The end is near for the Eleventh Doctor and Valarie Lockwood as next month sees the release of Victory of the Doctor, which will be the pair’s final boxset together. Ahead of this, Alex Hewitt sat down one final time with Alfie Shaw to discuss this epic finale.
Who Review can now exclusively present this preview, featuring Alfie, writers John Dorney and Felicia Barker, as well as composer Borna Matosic.
**PLEASE NOTE THIS PREVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ALL PREVIOUS RELEASES IN THE RANGE**
The opening story of Victory of the Doctoris John Dorney’s Didn’t You Kill My Mother?, which sees the Doctor working in arbitration between Valarie and Mrs Hendricks, the villain from The Inheritance(the first episode in this series). John explains, “I was always very insistent the title was specifically Didn’t You Kill My Mother?. It’s an extremely obscure reference to [1980s TV show] The Comic Strip Presents.” This is the episode that sees Valarie and Hendricks having a conversation about what happened in the Geronimo! boxset. John continues, “I’m always quite a fan of reducing things down and making it almost like a stageplay.” John also reckons it bears a resemblance to a recent hit TV show – “it will look like I’ve ripped off Severance. It’s weirdness in an office, which was the right kind of approach. The Doctor as an arbitration expert dealing with the two and the various levels of surrealism and what’s going on there play into that.”
This is John’s first time writing for the Eleventh Doctor, and he says he didn’t find it that hard to get into the character’s voice. “I vaguely sort of half-impersonate everyone when I’m writing anyway,” he says, in a pitch-perfect Matt Smith impression. He says that it’s often easier to identify different Doctors’ characteristics once he’s started writing. “What did I notice about Matt Smith? It’s very fast and a bit ADHD. Tennant has elements of that as well. Rather than cutting out the distractions, I just keep them in.”
Alfie explains that Didn’t You Kill My Mother? sets the stage for the following three episodes in the boxset, which tie together to form a three-part Dalek finale. “They’re three quite distinct episodes, but they do all flow into one another. It was a case of doing a big finale, doing the Daleks justice, making them a threat,” he explains. This episode is set after 2012’s TV episode Asylum of the Daleks, in which the monsters got their memories wiped and don’t know who the Doctor is. This gave an opportunity to tell unique stories set in this era. Alfie says, “if they don’t know who the Doctor is, they don’t think there are any Time Lords, QED they must think they’ve won the Time War.”
The first of the three Dalek episodes is Daleks Victorious, written by Felicia Barker. “I have to re-program my brain not to say ‘Victory of the Daleks’ every single time,” Felicia says. “It does have a deep link to Victory of the Daleks, because we address the Paradigm Daleks.” These multi-coloured versions of the creatures were introduced in that TV episode but never really expanded upon, and Felicia explains that she wanted to make them feel like a real threat. Felicia continues, “the rule in my head was ‘every scene where the Daleks appear, they have to end the scene on a better footing than they entered it. The Daleks are very much not a joke in this one.” This story also explores the different roles of the various colours of Paradigm Daleks, and Felicia was keen to give them each a distinct voice. “The Dalek Scientist has a specific cadence where he kind of delivers everything as though he’s making notes for a thesis. The Strategists are all very statistics and numbers.” There is, however, one change from the TV show, which Alfie explains: “the red ‘Drone’ has now become a ‘Commander’, because the bronze Drones are back.”
Following that, Alfie himself has written the final two episodes, starting with The Last Stand of Miss Valarie Lockwood. “This is the one where we really pick up on Valarie being killed in Everywhere and Anywhere,” says Alfie. “This is the story of how Valarie dies, and how she ends up in Chicago, and what leaves her there. The only two characters that have to make it out of the series alive are the Doctor and the TARDIS. We can do whatever we want with anyone else… and we do.”
Composer Borna Matosic has written the music for this boxset, and the Daleks presented an interesting approach in that they’re so loud. “The challenge is, how do you not score too big but still have them feel dangerous?” Borna explains. “I had two different Dalek themes in the set. One is when they are completely in control and not doing much. It’s a very eerie sounding atmosphere – long notes that don’t interfere too much with the sound effects.” There was a bigger challenge on the horizon, though… “When I started on The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles, I had an orchestral template I used as a starting point but I built on top of it. This template got bigger and bigger and bigger. Most of the time we needed a new sound for each episode, and with the Daleks we needed big, epic choirs. It actually got so big at one point that it exterminated my computer!”
And then it’s time to end, with Victory of the Doctor. “I knew when we started the series that that was going to be the title of the final one,” Alfie confirms. And he’s keen to ensure this really is the end. “It’s the last ever one of the Eleven and Valarie adventures. It’s the end of the entire run and I doubt we’ll ever see that TARDIS team together again. The reason we did Broken Hearts when we did [despite it being a late addition to the series] is because we were keen not to have things come out afterwards and look back.”
Does Alfie think it’s worth listeners going back through the series before the final set drops? “Yes. As John says, Mrs Hendricks is back. We’ve got characters from The Yearn, we go back to Medruth in Felicia’s story. Everything is kind of coming back into play. We find out who the phone call person is in this boxset. As people will know, it was not solved in Everywhere and Anywhere, and that is addressed. I’d like to personally apologise to the people online who thought it was another Time Lord – particularly sorry to the person who thought it was the Monk.” Alfie was keen to ensure nothing would go against the timelines established in the TV series, where the Time Lords were still all dead. “We’re playing by the rules of the era, which is before The Day of the Doctor. The Doctor thinks [the Time Lords] are all dead, the show thinks they’re all dead, and we’re playing by those rules.”
Did Alfie find it difficult making the decision to bring such an exceptional series to an end? “We’ve loved doing it, but we did it knowing we would have an ending. We’ve reached that ending, and we would like to honour that.” John says he also likes this approach. Felicia agrees too, “it’s probably one of the most serial, single-unit stories. It doesn’t really accommodate slotting in lots of extra adventures.” Alfie stresses, however, that there are gaps in the run where listeners can imagine little, smaller adventures, but that ultimately the focus with the series is on telling the most exciting stories with these characters. “The general rule of thumb in drama is show the characters on their most interesting days. And I think we’ve hit the most interesting days.”
Many thanks to Alfie, John, Felicia, and Borna for their time.
Victory of the Doctor is due to be released on the 6th February, and is available to pre-order now from bigfinish.com. Bundle options for the whole series are also available, and you can browse the entire Doctor Chronicles series here.
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