A Genius for War (audio story)

was the third story in the Once and Future audio series, produced by Big Finish Productions in celebration of the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who.
It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, Ken Bones as the General, Beth Chalmers as Veklin and Terry Molloy as Davros.
== Publisher's summary ==
The Time War. The Doctor has been injured and brought to a Time Lord field hospital. His body glows with energy, but this is no regeneration into a future form – instead, the Doctor’s past faces begin to appear as he flits haphazardly between incarnations…
Staggering to his TARDIS, the Doctor sets out to solve the mystery of his ‘degeneration’. Who has done this to him? How? And why? From the Earth to the stars, across an array of familiar times and places, he follows clues to retrace his steps, encountering old friends and enemies along the way. Tumbling through his lives, the Doctor must stop his degeneration before he loses himself completely...
In the midst of the Time War, the Time Lords have received a communication from Falkus, the prison moon of Skaro. Its sole inmate, Davros, wishes to make them an offer.
He will help them win the Time War… but only if the Doctor comes to his rescue.
== Plot ==
Having been taken out of time, the TARDIS materialises onboard Space Station Zenobia, where an angry Doctor confronts Veklin, during which degeneration causes him to shift forms a couple of times before settling on his seventh body. Veklin takes him to the General. Reassuring the Doctor that he is not on trial again, and admitting that he has no idea behind what's causing the degeneration or of a way to fix it, the General explains why the Doctor was brought here. The Time Lords received a message earlier on a secure channel, a message from Davros.
Now interested, the Doctor listens to the full message. Davros reveals that the Dalek Emperor has accused him of treason, sentencing him to being imprisoned on Falkus, Skaro's first moon. Having been betrayed by the Daleks, Davros holds no more loyalty to them. He wants the Time Lords to liberate him from his prison in exchange for helping the Time Lords defeat the Daleks. The Doctor doesn't buy any of it, with the General admitting that the High Council were also skeptical. Davros's offer, however, includes one condition. He wants the Doctor to be the Time Lord that rescues him.
Now understanding why he is here, and with reassurances from Veklin that he has a full and free choice on whether to accept the mission or not, the Doctor decides to go through with the rescue. He knows that Davros is up to something, but there's only one way for him to figure out what it is: to play along. With the Doctor suffering from degeneration, Veklin will accompany him on the mission. With all that settled, the General gives the duo their briefing. Falkus is protected by a Transduction barrier, but Davros intends to make a breach in the barrier, just large enough for a TARDIS to pass through.
The two travel to Falkus, where a breach does open up for them to land on the surface. Stepping out of the TARDIS, the duo are surprised to encounter Kaleds, who still believe they're in the Thousand Year War against the Thals. Bosco, one of the Kaleds, confirms that their leader is expecting the two Time Lords, and escorts them to him. The leader is, of course, Davros. Davros explains that the Kaleds are clones who function as sleeper guards, making Davros a prisoner of his own past. Because Davros, as their creator, is capable of turning Daleks to his side, the Daleks don't trust themselves to guard him.
However, even though he's a prisoner, Davros does have some power here. He was the one who first created the facility on Falkus, it was designed to be a genetic repository. Even though Davros was dormant during the time it was constructed, his original designs were followed, including that a copy of his brain was uploaded into the computer. This enables him to have limited control over the security systems, which allowed him to open the breach that let the TARDIS in.
Unfortunately, time is not on the side of the trio. The breach will soon close, and the Daleks have detected their presence on the moon, activating the sleeper guards. With Davros guiding them, the group makes their way back to the TARDIS and successfully escape just in time. Arriving back at the station, Davros meets with the General. Because of the nature of the Time War, Davros only sees two ways the war can end. One: Mutually assured destruction. Two: A more powerful, third species enters the war. Davros offers to genetically engineer a new race, one with the aggression of the Daleks and the regenerative abilities of the Time Lords. This hybrid species would wipe out both the Time Lords and the Daleks, but there would be peace afterwards, and the legacies of both species would survive in the hybrid race.
The Doctor is appalled to learn of the offer and that the General is considering accepting it. He points out that the reason Davros approached them, and not the Daleks, is because the Daleks would immediately reject the offer. The Doctor warns the General that if they go down this path, the Doctor will do everything in his power to stop them. However, the Time Lords are desperate to avoid defeat, desperate enough to make the deal with Davros. The General offers Davros a laboratory to conduct his work, where he'll be under guard and working with Time Lord scientists. The Time Lords will provide him a sample of their genetic material, while Davros will use his own genetic material. They don't get to proceed with the work, as the Daleks arrive, intending to recapture Davros. The Time Lords put up a resistance, but the Daleks successfully take the Doctor, Veklin, Davros, and the General prisoner, and take the TARDIS, before destroying the space station. 
Davros meets privately with the Dalek Supreme and makes the same offer he made to the General. As the Doctor predicted earlier, the Supreme rejects the offer and decrees that Davros will be imprisoned on Falkus once more, along with the captured Time Lords.
