War Doctor 4 - Casualties of War (Spoilers on Release)

TO GALLIFREY!

I've had a lot of problems with this series, but I think that my interpretation of that ending was very different from yours, partially in light of those problems.

As listeners, it's difficult for us to take any peril in these stories seriously, because we already know how the Time War and the War Doctor's life end. We know how his character arc ends. An awful lot of what happens in these stories seems somehow pointless, as though the episodes are just sort of spinning their wheels - as though the Time War itself is just spinning its wheels.

But - and if this is intentional on Nick Briggs' part, then bully to him - the finale takes advantage of this beautifully. Yes, of course the Doctor and the Time War are spinning their wheels. The Time War is so cyclical, and the pendulum of "who's winning" so maddeningly predictable, that all of the individual developments of the war - The Daleks are sending a time fleet! The Daleks have been defeated! The Daleks have deployed a Thing! The Daleks have been defeated! - are utterly, utterly pointless, and impossible for the Doctor to take seriously. He's not just war weary - in fact, there are bits of this series where he sounds as though he's having just a little more fun than we'd expect. He's just aware that outside of the inexorably mounting human cost, he's stuck in an essentially static situation. There will be no turning point, no pivotal moment where one side gains a true and fundamental upper hand. The stalemate is permanent.

Now, as far as the Doctor is concerned, is the evil, indistinguishable-from-the-Daleks nature of the Time Lords anything new? No, he was born not five minutes after Cass pointed this out to him, and Cardinal Ollistra has been an ongoing reminder of these facts for the duration of the series. The Time Lords ran out of scruples so long ago that, if one were to experience the events of the series (TV and Big Finish) chronologically, the biggest surprise in Th End of Time wouldn't be that Rassilon was willing to destroy the entire universe, but more the fact that Rassilon was around, and that the "ultimate sanction" was an option. As of, let's say, The Neverwhen, it is exceedilngly obvious that the Time Lords are just terrible people.

What the Enigma Dimension does is put the Doctor in a situation where he is forced to quickly calculate the results of the previously unforeseeable - a sudden Time Lord victory via the total elimination of the Daleks. Imagine a stone archway, and one half of it suddenly just disappears. The other half is going to come crashing down. The War-Era Time Lords without the Daleks would be like that - lacking in opposition, they wouldn't suddenly stop behaving the way they had been for 400 years. And maybe they had managed to come back from the brink after previous conflicts, but the Doctor has been stuck in the middle of this one.

And after making that split-second prediction - "oh, if the Enigmas wipe out the Daleks but nothing else changes, THIS is what happens next," - he's had a realization. That there is a solution available after all, and that enacting said solution itself is, on the whole, a better idea than allowing the status quo to continue.

The Enigma Dimension is not the story where the Doctor realizes, to his horror, that the Time Lords are as bad as the Daleks. He's gotten that knowlege built in. The Enigma Dimension is the story when the Doctor realises, to his resigned relief, that there is a "solution" to the problem, and that's it's the only one that has any possibility of working.

I simply see no reason why this as opposed to any other time is when he makes the decision. Remember, he does have to now go and steal the moment, then blow everything up.

Of course, it's not necessarily right before his use of it because there was no "billion billion Daleks" surrounding Gallifrey at that point. The way it is presented in DOTD, he only uses The Moment when Gallifrey's last city is about to fall. That suggests a continuing commitment to the Time Lord cause until the only alternative to a universe ruled by Daleks is killing everyone. If the decision had been presented differently in DOTD, I'd find it easier to see it your way.

And remember: he saves Gallifrey in DOTD. It then returns. If he really felt that both Daleks and Time Lords needed to be exterminated (1) he should have gone on a mission to find all remaining Daleks after "Dalek", (2) he should not have saved Gallifrey, and (3) he should have burned it again once it returned. But, quite undeniably, the Time War didn't permanently damage the Time Lords who fought it - they're back and not fighting wars (yet). (And, again, they also never became permanently stuck in evil ways after the dark times).

