The villains trilogy ends with Doctor Who's most famous baddie taking centre stage but in a tale that features the rogue Time Lord in a decidedly different way than we're used to seeing him. Set almost entirely within the confines of an old house on a colony world that evokes the Edwardian era, the play starts with the naff framing device of the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) doing his usual 'talk the sniper out of shooting' riff that was embarrassing in 1988. Thankfully, the story the Doctor decides to tell the assassin is a better one: calling himself Dr John Smith, the Master (Geoffrey Beevers), suffering from amnesia, has started a new life, being an excellent and caring surgeon and close friend to the Chief Adjudicator (Who legend Philip Madoc) and his wife Jacqueline (Anne Ridley). Celebrating his tenth year as a resident, the Master is plagued by disturbing images of murder and destruction. Is the house affecting him in some way or is his true nature bleeding through? When the Doctor, injured by a lightning strike, turns up dramatically, the Master finds a kindred spirit. Can the two oft opposed Time Lords restart their friendship from their Gallifreyan days? Can the Master be redeemed? As secrets spill out we get a view into the childhood of the two Time Lords and an event which defined them both...
Joseph Lidster's play is a massive improvement on his last, the laughably bad The Rapture, but is still a little too influenced by the New Adventures novels of the 1990s. The first disc is the best, with a first episode that is confident to just have Smith and his two friends talk, outlining their characteristics, their bond and the fault lines that underpin that bond. The only real problem is that this is not the Master we know. As the story develops we find out why but it's as if Beevers (only really the Master for one story on TV anyway and only on his second audio) is playing another character entirely, a noble, nice one, devoted to his friends and to helping people. When Tennant went human in Human Nature, he was still recognisably the Doctor. Still, it's a confident opening where the problems of unsolved murders and a possible curse seed lots of clues for later. When a charred Doctor turns up at the end of Episode One things continue to improve with Smith and the Doctor striking up an immediate rapport. McCoy is on fine form here, playing an older, wiser and more melancholic version of our hero.
It's only really towards the end of the third episode that the wheels fall off the bus. While the identity of the mysterious murderer was obvious enough (with only 4 characters to choose from), it's the addition of the personification of Death herself (Charlie Hayes) that tips the story into silly territory and reminds us of some of the excesses of the New Adventures days. We're back to the old nonsense about Time and Death being entities (a bit like the daffy Guardians on TV) with the Doctor as Time's Champion leaving the Master to be Death's Champion. All this last minute guff totally undermines Lidster's previous thematic thread (though rather laboured) about whether evil is born or nurtured. It runs throughout the play but is then changed to 'Death made me do it' in the last episode.
Then we come to Lidster's addition to the mythos of Who with his reveal of a decisive event from the Time Lords' childhood days. It's surprisingly unoriginal - as children the pair were bullied by another and one killed him when the bully was hurting the other. It's all so dull and human, another fault of the New Adventures which was to graft cod human psychology onto our alien heroes and foes. We then sink deeper into the morass with the reveal that it was the Doctor who made the Master forget, making a deal with Death to give his old friend a new chance, in return for coming back to kill him 10 years later. The cause of the guilt for the Doctor - you've guessed it - it was he who killed the bully but in a dream Death made a bargain and the killer became the Master, therefore cursing him to his life of loneliness and evil. Yes, it's fan fiction of the most ghastly order. Please just stop.
This is a shame as, for three quarters of the play, Master is very enjoyable and all the principals turn in fantastic performances. Lidster has real promise but this is the second promising audio he's completely messed up and I'm not that keen to hear a third.
GK Rating: *** The Blog of Delights
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