Doctor Who review: The War Master: The Cognition Shift
By James Aggas
The Doctor and the Master face each other once more in the final episode of Hearts of Darkness, the latest volume of Doctor Who spin-off series The War Master. But what is the villain up to this time?
The final episode of The War Master: Hearts of Darkness sees the War Master and the Eighth Doctor reunited. While we heard them face each other in the previous episode The Castle of Kurnos 5, the entirety of that story was told in flashback. Essentially, it’s this meeting that the whole Doctor Who spin-off box set has been building towards – especially since this time, things are a little different for both the Doctor and the Master…
What really leaps out about this episode are the performances of both Derek Jacobi and Paul McGann. Both are given something radically different to perform, and both clearly enjoy it immensely as a result.
This is especially true in McGann’s case. Once a key detail of Hearts of Darkness‘s story was revealed, I was hugely looking forward to hearing McGann’s performance in this episode, and it definitely didn’t disappoint. He clearly has a lot of fun with his role, and we get to hear him play the character in a way that you wouldn’t normally get to hear.
After almost two decades playing the role on audio, Paul McGann gives us a radically different performance as the Doctor in this episode.
Image Courtesy Aaron Rappaport/BBC
The Scaramancer
After three episodes of buildup, Lisa McMullin is given a lot to tie up with her final episode The Cognition Shift. Overall, she does a great job. While the end of the story perhaps relies a little too much on technobabble – particularly on what the Cognition Shift actually is – McMullin still handles this episode well, especially in terms of the characters.
This is especially true for the Scaramancer. In the second episode, she had initially been introduced as a ruthless cutthroat. But as time has gone on, it’s clear that there’s a lot more to her than that. There’s a lot of focus on her rage at the Master in this episode, but more importantly, there’s also a great deal of exploration of her guilt, too. Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo has been great to listen to in this role, and McMullin wrote an extremely fleshed out and complex character across just two episodes.
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Classic Master
But it’s not just the Scaramancer who’s handled well. The same is definitely true for the Master, too. McMullin never shies away from the pure darkness of the character, and he gets to do some truly cruel things in this episode. As for his plan, no matter how complicated it sounds towards the end, it basically comes down to another of his grand insane schemes that the Doctor has to stop, which is refreshingly old-school.
Overall, The Cognition Shift is an episode that wraps up Hearts of Darkness extremely well. Thanks to a strong script by Lisa McMullin, it’s full of strong character exploration, it handles its two Time Lords well, and we’re given two great performances from both Derek Jacobi and Paul McGann. It’s a great final episode to perhaps one of the best volumes of The War Master so far.
dark. Next. The Paternoster Gang: Heritage 4 neatly resolves the spin-off’s first series
Have you finished listening to The War Master: Hearts of Darkness yet? Did you enjoy the volume? What did you think of Paul McGann’s and Derek Jacobi’s performances? Let us know in the comments below.