Love and War written by Paul Cornell (and adapted by Jacqueline Rayner) and directed by Gary Russell

What’s it about: On a planet called Heaven, all hell is breaking loose. Heaven is a cemetery for both humans and Draconians - a final place of rest for those lost during wartime. The Doctor arrives on a trivial mission - to find a book, or so he says - and Ace, wandering around Joycetown, becomes involved with a charismatic Traveller called Jan. But the Doctor is strenuously opposed to the romance. What is he trying to prevent? Is he planning some more deadly game connected with the coffins revered by the mysterious Church of Vacuum and the unusual Arch that marks the location of a secret building below ground? Archaeologist Bernice Summerfield thinks so. Her destiny is inextricably linked with that of the Doctor, but even she may not be able to save Ace from the Time Lord's plans. This time, has the Doctor gone too far? 

The Real McCoy: ‘Sometimes he way cool and really sweet…and sometimes he’s angry and big. Like it’s really important on the cosmic scale…’ Don’t you just love the idea of the Doctor sitting alone in the TARDIS listening to the universe whispering to him. He recognises that Ace won’t forgive him after his actions in this novel long before he even makes his move. He’s offered the mercy of Death, or a slow murder over ten years but he states powerfully that he would never surrender to either option. He can’t win, whatever he does he loses something. It’s weird to hear him admit that perhaps there are alternatives that he hasn’t thought of. ‘There are huge things happening on this planet and much of it I don’t understand yet’ – wow had the NA Doctor been written more like this I probably would have warmed to him a lot more. Somewhere halfway through the novel run, his Doctor had every story sown up before they had even begun. What’s more important; winning or feeling good about yourself? Because one doesn’t always lead to the other. He doesn’t want to be alone and he doesn’t want Ace to be stuck on this planet in a position of danger. Those two things are a dangerous mix. The Doctor soon learnt that you can’t do deals with Time. The decision that weighs on the Doctor is a huge one because he knows if he goes through with it that Ace will never forgive him. The Hoothi prefer to let people do their work for them and then only make the finishing touches to their plans at the last minute. Ace tellingly points out that that sounds like a Time Lord she knows. She has been travelling with the Doctor a long, long time and finally he sees the true emotional consequences of his actions, of playing the grand chess player. He can’t reason with Ace, he can’t make her understand. His actions turn her into a rabidly angry young woman that he is scared of. Benny on the other hand thinks that he is like every other man, thinking that the ends justify the means. It has occurred to him that he might be wrong, but not this time. 

Oh Wicked: It would hardly come as a great surprise to anybody to hear that I have a few problems with the character of Ace and Sophie Aldred’s continuing portrayal of her. However, my distaste came long before her prolific Big Finish adventures. The rot set in in the New Adventures where she was either portrayed as an angst-ridden teenager who hates the universe and everything (including the Doctor) or portrayed as an angst-ridden adult space marine (don’t ask) who hates the universe and everything (especially the Doctor). What’s interesting about the audio adaptation of Love and War is that in Sophie Aldred’s hands and with a little tweaking from Jac Rayner, the portrayal of Ace far less 90s reactionary and far more like natural character development from what we saw on television. She’s much much more likable here than she ever was in the books. The anger that Ace always seemed to wield is still there but it’s tempered by humour and humanity. Bravo. Aldred genuinely softens the material and makes the developing romance in this story count, just as she did in A Death in the Family. Future writers take note – play to her strengths she enhances the material.

