The Master: wanted for crimes without number, across five galaxies.
The Master: escaped his pursuers. Last known location: rural Hexford, England, Earth.
The Master: dead and buried in an unmourned grave, in a lonely churchyard.
Apparently.
The Master: wanted for crimes without number, across five galaxies.
The Master: escaped his pursuers. Last known location: rural Hexford, England, Earth.
The Master: dead and buried in an unmourned grave, in a lonely churchyard.
Apparently.
AND YOU WILL OBEY ME
Following the example of 2015, Big Finish released another trilogy in 2016 featuring three different Doctors in a linked set of three stories. This year, the stories all feature the Master, and the first of these is “And You Will Obey Me,” from Alan Barnes. While it certainly does some great work with the Master, it’s also a disjointed, overstuffed release that fails to live up to its potential.
I think Geoffrey Beevers’ Master has been one of the most wasted recurring elements in the entire Big Finish stable. Instead of using him as the menacing, desperate character we saw on television, we’ve often seen him as a figure of fun or a generic ranting villain. Here, though, Barnes absolutely nails the character. He’s desperate to survive above all other priorities, and the way he corrupts a group of teenagers to serve as his eyes and ears while he recovers from an accident is both frightening and utterly in keeping with his character. The Master in this story takes a sadistic relish in acting like the world’s worst father, taunting his “children” in one breath and ordering them around in the next, and Beevers eagerly sinks his teeth into the role in one of his best performances. But then that points to the biggest problem with the story: the Master is hardly in it! He doesn’t appear at all in the first two parts save for a couple of background noises, appears almost entirely in flashback in the third episode, and finally steps onto center stage in the final episode. This would be okay if the story was interesting when he wasn’t around, but it wasn’t.
While the Master is hiding on Earth trying to recover, a number of different forces are trying to find him. There are two sets of alien assassins on the prowl: one is a rogue AI that wants to kill the Master to balance its moral ledger against previous crimes, the other is a pair of giant dragonfly assassins that only live for 30 days. There’s interesting material in both races, but the story does absolutely nothing with it. The dragonflies in particular are thoroughly unimpressive; the Doctor dispenses with them with very little effort and later a random character with a gun unceremoniously kills them off. How on earth were they expecting to kill the Master? And they’re not played for humor, so I assume we’re expected to take them seriously. I like the androids better, especially the revelation that they’re making all this effort to improve their morals by slightly over 1%, but even their role in the story is too cluttered.
The story is also about the Master’s effect on the children he controlled. There’s some nonsense about the Master’s symbiotic nuclei bleeding out into the surrounding atmosphere – seriously, what ARE symbiotic nuclei? – and rendering the children ageless. So in the story’s present, they’re all in their 40s, but they still look like 16 year olds. Does the story spend much time exploring how it feels to be a mature adult with the appearance of a teenager? How teenage hormones battle against a lifetime of experience? Since I’m asking the question you know the answer is “not really” but it’s still disappointing considering the potential. It doesn’t help that three of the four children are utterly free of personality; the fourth, Mikey (Russ Bain), has a personality but he’s arbitrarily removed from the script in an unrewarding way.
Oh, and there are some Russians in the story, and one character makes a point of saying how unmemorable they are. This is an unintentional microcosm for all the characterization in the story. I haven’t even mentioned the fifth Doctor, who is traveling alone in this story, but he’s barely involved in the plot until the final episode. For a story that’s so overstuffed with underdeveloped characters, there isn’t a strong plot tying everything together. I did like Jamie Anderson’s direction, and Richard Fox and Lauren Yason always provide fine sound design. But in the end, “And You Will Obey Me” is a mess that wastes a great portrayal of the Master and a disappointing start to an ambitious trilogy.
Not great.
5/10