On Falkus, Davros enacts his plan. The Kaled clones turn on the Daleks. The General takes advantage of the situation to escape, while the Doctor and Veklin remain captured. Davros has them taken to his laboratory, so he can create the new hybrid race. Davros knew that appealing to both the Time Lords and the Daleks would fail. This was all done to get the Doctor involved, for Davros intends to create the hybrids using an infant Kaled mutant gestated from his own stem cells, and the Doctor's genetic factor. To Veklin's surprise, the Doctor agrees with Davros, citing how he could've prevented the Time War in the first place. Davros creates the hybrid, but immediately after it begins to regenerate and break down. The power to the lab is cut and the two Time Lords are able to escape, the Doctor grabbing his genetic factor on the way out. He explains to Veklin that the hybrid failed, because his genetic factor is currently unstable, thanks to the degeneration. Heading into the lower service tunnels, the two discover that the Falkus computer is a giant Dalek brain in a vat.
The Doctor drops his genetic factor into the vat, passing his degeneration on into the brain. He and Veklin hide inside two Dalek casings, as the moon explodes. The two are saved by the General, who retrieved the TARDIS after his escape. Davros has also escaped in his own escape pod, but the Doctor's scheme has worked, and Davros believes that the genetic factors of the Time Lords and the Daleks are incompatible. After dropping off the General and Veklin on another Time Lord space station, the Doctor is returned to his own time stream. Before he can back to his search for the giant diamond in the stars, degeneration takes hold again. Shifting first into the Second Doctor, and then into the Third Doctor, he realises he's forgotten what it was he was looking for.
== Cast ==
* The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
* Davros - Terry Molloy
* The General - Ken Bones
* Veklin - Beth Chalmers
* Aldan - Yasmin Mwanza
* Bosco - Esmonde Cole
* The Daleks / Dalek Supreme - Nicholas Briggs
* The First Doctor - Stephen Noonan
* The Second Doctor - Michael Troughton
* The Third Doctor - Tim Treloar
== Crew ==
* Senior Producer - John Ainsworth
* Cover Art - Lee Johnson
* Director - Helen Goldwyn
* Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
* Music and Sound Design - Howard Carter
* Producer - David Richardson
* Script Editor - Matt Fitton
* Writer - Jonathan Morris
* Daleks and Davros created by Terry Nation
== Worldbuilding ==
* Space Station Zenobia is used as a strategic base in the Time War, having been displaced from time prior to demolition.
* The Time Lords used a time scoop to summon the Doctor.
* Falkus is protected by a transduction barrier.
* The Doctor identifies himself as “the Oncoming Storm”.
* The General triggers the TARDIS’ Hostile Action Displacement System.
* The TARDIS Cloister Bell tolls.
* Davros returns to Skaro and finds the Lake of Mutations.
* Davros mistakes Veklin at the Doctor's latest companion.
* The Daleks continue to count by Rels.
* The Doctor refers to change as "not a moment too soon."
== Notes ==
* Davros claims to enter the Doctor's TARDIS for the first time, contradicting the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip Up Above the Gods.
* The Skaro alert alarm from Genesis of the Daleks is heard again.
* The story's title is a homage to Mavic Chen's description of the Daleks in The Daleks' Master Plan.
* The story was recorded on 30 September 2022 at the Soundhouse.
* The cover of the story shows Davros having organic hands, contradicting his appearance on the covers of The Eighth Doctor: Time War: Volume Four, meanwhile the trailer shows him having cybernetic hands.
== Continuity ==
* Davros was incarcerated on Falkus after being accused of treason by the Dalek Emperor. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)
* The Doctor has heard the Kaled battle cry before. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
* The Doctor asks if Davros remembers Napoleon. (AUDIO: The Curse of Davros)
* Davros recalls his betrayal of the Kaleds to the Thals, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) and leading Daleks against the Supreme. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
* Davros notes the Time Lords’ attempt to use the Doctor to prevent the Daleks’ creation. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) The General claims the event is now time locked and any attempt to meddle would unravel the causal nexus. (AUDIO: Shockwave) Davros also mentions the Daleks' own attempts to prevent the genesis of the Time Lords. (AUDIO: Effect and Cause)
* The General recites the prophecy of the Hybrid. (TV: The Witch’s Familiar, Heaven Sent, Hell Bent)
* The Kaled clones believe that Skaro is the only inhabited world in the universe. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
* Davros refers to TARDISes as the "apotheosis" of the Time Lords' genius. (TV: Journey's End)
* The Doctor disapproves of Zenobia's redecoration. (TV: The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, The Day of the Doctor etc)
* The General threatens to have the Doctor 'dematerialised.' (TV: The War Games)
* The General vows to protect Gallifrey "For Gallifrey..." (TV: The End of Time)
== External links ==
Category:Once and Future audio stories
Category:2023 audio stories
Category:Seventh Doctor audio stories
Category:Davros audio stories
Category:Time Lord audio stories
Category:Dalek audio stories
Category:Stories set in the Last Great Time War
Category:First Doctor audio stories
Category:Second Doctor audio stories
Category:Third Doctor audio stories
Category:One part audio stories