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 | Reviews for Doom Coalition 4 |
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| Another Mad Timelord Meets His End |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Tuesday 5 December 2023 |
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| Rating: |   7 |
Doom Coalition 4 is the epic ending to the epic adventure that is Doom Coalition. With Doctor 8 in the 2010s and after, Big Finish seems to want to bring him ever closer to Gallifrey. More and more, his fate is tangled up in that planet. Thus, Doom Coalition revolves around the concept of Save the Universe by Saving Gallifrey. And save it from what? Well, it turns out in Doom Coalition 3 it is not from the new mad Time Lord The Eleven, and not the even newer mad Time Lord The Clocksmith, but from ultra patriotic, snooty Civil Servant Time Lord, and, of course, a quondam friend of The Doctor, Padrac (finally, an evil Time Lord who does not have a "The" for a name). Thus, the Doom Coalition of the title is not The Doctor and pals, but Padrac + The Eleven + The Clocksmith + The Sonomancer (from earlier in the series). Part 1 of Doom Coalition 4, Ship in a Bottle, starts with The Doctor, Liv, and Helen, trapped in a lifeboat of sorts in a future that is rapidly disappearing. The story is an occasion for much self-reflection and confessions from the characters, as every effort to escape is doomed to fail. Of course, they do escape, but to what? Part Two, Songs of Love, concentrates on River Song, now seemingly a prisoner of Padrac. However, she schemes her way out, sort of, and exits the series via the Matrix, sort of (it is not really clear just what happens to her in there other than that she rescues The Doctor, who temporarily gets back all his memories of her, only to have her take them away again, which is becoming an all-too-easy out for Big Finish, and then just fade back into her regular timeline, maybe?) So, with River now out of the story, Part Three, The Side of the Angels, gets the TARDIS crew back together. They end up in an alternate New York City where The Monk has formed an alliance with Cardinal Ollistra and the Weeping Angels to create a new Gallifrey on Earth rather than make a direct strike against Padrac. This is an earlier Ollistra incarnation. This one might be the best episode of the four. Then, we get the big confrontation at the end with Stop the Clock. The whole series is fast-paced and keeps one riding along. Writers Fitton and Dorney tie up most the loose ends from Doom Coalition 1. Robert Bathurst is suitably upper-crusty arrogant as Padrac. I have a problem with the resolution, because it rests on Caleera/The Sonomancer being completely doolally for Padrac. The simplification of characters to simple types, to having just one dominant emotion or point of view, does not resonate with me. It seems to me like a solution derived from time constraints or lack of imagination, or both. In sum, Doom Coalition 4 works only if one has already listened to the rest of the Doom Coalition series. The scope is suitably big for Doctor Who, but there are many corners cut in terms of story, especially with the resolution.
