence. The idea of two older actors - Hurt and Pearce - heading off to stories unknown is something that could only occur on audio.

Sparkling Dialogue: 'The sky was...made of dreams.'

'Death's the only certainty we have...why take it away? For some of us death is the only peace we can hope for.'

Great Ideas: The Daleks are all very good at preying on peoples guilt, surrender or they will kill more innocents. The weapons are getting more and more perverse as the Time War continues, there is a weapon in existence that can remove an entire species but keep the timelines in check. An entire civilisation, gone and forgotten, unmourned. Imagine that, the agony of being unwritten. The Daleks are not above cultivating their own obscene plant life on the worlds they have conquered, Varga plants have turned up in a fair few Big Finish stories in recent years and I can understand why. They are terrifying, both in prospect and in realisation. Plants that hunt and infect, vegetable matter overwhelming you and infecting you with a hunger. The opening ten minutes are quite gripping, getting us acquainted with the players in the Time War, giving us insight into the Doctor's role in the conflict and where his loyalties lie and offering us a potential new companion in Collis before bumping her off in graphic style. Technomancers, a society that blends magic and technology. The Time Lords must be getting desperate to seek out the help of such a dangerous race. The Horned Ones came to this world in its earliest days back when the universe was very young. They came to escape a dimension very different from ours. Their very presence twisted this world and caused it to transform. Violent and cruel Kings hounded from their world? They feed on death and offer out magic in return. Even death is not sacred in the Time War, the Time Lords are resurrecting fallen troops en masse in their endless bid to defeat the Daleks. To die over and over again makes the troops canon fodder rather than people. The Crypt of Non-Time is the place where the Mages can reach into worlds that no longer exist.

Isn't it Odd: John Dorney is using his time to bash out an awful lot of set up for the remaining two adventures to take and run with. It's something of a thankless task because the exposition means that the story gutters to a halt. Do we really need all that incessant technobabble to justify the idea of the dead returning to life? In a story that features actual real life magicians this could easily be covered in a line. They're back from the dead...because the Technomancers have the ability to do so. All this techno-doublespeak doesn't take the place of real drama.

Standout Scene: The news that every soldier that is returned to life contains a fragment of a Horned One. The Time Lords are playing a very dangerous game, offering a vessel to these creatures that have for so long been dormant and unable to act. Each time they are resurrected the Horned One takes more corporeal form and they get more and more aggressive before eventually they have taken them over completely. It shows you how far they are willing to go, to literally make a deal with the Devil. Potentially they could be unleashing something far worse than the Daleks onto the universe.

Result: The trouble with the Time War is that has had such a momentous build up over seven seasons of televised Who that unless it was something pretty bloody spectacular and dazzlingly creative it couldn't help but feel like the creators were making a lot of fuss about nothing. When we finally got to see the Time War in The Day of the Doctor it lacked the temporal insanity that Russell T Davies seemed to imply throughout his tenure and became a game of cowboys and Indians in space en masse. There was a lack of imagination but it was so well realised that it really didn't matter. When Big Finish announced that they had secured John Hurt and were going to produce Time War audios I was hoping that it would be a chance to redress the balance, creatively speaking. Nicholas Briggs' first set was largely unmemorable and treading over previous glories, not at all what I was hoping but kind of what I was expecting. It seems that Infernal Devices is going to be much more in the vein of what  was promised; high concept ideas, desperate measures and a universe that has gone to hell. But not quite yet... John Dorney has scored the bum deal of this box set, being the one responsible for putting all the pieces in place for the others to capitalise on. He introduces two very juicy ideas; the Technomancers and the idea of resurrecting an army of dead Gallifreyans but because he has to add some substance to both notions there isn't a great deal of time to indulge in a plot. Much of Legion of the Lost reminded me of the Gallifrey series, an awful lot of waffle and very little in the way of pace or set pieces. Fortunately it is decent waffle, the dialogue a huge improvement on Only the Monstrous. The first and last ten minutes are the best of the story, sufficiently dramatic to keep my interest but aside from the concepts I did get a little bored in the middle. Legion of the Lost promises interesting times ahead. And, oh yeah, John Hurt is in it. So you've got to listen to it anyway: 6/10