The Potential Daleks: War of the Morai

"Your empathy and compassion protects you."

Writers: Nicholas Briggs & Mark Wright

Format: Audio

Released: December 2025

Series: Second Doctor Adventures 4.03

Featuring: Second Doctor, Jamie, Zoe

Synopsis

The Doctor and friends dash back to the Vanishing Point, hoping to warn Ananke and the Morai of an impending invasion. However, what they discover is a fiendish plan in operation and a population in exile. 

Zoe must resort to an extraordinary use of her own mental powers, while the Doctor, Raven and Jamie fight to restore order and save the universe.

Verdict

War of the Morai was a strong story to conclude what has been an excellent The Potential Daleks fourth series of Second Doctor Adventures! I thought this rounded out what has been a really fascinating and complicated storyline nicely, and things are far from being over for this splinter version of the Second Doctor! I find that incredibly exciting and whilst it is audacious and kind of cheating in going Season 6b about it by having this Doctor just moments before his forced exile in The War Games, I'm all here for it when we get storytelling like this. I have found things enthralling and it's just wonderful to continue the adventures with an older Jamie and Zoe. Will they get a goodbye that they deserved this time around? I'm skipping ahead here but the idea of them all going to Gallifrey in the next boxset excites me greatly. This would be the earliest depiction we have of the Doctor on his home planet post-The War Games and that excites me greatly, especially with this being right after as far as the Doctor is concerned. The throwback to The Vanishing Point here was good and expected given what the Daleks were trying to do in using the barricade to create an eternal Skaro. That's a tantalising prospect and hearing the Emperor revel in him being a Dalek mutated from Time Lord DNA was glorious. I sincerely hope we haven't heard the last of him and with it being alluded to that he might have survived the fate of the passage, I suspect he will return and I'm very excited for the rematch. There's just something special about the Emperor and Nicholas Briggs does a stellar job in making him sound booming and a much larger presence than your average Dalek. I thought the returns of Ananke and Aither were really good and the former really presented well just how much the Morai and the Vanishing Point have been impacted by the coming of the Daleks. It's been an awfully long time since the Doctor, Zoe and Raven were around and I enjoyed the emotion of the devastation. Aither being resurrected was unexpected but I guess it shouldn't have been given the nature of the Morai! The description of how they never really died was eery but then when we got into the calcification of the race and how this made the barricade of the Vanishing Point it got into the realm of being uncomfortable. Zoe's relationship with Aither was good to expand upon and he really did seem broken at not being accepted as companion in the TARDIS. He wanted to travel and who could blame him! I liked that the Doctor was sombre as he admitted that in ordinary circumstances he would accept him alongside them, but after everything that happened with the Daleks here and his very nature, that wasn't going to be possible. I thought Raven was a little quiet in the story which was a shame but it was Zoe who shone by manipulating the Daleks with her eidetic memory. She'd willed into being the belief that only Aither could control the gateway and his shock at that was fun stuff. She was playing things very well and ensured another ending for the Daleks within the barricade of the gateway. Who knows what fate befell the Daleks here. It's a neat way to conclude things but it still leaves things open-ended for their inievtiable return. But it's this Doctor's return to Gallifrey alongside Raven that I'm now very excited for moving forward in the next boxset! It does feel like we're building to an ending of this arc and whilst I don't know if that is the case, it feels like it and Gallifrey is a wonderful place to finish if so. Overall, a great occlusion to the series! 

Rating: 8/10