Ace always told herself that if she had money she would give it to people who needed it. That’s very interesting given where Russell T Davies suggested where she ended up. Ace is insanely protective of the Doctor, even to the point of putting her own life in jeopardy. If she has to die with him just so he doesn’t have to die alone, she would do it. Flashbacks to Ace’s past are vital to give her decisions in this story some substance, I was very pleased that Jac Rayner took the step to have her engage with her mother. It’s a relationship that has long been alluded to but never truly experienced. I think I held my breath during those moments. Mentions of Liam (The Rapture) and I loved how similar to Jackie Tyler Audrey was, always entertaining men and not focusing on what is important. It just goes to show that Andrew Cartmel really was passing the baton to RTD. The inference is that Ace behaved so appallingly at school not only because she was an angry kid at an angry time, but because she was trying to get her mothers attention. She very tentatively asks the Doctor about the people that he travels with and whether he chooses them, admits that she is falling in love and is having difficulty in choosing between staying or going with him. She tells him she will never, ever leave him. She wants Jan to join them in the TARDIS, to travel alongside them. Bless Ace when she makes the decision to head off into the stars with Jan never to return. As if it was every going to be that easy. And I like the fact that she asks him to marry her, with Ace it was only ever going to be that way. The engagement is brief and throwaway but the meaning behind it is massive. Especially since Ace thought getting engaged was something that she would never do. It was always going to be with someone a little rough and ready, someone with an edge. It’s rare (especially in Doctor Who) for a romance to develop realistically over one story but Love and War is an exception, partly because of its three hour running time so it has the time luxuriate in Ace and Jan and their burgeoning relationship and partly because Ace walks into this story raw and burnt in love and it’s a natural to cling on to the first man who takes a shine to you when you are that vulnerable (The Green Death was another, which has a similar sort of running time). Ace is so angry with the Doctor for sacrificing Jan she warns that if he lets go of her wrist that she will kill him. That’s how bad things get between them.

Archaeological Adventurer: Enter Bernice. This is HUGE. It’s Bernice Summerfield’s first story. It’s the time before all of the other stories she has experienced in the hands of Big Finish, of Virgin, of the BBC. This is where she entered the Doctor’s life, and ours. She’s been a character I have laughed with, cried with and despaired at at times. She’s the ultimate spin off companion, besting Evelyn and Lucie and Fitz and all the others because she simply keeps on going. Even when her adventures with the Doctor ended, the novel line continued with Benny as the protagonist. Even when the novel line ended she was picked up by Big Finish and a wealth of stories both on audio and prose emerged. She’s unstoppable, constantly evolving. It’s even gotten to a point now where releases celebrating her anniversary are coming, where we are looking back at the early days of Bernice Summerfield with a feeling of nostalgia. Unlike Ace she has the ability to keep churning out fresh stories but never feeling stale. She evolves. She dazzles. Bernice, and Lisa Bowerman deserves a lot of the credit for this, is absolutely addictive. Here in Love and War she joins the Doctor at a turbulent point in his life, she’s the outsider observing the breakdown of his relationship with Ace. As such it’s not a story that is all about the new companion (which is often the case) but one where Bernice is pretty much the outsider. There would be plenty of time to explore this character in full later, at the moment she is on the periphery of all this emotional drama and commenting in her usual good-humoured way.

She’s an atypical archaeologist because she’s as interested in the ale as the cup. Actually, that pretty much sums Benny up rather well. Bernice calls Ace ‘very interesting’ but she has no idea what kind of relationship they are about to enter in to. Benny would spend as much time being terrified of Ace as she would being her friend. It was quite an uncomfortable dynamic (and not in a good way) that would see Ace threatening and abusing Benny, which meant I was entirely on Bernice’s team whilst Ace alienated me completely. Here they are written with a lot of humour, and it’s an approach that makes the dynamic between them sing a lot more mellifluously. Benny is pretty blasé about the TARDIS being a time machine, you would think she would be perfectly excited about the chance to go back experience the times of the artefacts that she has discovered. What’s more surprising – that she was at military academy or that she was a failure? She talks about the Dalek War and her mother’s death, about being sent to military academy as an orphan. Both Benny and Ace found themselves on a remote outpost. She faked her qualifications, and threw herself into work that she perhaps didn’t deserve to do and found out that she was in fact very good at digging up and exploring the past. Benny’s diary was always a wonderful device, whether in prose or in dialogue and it makes it’s first appearance here. It gives Bernice a strong narrative voice, it allows her to reference the past and it gives the character a distinct level of consideration that Ace sorely lacks. Ace spits at the Doctor and Benny that they are a ‘fake mum and dad’, a dysfunctional relationship that lasted far, far too long in the books.

