Doctor Who: The War to End All Wars

A First Doctor story told from the perspective of Steven. Unlike most later Companion Chronicles this returns to the format of the earlier releases in the series by having a framing narrative that explains why and to whom the narrator is telling the main story. In this case, we see an elderly Steven, deposed from his rule over the world for which he left the Doctor in the TV story The Savages. In the style of many of the better releases in the series, this has direct relevance to the tale that Steven is telling to his visitor, and the two are thematically intertwined.

The main story tells of the arrival of the TARDIS on a world ravaged by a never-ending war that has obvious parallels with World War I, despite a number of key differences (such as women on the front lines). It's a grim tale, dealing with themes not only of the futility of war, but crucially, also of the dehumanising nature of military service. Even the true nature of the enemy remains a secret for the first half, with everyone fighting them simply because they must, rather than out of even a misplaced ideology.

The Doctor is very much in the background here, only appearing at the beginning and the end, so that the focus can be on Steven's attempt to end the ceaseless nightmare, or at least to escape it. It's a polemic against a self-perpetuating system where everyone involved is too blind to question the point of it all, and in some respects, is reminiscent of dystopias such as 1984. That this directly feeds back into the framing narrative, as we uncover what has happened to Steven to place him where he is, is an added bonus.

The main story is self-contained, and has to be, to deliver its moral message and to retrospectively expand on Steven's reasons for leaving the Doctor not long after it is set. The framing narrative, however, ends on a cliffhanger, and forms the first part of a larger arc.