Review by Jacob Licklider
Big Finish Productions’ third installment of their 60th anniversary celebratory series, Once and Future, has been released and puts degenerating Doctor into his Seventh incarnation, played by Sylvester McCoy for A Genius for War. A Genius for War is interesting because the TARDIS is intercepted so the Doctor can go on a mission for the Time Lords led by the General and Veklin, played by Ken Bones and Beth Chalmers respectively, as Davros, played by Terry Molloy, has an offer for the Time Lords. The TARDIS being taken by the Time Lords means that this is an episode that feels more like a side step for the series, and as such Jonathan Morris is allowed to tell a complete Time War story in one hour, however, there is some oddities with the characterisation of the Doctor. Past Lives characterised the Fourth Doctor as not the Fourth Doctor due to the Doctor being a future Doctor in the body of the Fourth Doctor, but The Artist at the End of Time altered the characterisation so the Fifth Doctor acted as the Fifth Doctor. Jonathan Morris doesn’t quite take either approach, A Genius for War blending the portrayal to play to McCoy’s strengths but also feel as if it was rewritten for a different Doctor. This is certainly a possibility as Morris could easily have pitched this as a War Doctor story, the War Doctor on Big Finish is at least similar in the types of stories he has to the Seventh Doctor, so the rewrites while extensive wouldn’t have been as complicated as say rewriting the story for the Fifth Doctor or Eighth Doctor for instance. Morris’ script makes the Doctor take charge of the mission to find Davros and then blends several past and future stories into a single hour.
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