It is coming. Or it has already happened. Or it is happening now everywhere and every-when The Time War has haunted Doctor Who since it came back in 2005, and soon – very soon we get to experience it first hand with a new series of adventures starring Paul McGann as Doctor number Eight, but to whet our appetite there is this and the next Short Trips release, sort of Time War preludes or Time War cutaways, or even more so stark depictions of how the Time War has affected everyone The Doctor knows, has known and will know. And this particular cutaway features Nyssa of Traken.
Nyssa was always the most compassionate of the Doctor’s former companions and in this story she travels from world to world with her companion one “Doctor Foster” remaining steadfastly neutral in the horrors of the Time War, offering medical aid to those in need regardless of their allegiances. A very very Nyssa thing to do, until one day she lands on the planet very very close to Gallifrey, a fuel rich world which the Time-lords have tried to appropriate into their empire to which the indigenous population are very against, and then an atrocity perhaps perpetuated by a Time Lord takes place and suspicion falls on Nyssa and her companion. In times of war even the great and the good sometimes turn to the most abhorrent of methods in the pursuit of the mythical greater good….
Sarah Sutton draws the listener in to what is a very dialogue heavy piece – her voice aching with compassion for those innocents that the Time War has destroyed and only wanting to do the right thing in a universe where the ethics of right and wrong have become fluid at best. The role of the Doctor in the story is kept hidden from Nyssa but not from the listener, he is in fact hidden in very very plain sight – but it is the effect that the Time War has had on the once noble and non interventionist Time Lords that is explored here, and the extremes that they will go to to gain even the most minuscule of advantages. And in contrast we have Nyssa who is resolutely an humanitarian and The Doctor who’s resolve and determination to do the right thing are being sorely tested and we see the beginnings of a path that will lead to Karn and his resurrection as a Warrior.
A tense cutaway, a short prelude, an excerpt from a greater and much more calamitous happening but a window into the seed of good that still exists somewhere in all the tragedy. 8/10.
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