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TARDIS Guide

Overview

Released

Friday, October 31, 2003

Written by

Joseph Lidster

Cover Art by

Clayton Hickman

Directed by

Gary Russell

Runtime

132 minutes

Time Travel

Future

Tropes (Potential Spoilers!)

Amnesia, Ghosts

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

Perfugium

Synopsis

Many years ago, on a dark and stormy night, the disfigured and enigmatic Doctor John Smith invited his closest friends, Inspector Victor Schaeffer and his wife, to a dinner to celebrate his birthday. A mere few hours later all the occupants in that house had been changed — some were dead, others mentally scarred forever by the events of that night.

So, what happened to the distinguished dinner guests on that evening? Perhaps we'll never know. But two clues have led to much speculation — found outside the study window, a charred umbrella with a curved red handle and found inside the house, a blood-stained copy of Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

For one person, this night represented an ending: an ending to one thousand years of darkness and an ending to ten years of light.

But for everyone else, is there no ending of this one night of Hell?

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15 reviews

This review contains spoilers!

This one is the only one of the trilogy I can say is actually excellent. Maybe I was over hyped but I didn't really like Omega and I thought Davros was really good but lacked something.

In this case both the main plot and the character flashback are intertwined so it is a far more cohesive story. The slow build up and tension is perfect, the setting is eerie and each revelation is wonderfully realised.

The resolution is left open ended, which I normally like, but in this case I would have preferred if they went all in and gave us the Master's choice (I mean they already have contradicted a lot of the character's canon so who cares)

So yeah, the dialogue is excellent, the concept of Death intriguing and McCoy is in top form.


MarkOfGilead19

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the single best treatment of the master there has ever been, without question


megaminxwin

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This story is incredibly dark, and gives us such a deep dive into the psyche of why the Master is the way he is. It's the Seventh Doctor at his manipulative best, and we have maybe the most unstoppable force in the universe controlling the strings. An essential story for understanding the Master.


Guardax

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Beavers is great at playing the master and his performance always tends to be magnetic and I also had easily one of McCoy’s best turns in a Doctor Who audio. David Darlington still continues to be one of the finest sound designers on Big Finish’s payroll with his atmospheric effects that portrays the claustrophic space really well.

The most of the side cast comes off extremally well except for Death herself who comes off as way too camp and wisecracking to be taken seriously especially in a story this foreboding. The final part also kind of drags on way too long but this is still a great story in the main range that explores the Doctor/Master relationship in an actual interesting way.

 

 


Allowableman2

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We have one of my earliest experiences with Big Finish in Master. As I mentioned previously with the Davros audio from the Sixth Doctor, Big Finish made a trilogy of audios to celebrate the 40th anniversary where Doctors Five, Six and Seven were paired up with an individual villain in a story that focuses more being a character piece for said villain. In this case we have the Seventh Doctor facing the Master in a very unconventional story that draws a lot of influence from the famous Seventh Doctor novel Human Nature (though most fans will be more familiar with the Tenth Doctor episode of the same name).

Dr John Smith has been a resident of Perfugium for ten years after stumbling into a hostel with no memory of who he was and no indication of what once he had been other than his physical disfigurement. On the night he considers his birthday, exactly ten years after his arrival, he invites his two closest friends for dinner, to take their minds off his mysterious past and the fact the town is plagued by a wave of murders. But the night is about to become much darker as an old curse looms over the house, something evil stalks the corridors and from the storm comes a strange man who knows John Smith’s true identity and has come to kill him.

This story is sort of a mix between Human Nature (both novel and episode) and Utopia from Series 3 where the Master has spent a decade living as a kind and gentle person but is troubled by thoughts buried deep in his mind of what sort of person he used to be. Geoffrey Beevers puts in his finest work in what I can honestly say is my favourite Master story. It delves into the Master’s beginnings with his childhood and that first act to start him down his dark path. Or so it seems at first as the climax features a shocking twist that paints the Doctor in a grimmer light. Master is much more psychological and introspective than most Doctor Who stories, the vast majority of the story is less on plot and more on discussions between characters on what makes a killer who they are, what can drive someone to perform acts of evil, whether it is through their own choice or something else at work. It’s not a cheerful story and it has one massive downer of an ending but that’s sort of the point and what makes the Master such a tragic villain and how things could’ve been between him and the Doctor. If you’re a fan of the Master, then this is a must listen.


DanDunn

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