Next we have Davros featuring, you guessed it, the Master! No of course I’m kidding. This was part of a special trilogy in 2003 during the 40th anniversary celebrations which Big Finish was spearheading. While the Eighth Doctor got the main 40th anniversary story in the utterly insane story Zagreus, Doctors Five, Six and Seven got their own stories pairing them up with an individual villain and naming the stories after said villain. With Five we got Omega, Seven got the Master and Six was left with Davros. Picking up in between Resurrection and Revelation of the Daleks, Davros is restored to life thanks to the head of the galaxy’s largest corporation TAI. Mr Baines hopes to use Davros to make further advancements in TAI’s technology while his wife Mrs Baines (voiced by Wendy Padbury) is a historian who admires and is fascinated by Davros. The Doctor attempts to persuade them of how dangerous Davros is but ends up being employed to work alongside him instead.

This scenario is as entertaining as it sounds, listening to the Doctor and Davros trying to one up the other at work is very funny, but beyond that this story is a fantastic dive into Davros’s character. It’s the first Big Finish story to feature him and Terry Molloy easily sinks back into the role in what I can honestly say is his best work as Davros. I already considered him in this position but didn’t fully appreciate it from just the TV episodes, but Terry Molloy is by far the best Davros actor in all of Doctor Who, you can tell his successor in Modern Who, Julian Bleach (second best) is modelling his performance more on Molloy’s than his predecessors.

Unlike any other Davros story, this one focuses solely on him without featuring his creations which helps to demonstrate just how deadly Davros can be even without his Daleks flanking him. The story even offers our first glimpse into Davros’s origins as we hear flashbacks from before his accident and the signs of the cruel, power crazed monster he would later become. This would be expanded on further in the four-part mini-series I, Davros, a biography from childhood to wheelchair that I highly recommend. It’s an infinitely more superior origin story than the five wasted minutes Steven Moffat gave us in The Magician’s Apprentice.