A four-part adventure featuring the Master’s exploits in the Time War.
On the mining colony Callous, Elliot King struggles to meet the demands of its governor, Teremon. The odds are stacked against him, and his options are running low. The world that once promised dreams now offers only despair.
A wild Ood stalks the forests, carrying an antiquated phone. The caller promises much – he claims he can change the world – but he always speaks a devastating truth.
He is the Master and the Ood will obey him… but to what end?
1. Call for the Dead by James Goss
2. The Glittering Prize by James Goss
3. The Persistence of Dreams by Guy Adams
4. Sins of the Father by Guy Adams
THE WAR MASTER: THE MASTER OF CALLOUS
The problem with the first War Master set was that it tried to do way too much: in addition to telling a sweeping, galaxy-spanning Time War tale, it also gave itself the responsibility of bridging directly to the TV series and “Utopia.” As a result, it didn’t succeed at either goal. But now, after a brief appearance in the UNIT series, the War Master is back in a second set, “The Master of Callous,” that tells a smaller, self-contained story and works all the better for it.
Freeing this series of continuity obligations was a great idea. “The Master of Callous” is basically a look at one of the Master’s schemes without the Doctor around to stop him: he’s on a mission to collect a rare mineral that is quite dangerous to mine. Rather than getting it himself, he manipulates an entire colony world into doing his bidding, working from behind the scenes like an evil NA Doctor. The set is split into four stories: “Call for the Dead” and “The Glittering Prize” by James Goss and “The Persistence of Dreams” and “Sins of the Father” by Guy Adams. It’s a bit unfortunate that the first two stories are clearly better than the second two, but this is a strong set overall with no serious weak spots.
You’ll immediately notice one thing about this set: it is unrelentingly grim. The first story features a great conceit: a “wild” Ood on the colony planet Callous that carries an old-fashioned telephone receiver from person to person, asking them to answer phone calls. Because this is creepy, they rarely answer; when they finally do, the message is from the Master and he invariably talks them into suicide. See, the colony was originally founded by Elliot King (Simon Ludders) as a haven for artists, a place where they could find their muse in nature. But it sits atop a huge supply of a rare, valuable mineral, and so the region’s governor (Pippa Haywood) continually places financial demands on Elliot to force him to put his people to mining. Being close to the mineral causes deadly hallucinations, however, so Elliot resists, doing everything in his power to try to mine in other ways – but none of it works. Soon, he loses everything, including his family, and that’s when he finally answers the Ood’s phone call.
The remainder of the set tells the story of Elliot’s estranged daughter Cassandra (Maeve Bluebell Wells) who comes to the colony with her wife Martine (Sam Béart) and resolves to do what her father couldn’t and make the colony a success. And that’s when the Master shows up as well, simultaneously teaching Cassandra how to properly operate the mine – using Ood labor protected from the hallucinations with psychic blockers – and provoking conflict between the colony and the governor. This plan takes years to execute, building to one goal: separating a huge amount of the mineral from both the colony and the governor and then leaving no trace behind. While Goss does a largely brilliant job of setting this up, both in portraying Elliot’s struggles and Cassandra’s fall from grace, Adams doesn’t quite stick the landing. The third story, “The Persistence of Dreams,” is devoted entirely to Martine, alone on an asteroid relay station, slowly losing her sanity to the effects of the mineral. While Sam Béart’s performance is excellent, this is the sort of story that’s actually more effective in a long-running series. Here, we barely know Martine, and while her hallucinations and memories certainly flesh her out, the end result of the story renders that development meaningless. A different problem arises in the final story – Cassandra also loses her grip on normalcy, but both the writing and Wells’ performance are wildly over the top and unconvincing.
All that said, this is Derek Jacobi’s best performance as the Master by far. He’s brilliant, he’s cunning, and he puts forth an utterly convincing façade of kindliness over his completely amoral core. This isn’t a ridiculous plan to conquer the universe, this is a specific plan with a specific goal, and he puts forth years of effort to carry it out, bringing it to fruition with ruthless efficiency. He’s also fully in keeping with his TV portrayal and quite distinct from the other Masters. Of course, it helps that Jacobi is the best actor ever to play the part, but as a showcase for the Master it’s hard to do much better than this.
Overall, “The Master of Callous” is a strong set anchored around a fantastic performance in the title role. It’s not perfect – some of the writing is obvious, and the second half is weaker than the first – but it’s light years better than the first War Master set. It’s also arguably the best Time War-related set Big Finish has released, which is not a coincidence given how little the Time War actually features.
Highly recommended.
8/10