In Genesis of the Daleks, the Doctor asked if he had the right to kill
the Daleks at their very beginning and years later the Seventh Doctor would say
yes he did as he blew up the planet Skaro in Remembrance of the Daleks.
That is a question that is asked today in Master a story where the Doctor has made a deal with Death to give
the Master ten years of a life and at the end of the ten years he has to kill
him, but unlike the Daleks, he can’t bring himself to harm his old friend and
wants to find a way to save him. Joseph
Lidster uses this plot to reveal the past of the Master and why he is a killer
after being the friend of the Doctor for their childhood which is revealed in
Part Four of the story in an extremely heartbreaking sequence that makes you
question the morality of both the Master and the Doctor. I won’t spoil exactly what about the Time
Lords’ past that Lidster reveals, but I will say it makes the story an
extremely emotional ride.
The emotion is only one
aspect of the story while an important aspect that goes most ignored is the
setting. The setting is a Victiorian
style mansion on the outskirts of Perfugium which is separated from the rest of
the town a la And Then There Were None…
and before being owned by the Master it was owned by a man called Wollstonecraft
in reference to Mary Shelley creator of Frankenstein. Every scene in the setting feels like being
in an old house that is hiding a lot of secrets in the shadows. There are creaking floorboards and a
disembodied voice in the shadows that promises our characters are all doomed to
die on the fateful night. Lidster’s
script and Russell’s direction also are odd in that while the entire story
minus of course the frame story, takes place in the house you get a feel for
what has been shaking the town of Perfugium in the previous weeks. There’s a murderer killing prostitutes a la
Jack the Ripper and bodies without their hearts are being found on the
streets. Nobody is safe in their houses and
the head inspector of the police is at his wits end especially when a girl who
isn’t a prostitute shows up dead.
I should also take at
least a moment to talk about that frame story.
The story is the Seventh Doctor telling a nameless assassin what
happened that fateful night on Perfugium while a parade is happening that the
assassin is getting ready to shoot.
While it is never revealed who the politician the man is going to
assassinate, but it doesn’t matter as the Doctor is the one who has to kill him
as a part of another deal with death.
Sylvester McCoy gives his best Doctor Who performance in this
story. McCoy shows that he can be
extremely sympathetic and channel the Virgin New Adventures style Doctor as
this is a story after all the novels have taken place and at least for me is
just about to go to Skaro to get the Master’s remains leading into The TV Movie.
The story is also notable
for being the second appearance of Geoffrey Beevers’ Master in Big Finish
although here he is barely the Master.
That isn’t a bad thing as we get to see just how good the Master could
have been if the events that led him to be evil were different. He has friends, has a lover and has a wide
range of emotions to give off with his voice being the more sympathetic
character. There is the Master’s master
Death played by Charlie Hayes, Wendy Padbury’s daughter, who is extremely
creepy playing Death as what seems to be a twenty-one year old girl with
absolute power. She has everyone wrapped
around her finger as she’s the one who’s caused Victor, the Master’s best
friend on Perfugium, to become a complete psychopath who is broken and
Jacqueline to become smitten. She is the
one who stops the Master from becoming good in the end and causes the Seventh
Doctor, the master manipulator, the man who has an iron will to fall apart as
she makes sure he loses his friend and have to bring himself to kill an
innocent man which he was never really able to do to an innocent.
To summarize, Master is a powerhouse story that is my
favorite from Big Finish’s catalogue as it works as a bookend to the Seventh Doctor’s
life and asks several morality questions about if the Doctor is actually meant
to be the hero of his story. The acting
is spot on and the writing just transports you into the story’s setting as everything
works in perfection. 100/100.
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