Review by Daniel Mansfield

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The best River Song boxsets of the past few years have all had one thing in common: they’ve been epic, four-hour stories written by a single writer, expanding River’s mythos in meaningful ways by focusing on her character rather than leaning on continuity or concept.

War Widow is an odd beast in that it combines both approaches. It tells four individual stories focusing on River’s experience of the Time War, at times laser-focused on her character, and at others, sometimes even within the same episode, feeling scattershot and disposable.

A prime example is opening story The Shape of Fear by James Kettle. The Eighth Doctor rescues River from conscription to the Time War, and brings her to a planet whose geography is influenced by the emotions of its inhabitants. The Doctor and River begin to work through their differences, with chaotic consequences, but then the Doctor disappears for half the story, leaving River to interact with the rather dull natives of the planet for most of the runtime. There are glimmers of a more interesting character piece here, but the story never quite develops into something substantial.

Matt Fitton‘s Bad Timing asks the question: what if River had to work with the Time Lords to defeat the Daleks? A fascinating concept in theory – River’s interactions with the Time Lords and the Daleks have been surprisingly few and far between – but Fitton eschews meaty character material in favour of high-concept timey-wimeyness, and characterises River as almost totally unbothered by the whole thing. Add to that another all-too-brief appearance from Paul McGann, and you get a story that sits firmly around average.

Slightly better is Unchained Melodies by Lisa McMullin, which marries high-concept and character focus as River faces ten future regenerations of herself from an aborted timeline. This is a story with a central idea so good it could have sustained a whole boxset, but suffers from being crammed into an hour. The ten other Rivers are played, admittedly very well, by just four other actors, making them difficult to distinguish from one another, while the short runtime leaves little opportunity for any of them to develop distinct personalities of their own. This is an inventive story that feels like a huge idea compressed into a space too small for it to truly flourish.

The set ends with the brain-scrambling Reality Director, initially presented as a behind-the-scenes feature, but developing into a very meta look at what would happen if the Time War wrought havoc on a recording session at the Big Finish studios. The entire cast is incredible, pretending to be interviewed as strange forces encroach upon their world, with Alex Kingston perfectly portraying herself having an existential crisis, and Nicholas Briggs playing a somewhat unflattering version of himself with aplomb.

This is easily the high point of the set, showing off just how creative Time War stories can be. Funny, strange and unsettling, The Reality Director is worth the price of the boxset alone.

Aside from the grand finale, though, War Widow feels like a series of missed opportunities – full of strong ideas that are ultimately left underdeveloped. There’s plenty here to enjoy, but compared to some of River’s other recent exploits, War Widow feels like a step down.

War Widow is available on CD or as a download from http://www.bigfinish.com