The title of this story promises the Master. But the start of the story doesn’t give us the Master. It doesn’t really even give us the Doctor! Sylvester McCoy reprises his role as the Doctor, and I have to say that his stint with Big Finish has rocketed him up the charts for me on quality of Doctors. His modern take and stories introduce the manipulative mastermind that toyed with adversaries and allies alike!
And that Doctor is a fascinating one. But this story barely allows Sylvester to have any “screen time” (yes, it is an audio) in the first episode (as a reminder, the stories Big Finish does are done in a throwback style to the original classic Doctor Who where there are 4 episodes to a story and each story starts with replaying the last minute of the previous episode, and also we get a theme song at the start and end of each episode.) The Doctor starts off by interrupting someone about to kill someone and offers to tell the individual a story and after he finishes the story he won’t interfere with them doing what they feel they need to do.
And so he tells a story. Of a man with a severe injury to his face. A man with a single servant in his home, Jade. A man with two friends (a couple, Victor and Jackie) who come over to visit on a night when a storm is coming. A man who goes by the name Doctor John Smith but doesn’t really recall who he is.
This man seems gentle and kind and intelligent. His friends seem to be both more and less than they appear. Some murders are taking place in the area, and Victor is a cop looking into them.
To be honest, the first episode was rather blah as it set things up. The second episode was a bit better as the Doctor entered the story itself. But it wasn’t until the third and forth that the episode came alive. Because the individual calling himself John Smith is actually the Master. And just any master, but he is the post Keeper of Traken Master. Geoffrey Beevers is the actor that played the burned and disfigured version of the Master in that classic episode.
The real premise of this story is that the Doctor made a deal with Death placing the Master into this pseudo life where he is given a chance at living without knowledge of the atrocities he has committed. A chance at living a life without being given the option to consent to it. Ahhhh, back to the manipulator Sylvester Doctor. He is playing a game with the life and future of his oldest friend and oldest enemy.
If you watched the new Doctor Who series, you might recall an episode called Utopia (season 3) where Derek Jacobi played a gentle and kind man who didn’t really seem to know who he was but had flashes of a different life. That story feels very much like it was born out of this Big Finish story (not the first time, as the Eccleston story Dalek was a redo of the Big Finish story Jubilee!)
The second half of this story makes it an incredible journey as we get to watch a non sociopathic Master explore what life could have been like and whether he would rather attempt a life with love or resume the life path he had been on for untold years.
There is also a wonderful bit where we are given a glimpse at a tragic event during the childhood of the Doctor and the Master where a bully was about to kill one of them and in self defense of their friend, the bully was instead killed. A formative event that set both the Master and the Doctor on the path for their future as well as creating a distant gulf between these two childhood friends.
The whole framework of the Doctor talking to the shooter at the beginning and the way it ends seemed dumb to me though. If you are an assassin about to kill someone, you really don’t have the time to listen to the Doctor tell a rambling story for 90 minutes. Your target is now long gone. The window for that kill closed. I had actually forgotten how the shooter part resolved and had to go back and listen to the tail end again (after just listening to it a day ago!) I had forgotten, because it felt dumb and forgettable.
This is the sort of episode that I love Big Finish for, and I want to replay it for someone so we can discuss it in depth afterwards! I’m giving it an 8 star review because I really do feel like they could have done the start better. The second half is about an 11, but the first half is about a 6. And sure, you need the first half to get to the second. And the last two minutes convinced me to round down to 8 instead of up to 9.
As a side note, this was Big Finish Doctor Who episode number 49. They were ramping up and getting their feet under them still. It is currently available as a bundle of stories for $10, combined with Davros and Omega. Well worth it! Make sure you are looking at the Geoffrey Beevers one though as they did another story called Master! which I haven’t listened to and is a different actor in the role.