The War Master: Solitary Confinement

#9.04. The Kicker ~ 7/10

◆ An Introduction

In a run-down asylum, screams echo in the halls as inmates roam, terrorizing the wardens. One patient has convinced himself that he is a Time Lord, but is he just playing the long game? No-one is quite what they seem.

Time to wrap up this box set, before the lunatics completely take over the asylum!

Unless they already have…

◆ Publisher’s Summary

When a member of the Temporal Inquisition arrives at the Drane Institute, they discover more to the Master’s madness than meets the eye – and his secrets now threaten them all.

◆ The War Master

Sometimes you have to play the long game, and he has been holding all the cards whilst institutionalised! The Master spends the majority of this episode toying with the people around him; fellow inmates, wardens, and even external forces aligned with the Daleks. Everyone who believed they were in charge of the situation turned out to be nothing more than one of his playthings. Some great material from Trevor Baxendale.

It is often claimed that people in asylums talk to themselves: listening to Sir Derek have a full-blown argument with himself wasn’t on my bingo card for ‘The Kicker’, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

Check mate means you’re beaten, up to a point: the Master believes there is always room for manoeuvre. Nothing is inescapable. He thinks that madness is such a lazy, tedious term – those who deploy it rarely have any experience of it, and it’s such a difficult thing to define – but for what it’s worth, he is in this place because he considers himself to be mad; by his own standards, not by other people’s. Poker is his favourite game… sometimes. It’s important not to let your opponent know what you’re thinking. Did the Master ever mention the time he met Wild Bill Hickok? An excellent poker player: face like carved stone when he was at the table. He was shot and killed during a poker game in a town called Deadwood. The hand he held consisted of two pairs – aces and eights, all black – and one other card. That fifth card is what Americans used to call “the kicker”: the card that determines the winner in a draw, if another player had a similar two pairs. The cards fell to the floor when Wild Bill was shot; the pairs both landed face up, but the kicker landed face down. It was never recorded what that card was, and to this day, a poker hand consisting two pairs of aces and eights is called “the Dead Man’s Hand”. Absolutely true! He was there, he should know. The Master was present at the signing of the Magna Carta, but he doesn’t like people talking about that. He isn’t very good at tests, not at his age, not in his condition. Boring is the first word that comes into his head when Madame Sendaya mentions Gallifrey. The Master has seen all the types of interrogation in his time; thought scanners, mind probes, sensoids. They’re all the same in the end. If he had a TARDIS, do you think he’d still be in the Drane Institute?

◆ Hearts and Minds

Trevor Baxendale leaves it surprisingly late to showcase his big reveal. Using some experimental neurosurgery, the Master has given everyone within the asylum something of a role reversal: the wardens were switched with the inmates, and vice versa. Bartholom, who has been checking in with the Master and psychoanalysing him during every episode, was once a deranged serial killer! Shilling first appeared as this broken inmate, but is supposed to be the director of the Institute!

There is something incredibly discomforting even thinking that your whole life could be a lie, that every memory has been engineered within your mind by some lunatic. Unfortunately, there are two reasons why I wasn’t impressed by this revelation. The first reason is that this episode has more padding than DFS, meaning that we barely get a second to think about the mind-swapping mayhem. The second reason is that I have heard all this before in a different range: memory editing and losing your sense of self is practically the bread and butter of the ‘Vienna’ audios, especially with stories like ‘Tabula Rasa’ from volume two.

◆ Sound Design

Screaming inmates can be heard throughout the corridors of the Drane Institute, struggling to cope with their own delusions and fantasies. The whole environment sounds decidedly unpleasant.

◆ Music

Robert Harvey rarely disappoints, and he isn’t going to start now! From the moment the Temporal Inquisition arrive at the Institute, we are greeted with this grand motif featuring what sound like church organs: you really get the impression that this organisation are not to be messed with.

◆ Conclusion

“The lunatics have taken over the asylum!”

Tables have been turned within the Drane Institute: all the inmates have been converted into wardens, whilst all the actual wardens have been tidied away in solitary confinement. The Master has been playing the long game, but his motivations are now revealed…

I really wanted to like this episode more. Having the arch-enemy of this franchise confined to an insane asylum is such a tantalisingly exciting concept that could go in several different directions. You could have him genuinely broken and deranged, assisted by someone who would soon live to regret it. Or you could have the Master taking over the sanitarium for his own nefarious purposes.

Trevor Baxendale went with the latter, but he didn’t really do anything with that concept until the final ten minutes! My biggest issue with this episode is that it contains more padding than DFS; there are countless scenes of characters interacting, but never doing anything to move the narrative along. It’s a real shame, because this writer has a reputation for creating some exquisitely horrifying stories: I can highly recommend ‘The Draconian Rage’ if you need proof of that.

‘Solitary Confinement’ has been a pretty underwhelming box set, but I was expecting incredible things from this finale: one of my favourite performers had even been cast – Eva Pope – to play a key character. Unfortunately, ‘The Kicker’ failed to do anything other than bore me into a coma.