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 | Reviews for The Home Guard |
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| The Master Is Becoming More Himself |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 4 August 2024 |
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| Rating: |   7 |
The Big Finish Early Adventures series are done as a blend of the Companion Chronicles, basically as stories read by Doctor Who actors from long ago, and the monthly series of new adventures, fully dramatized. I think it would be better to make them entirely like the new adventures and drop the narrative links. The Home Guard is a curious affair. Simon Guerrier has tried to maintain the spirit of 1966 Doctor Who without rehashing old territory. Thus, it starts out almost as a historical, in which it seems the TARDIS crew are for some reason living and blending into a World War I setting. However, we learn that they are not pretending, but really believe that they are part of a town holding out against some undefined enemy. Polly and Jamie believe they are a married couple, and Ben seems to be a best friend to them both. They are part of the Home Guard, led by an incompetent officer who seemingly does not like being a leader and really does not like military ways, calling himself The Doctor. What ensues is that the TARDIS crew got accidentally caught up in an experiment being run by The Master. This pre- Roger Delgado Master, played brilliantly by James Dreyfus, is a character in transition. He thinks that he is doing good, righting a wrong, and has, Master fashion, created an elaborate plan of deception and manipulation so that he can also gather "information" from the experiment. He is becoming more like The Master that we see by the Third Doctor adventures in that he is single-minded in purpose, and has an "ends justify the means" mentality, so that if people are hurt or killed it does not really affect him. Apparently, the starting idea for this story was to have a Doctor Who adventure like Dad's Army. However, while references to Dad's Army remain, the story itself turned much more toward a Doctor Who tone. I think another of the ideas for this story is to "introduce" (or retroduce?) the technology that the War Chief will use in The War Games, the mist that fogs people's minds and makes them believe they are in a scenario, to reinforce the notion that it is stolen Time Lord technology. The Home Guard is entertaining but not deep. For me, it took too long for The Doctor to escape the induced delusion.