Standout Performance: Seriously, listen to Sophie Aldred narrating the opening sections of this story. She’s excellent. This is what I really call playing to her strengths. It’s what every writer and director should be doing with the long-standing Big Finish regulars, investigating previous stories (it’s not like those stories aren’t there to listen to) and identifying their strengths and weaknesses, avoiding the latter whilst emphasising the former. Since this is Rayner and Russell who have prolific experience with Aldred, it doesn’t surprise me at all that they have captured her character (and shaped her performance) at its best. By the end of the story she is screaming her head off like a wailing banshee again and given what Ace goes through in this story I would almost say it was justified, but it just isn’t Aldred’s forte. I swear she must have to take lozenges into those Big Finish booths the amount they have her balling and wailing and caterwauling. Whilst it might be a little predictable to have space gypsies in the future all voiced by Irish actors, it’s so nice to hear a high number of Irish accents in a story (I think The Settling was the last time it was this prominent).

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Deep in the butterfly tunnel of the space/time vortex…’ – The New Adventures could verge on the pretentious at times, but at times the prose was quite beautiful too. It’s worth remembering that.
‘If I get burnt, I get burnt, don’t I?’ – Prophetic words, Ace.
‘Would you say that it was worth sacrificing one person to save the entire galaxy’ ‘It depends on the person, I suppose.’
‘The fields of Heaven are thick with meat, Time Lord. Meat we can use. Billions of unstoppable soldiers, enough to conquer Gallifrey through sheer force of numbers.’
‘Were we ever mates?’
‘Why did you treat her so badly?’ ‘Because I had to.’

Great Ideas: Heaven is one gigantic graveyard. Without going into all the details, a lot of effort is made to make this feel like a thriving world with its own culture, traditions and myths. I truly felt I was entrenched in a world that existed before the Doctor visited and one that would continue to turn long after he has gone. Trust me that isn’t always the case, especially in a Big Finish story. You can transfer your mind completely into Puterpsace where it can live on for a time. Millions of years ago the Time Lords were doing business with the Hoothi, the master strategists of the galaxy. Nobody knows how they evolved or if they were artificially created; they’re fungoid creatures that live off decayed matter. These were the days where the Time Lords had interests of their own, planets where their influence was felt. The Hoothi got involved in a war and introduced their dead soldiers into battle, infesting the bodies of their slain foes and use them as pawns in their affairs. The Time Lords had been negotiating with the people of that planet and the Hoothi damaged that plane and full-scale war was the result. Biological agents reduced the planets population by two thirds. The Hoothi took all the dead into their silent gas dirigibles. Silent deadly and invisible to tracking systems. The Time Lords sent an ambassador to the Hoothi home world intending to stop them from interfering in their affairs. The Hoothi used him as a host and attempted to attack Gallifrey. It didn’t last long; Time Lord biology is more advanced than theirs. When you can find them the dirigibles are vulnerable, full of explosive gases. The Time Lords went on the offensive, attempting to time lock their world. The Hoothi fled into the galaxy and it was thought they had decided to search for easier prizes elsewhere. But they haven’t and their here on Heaven.

Isn’t it Odd: Fancy putting the title music 12 minutes into the story. As it takes on the structure of the novel, I would have disposed of the music altogether. Give it a unique feel. I’d forgotten how obsessed the NAs were with Cyberspace at the time. Not a fault of theirs, everybody was obsessed with it at the time. It does make a certain section of the story seem a little dated though. The Travellers rubbed me up the wrong way but I recognise that this is a personal thing. I was brought up by a woman who was obsessed with spirits and the power of the moon and precious minerals with healing powers. I always took a more scientific, less romantic approach. So, the Travellers and their happy go lucky, free as a bird spiritual lifestyle turned me off a bit. However, I can absolutely see why Ace was so dazzled by them and their lifestyle and that is far more important when it comes to the story. She’s always been a travelling hipster so when like meets like expect love to blossom. There’s a chance that you might find Ace’s hysterics in the last hour a little too much to bear. Aldred gives it her all, but essentially, it’s an awful lot of shrieking in the best EastEnders style.

