Start to Finish - 'The War to End All Wars'

Image (c) Big Finish Productions

Far, far from home, Steven Taylor has become a king and now, deposed, lives in a secluded cell. Asked by his sole carer why he allowed the throne to be taken from him, he explains by telling the story of another time, when he was caught up in The War to End all Wars.

The last of the Companion Chronicles to be written for the initial run, this one has a suitable sense of finality to it, as Steven muses on the nature of intervention, and the feeling that led him to leave the TARDIS in the end: The feeling that one could never affect lasting change so long as one were just visiting. His reminiscence of the planet Comfort, where an ancient system drove the innocent descendants of a penal colony to engage in endless, futile conflict with themselves, provides the impetus behind his decision to stay on in the TV story 'The Savages', and later to renounce the throne in favour of democracy.

The War to End All Wars feels a lot like the story that should have ended The Companion Chronicles, although we have two more to go. It's a story about moving on, about making a lasting place, as many of Steven's Chronicles have been. It also cleaves tightly to the original format of the series, a companion telling a story, and it makes a solid bookend opposite Frostfire.

Still, it's not the end, and indeed at the last it isn't even the end of this story, finishing on a cliffhanger picked up when the Chronicles restarted in 2015. Still, for my current purposes there are two more to go, and next week Jo Grant and Iris Wildthyme meet an unexpected Doctor in The Elixir of Doom.