“My Master will break his bones! My Master will ionise his blood…!”
A uniformly strong cast. Geoffrey Beevers being given good strong material to play with. And a writer pairing that with skill and convincing settings. With this, the second of three installments of Big Finish’s Dark Gallifrey series, we will be served with an insight into this withered, decayed, incarnation of the Master, which has the effect of making him almost… admirable?! No, that’s not the correct word; what we do end up being given is a surprising, and very unexpected, look into just what it is that’s going on inside the mind of this desperate and highly dangerous villain. And in doing so, writers Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle succeed in adding an extra dimension to the character. They bequeath him motive.
When the trailer for this release was pinned to the Big Finish website, there was nothing at all to suggest either the plot or the setting. It was altogether a thoroughly underwhelming primer, and certainly nothing that would sell this release to a passing customer. A strange thing to edit and authorise such a very poor sampling, because, as the story itself gets underway, the writers have been blessed with very capable sound design and so an immediate ambience of 18th Century Venice is conjured; so professional is the attention to detail in this multi-layered sound design that it’s possible to see the canals and sense the smells and the humidity of the floating city as we follow a beleaguered despatch, as he races against the twin obstacles of time and Gondalier ferries to make his delivery.
We are gently but firmly brought into a world that feels like it might be another planet in a way, and yet the particular opulence and grand theatre of a period in Earth history is the setting and background for the latest chapter of the Master’s patient search for… something.
Along the avenues and waterways, the Master can move freely in the night, when in real terms the city comes to a different kind of life and we learn of master mask-maker Lupo, a much sought after designer and maker of decorative dance masks for the elites and the theatres; such is the confidence and skill of the two writers that all of this feels very organic storytelling unfolding. Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle have a natural gift for world-building. The 18th Century that we inhabit here is all around us — it isn’t simply something we are being told about: we are in it! And so too is the Master. Adapting to his environment, and one almost suspects feeling comfortable in his ability to move and travel with relative ease and freedom in this extraordinary world he has arrived in.
Driven by his own survival instinct and the lust for new power, the Master is matched and counter-pointed by wealthy brothers searching for lost sisters, by faulty failed androids wanting only to please their Master, and by celebrated but elusive mask-makers hiding their own great secrets… It’s a storytelling approach whereby we are not being invited to ‘care’ about any of these characters; rather, we are being gently coaxed along to find out what each of them actually wants here, which one is the most ruthless in their personal ambitions, and whether they deserve the fate that life gives them. Indeed, as we come to the final quarter, what becomes apparent is that what we are presented with here is a small cast of characters who have been reduced by their circumstances to being isolated from those around them, having only themselves left to look after, and through the process have had their better instincts eroded to the point where they become, unknowingly, highly self-destructive. Their lives can only lead to one destination… It’s a storytelling point made manifest as we are unexpectedly treated to a flashback to this Master’s earlier years as he uncovers a secret gathering hidden away on Gallifrey, and given some needed insight into some of the characters seeded in these two stories so far. We are treated to a dark look at the underbelly of Gallifrey, a society apparently slowly losing its moral compass as renegades begin to detach from the mainstream order, and personal ambitions begin to be pursued. It all works to contribute to the overall themes of the Dark Gallifrey series, but more immediately as Mooney and Pringle go to demonstrate, it works to show something of basic human nature too.
This latest installment of the series focuses on the grisly incarnation of the Master as played by Geoffrey Beevers, and ends up being an astonishing experience: it starts out as presenting one thing — a pursuit of Lupo — and at the three-quarters mark suddenly plays a deft switch in exchanging what we thought we knew, for something a good deal more personal for the Master. And in doing so, this unexpected sharp shift in the storytelling emphasis delivers a marvellous insight into why the Master is what he is, and why it is he simply does not trust anybody. But himself.
Here is a story that reveals itself to be about what betrayal does to a person; it’s about what living on conformist Gallifrey does to its long-lived people. It’s also about power, and, ultimately, revenge. Recovering a sense of self-honour.
And as Geoffrey Beevers demonstrates, if you were wise, you really wouldn’t want the Master coming after you…
A superb release — in nearly every respect!