Standout Scene: That final scene between the Doctor and Ace. Hoo boy. It’s either the zenith of a complex relationship that has finally erupted into outright conflict or the embarrassing depths of soap opera that the series can plunge. I’ll leave that for you to decide. But it’s sure a lot of shouting.

Result: A story that feels the most like the early days of Big Finish; with Jac Rayner having a heavy presence in the writing, Gary Russell overseeing the project and Bernice Summerfield dominating proceedings. I would have gone the whole hog and had Alistair Lock of Russell Stone provide the music and sound design. It’s a terrific throwback, and I’m pleased to say that the results are just as stunning as much of those early years were for Big Finish and for the same reasons. Confident writing, great casting, marvellous performances and a sense of everybody pulling together to create a memorable product. I was talking with a friend of mine about the novel adaptations the other day and how they seem so much more substantial and nuanced than your regular Big Finish releases (and therefore a crying shame that they sold so badly and preventing further adaptations from taking place) and when I stopped and thought about it a second it seemed obvious that these were a cut above the rest. They are essentially a second draft of an already popular story (naturally Big Finish have only chosen to adapt well received Virgin novels and not acknowledged stinkers like The Pit and Deceit), a story that has already been fleshed out in detail in prose. Whilst I wouldn’t want to be the person responsible for having to plough through a novel and extract its guts but cut away all the extraneous flab that wouldn’t work on audio, the guys responsible for adapting these stories (and it is the cream of the crop as far as Big Finish is concerned: Jac Rayner, Jonathan Morris, John Dorney) have the advanced template of a story to enhance. They SHOULD be good because they are damn good stories being given an extra polish. I really liked how this was told, much like a novel in progress, with dialogue scenes enhancing scenes of extended prose. It could be as dry as dust but Rayner is too colourful a writer to ever let that happen. McCoy and Aldred take hold of what were uncomfortably dark characters on the page and give them shades of humour, remorse and humanity – having their dialogue spoken rather than being read makes all the difference. And Lisa Bowerman is as magnificent as ever, taking Benny right back to the beginning and delivering a more enthusiastic, less mature take on the character who is addictive to hang with. It’s one of the best ever Ace stories; taking hold of a troubled character and making a lot of sense of her torment. The scenes in Puterspace might be padding, but it’s vital character work that makes sense of a lot of choices in stories that stretch long before and long after this story. Ace coheres into a tragic character here, rather than a reactionary one and I don’t think I have ever felt more involved with her. All those things that used to irritate me terribly with the NAs take on new meaning when brought to life on audio; an obsession with Owls, cyberspace, angst and chess. The Hoothi are a terrifying foe and like all the best Doctor Who monsters they have a great hook (that they can planet seeds inside you and eat you alive) and how everything builds to that incredibly dramatic and emotional climax is masterfully handled. Things are almost too quiet until bam, there’s’ no going back for the Doctor and Ace and all hell breaks loose. My one complaint is that this story is perhaps a little too long, Damaged Goods was a much tighter, less sprawling story but given that every scene of Love and War is so well written and performed that even that is a token objection. These novel adaptations are ridiculously good. Big Finish sit up and take note. This is how you write stunning audio drama. Not churning out a factory line of mediocre stories obsessed with nostalgia and New Series continuity. There were only 12 NA/MA adaptations and it feels like a lot of time and attention and care has been lavished on them. If this was the Big Finish standard, we’d be in exceptional form. As it is, they are a benchmark of quality that considerably raise the average of the company’s output. Love and War is the work of several Doctor Who giants; Cornell, Rayner, Russell, McCoy, Aldred, Bowerman. It’s to their credit that it is as powerful as it is: 10/10