📝8/10

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: on a date with the Master!

MY SCATTERED AND TOTALLY IRRELEVANT NOTES:

The fourth and final story of the set successfully builds an atmosphere of finality, as the Unbound Universe is on its last legs, with the remaining refugees preparing to leave.

The Reverend Mother from The Library in the Body returns, and she’s great fun (but fairly superfluous), especially when she’s drunk towards the end; but even better are Forz and Ampz, two robotic sidekicks, whose story isn’t given enough attention.

Love the idea of people flocking to an emporium at the end of the universe, which is just a big department store with really good closing deals.

Mark Gatiss (under the guise of Sam Kisgart) leaves a strong impression from his very first scene as the soft-spoken, suave, and deadly charming emporium manager. Emma Reeves relishes in toying with his presence and the mystery of his personality, and even though I knew he was the Master from the start, the teases to his identity were tantalising.

There’s good humour in how the story plays with stereotypical department stores with their rubbish sales, bored staff, and hopeless elevators, and in how it makes the Doctor get stuck in an elevator because he’s never invented the sonic screwdriver in this reality.

I truly enjoy the scenes with Benny and the Master discussing matters and sort of having a date over champagne.

Surprisingly, there isn’t a lot of tension here, and the audio takes a good while to turn properly exciting. Things take a turn once Unbound begins convincing the people that the portal out is fake and that people have gone missing.

It’s interesting to slowly learn about the relationship between the Doctor and the Master of the Unbound Universe, which differs slightly from the one in the regular one.

I’m a bit bummed by the ending, as I was expecting a bit more of an explosive finale rather than this fairly minimalistic one.