{Spoiler}
Rather than his casting Gallifrey's fate to the wind out of war-weariness, perhaps having just witnessed the barely comprehensible force that the Daleks have just dragged into the War, The Doctor has his first true epiphany about to just what extent Daleks might be capable of assimilating and corrupting Gallifrey's technology and the possible consequences of them doing so. He may truly realize for the first time the unthinkable ideas that maybe Gallifrey isn't going to win, and that saving the universe may ultimately require the destruction of the keepers of Gallifrey's secrets. As usual he aspires to protect the universe in spite of the cost, yet he's saved from the weight of this horrendous responsibility the first time because he had been The Doctor and had succeeded in the admirable deed of taking an intelligence so alien that it was willing to attack Gallifrey simply because the Daleks asked, and encouraging from it its own informed and independent decision in the matter, with the fates of both sides in the Time War hung equally in the balance.

He's not really surprised at the outcome, though, because of the faith he's invested in the alien intelligence, and his faith in what they have in common in spite of vast differences, with the being making in the end what is likely the very same choice The Doctor would prefer to feel at liberty to make. In the final accounting he hasn't really placed Gallifrey at risk and deep down probably knew it all along, but its proved to be a dress rehearsal for an impossible choice that likely still awaits further down the road in another form, another time. The Doctor and the strange intelligence have both been enriched in understanding by meeting and communicating, and even as The War Doctor that's the option The Doctor prefers if it's available to him. (At least that's how I'm inclined to interpret events, or something like that, if it will work).

I don't know if I'd be too quick to dismiss some aspects of these stories, all of them strike me as being rather thoughtful the more thought I try to give to them. I wasn't terribly thrilled about the condition Leela turns up in, for example - she's at anything but her best and good luck with any warm and fuzzy reunion, she doesn't even really know The Doctor - yet on reflection it's poetic in its way because The Doctor himself turned up in less than the best condition when the series opened (and for the same reason - a disruptor weapon deployed by Daleks). That potentially helps encourage some interesting further comparisons between Leela who is helping to save the day by being the simple "noble savage" that is less complicated than any jaded Gallifreyans - but why is The War Doctor himself any less noble a warrior than the Warrior of the Sevateem, and after as much as he's tried to distinguish himself from the ways of Gallifrey? Is he really so complicated himself, or just a being with a keen and usually straightforward sense of right and wrong who's just been faced with an extremely complicated decision? What decision would Leela make if the decision of Gallifrey's fate fell to her, and should The Doctor be judged any differently than Leela should she also be forced to the conclusion that the same unthinkable decision might be the right one?

I emerged from the listening experience with the wonderful sense that The Doctor probably has more in common with Leela than with Gallifrey and that there was really nothing wrong with that. Ollistra might be a particularly good contrast to The Doctor and Leela here because even after this many outings with The War Doctor and his potential beneficial influence, she still manages to be to my reckoning a remarkably good example of an over-complicated Gallifreyan - ever mercurial, just when I am about to firmly dislike her she does something redeemable, and just when I am about to truly like her she does something awful, it seems like - making her hard to trust no matter how familiar she becomes. (When Ollistra is played so well either way by Jacqueline, it makes it even harder for me to know quite what to think of the character).

(Likewise there is a part where it comes up how long it will take for Gallifreyans to arrive by TARDIS - this passing remark sounded jarringly odd to me because one wants to think that anyone with a TARDIS is never late for anything, but it did conjure observations about limitations and how everything is not necessarily always so easy, and eventually about the impediments that the Time Lords may face in hoping to mop up after acts of the Time War while still having to observe the usual restrictions on how much they can alter things in the course of trying to make any amendments. That same theme comes up in many other places, where having a time machine doesn't mean you can just magically go back and fix anything and everything, subtly brought into focus again in the Time War almost as if by accident - in contrast to being so obtrusive as to dominate the storyline as it does in Father's Day. Without the point being belabored, it sort of sunk in for the first time that perhaps what makes a Time War so terrible isn't as much what is done or what it is done with, but what cannot be undone). (Of course, maybe I am reading too much into things, but these might have to be some pretty good accidents if I am. I think all the cards were rather played here overall and that it reflects skill and care in storytelling).

Another of what I thought was one of the great things about this set though was that if I understand things correctly (I should probably be double-checking as it's been too long since I looked at the appropriate timeline), it lends clarity and perspective to the "dead Leela" Companion Chronicles and seemingly gives Leela an immensely well-deserved future. That's very pleasing to me after what an asset Leela has been to Gallifrey, and to the Gallifrey series especially. (I also enjoyed Nick's bits of social commentary. I usually do, but I particularly liked the ones here in the closing story).