Big Finish – Master! Nemesis Express Review

Love him or hate him, the Eric Roberts incarnation of the Master has been receiving an overhaul of late, featuring in a number of Big Finish releases, both standalone and boxsets, as a result, this Master feels more like a treat for fans. I really enjoyed his debut boxset last year and was really looking forward to this one, with him facing off once again with Vienna Salvatori.

Nemesis Express opens with, well, Nemesis Express – written by Robert Whitlock. The Master, once again trapped in the time vortex, manages to worm his way out and into the life of a young woman called Passion, a thief who has been hiding out on the time and space train Kairos. But the Kairos has had a new passenger recently, a reformed bounty hunter called Vienna who has been hired to find an extremely valuable gem and the man who has stolen it. With this set being one continuing story, Nemesis Express is a little difficult to look at and review on its own as it is a set up for the following two episodes, albeit a very entertaining one.

There is enough incident and intrigue to keep a listener engaged throughout. Where Nemesis Express really does succeed in its handling of the Master, who once again has to literally worm his way into the story, beginning as a terrifying background presence before finding a body towards the end to take over. While this isn’t a new thing for this Master to do, it still works effectively as being very sinister. Eric Roberts does a brilliant job with the material too, delighting in his dialogue and getting to be truly repulsive.

I’ve also been a fan of Vienna played once again by Chase Masterton and she’s a welcome presence here, bringing enough light and humour to the proceedings to stop them from being truly depressing. However, Vienna has been suffering lately, since her own series wrapped up, she’s bounced around a few different sets, and we’ve not learnt anything new about her. And what also surprised me was how unfazed she was by everything going on around her, even though Big Finish I think are trying to make her this incarnation of the Master nemesis. But Masterson is a great presence nonetheless and I hope if the Master gets another boxset, she will continue to be a thorn in his side, even if she needs a bit more character.

Capture the Chronovore! sees the Master, a group of train passengers, Vienna and Passion getting caught up in the Master’s latest scheme using the power of the Chronovores to develop a weapon of mass destruction. Author Lizbeth Myles once again does a great job with the story, though it does suffer the same fate as the previous outing in that it exists to set up the finale. Unfortunately, the Chronovores aren’t really used very well, though Big Finish has done another great job of realising them in the audio medium.

I’m still not entirely sure what went wrong here, maybe it was the same as the previous story in that it only seems to exist to set up the finale, but even though this should be one long story, if each episode is its own thing anyway then surely each episode should be able to stand on their own two feet too. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy each episode, it’s just a great shame that neither of these two episodes gets the breathing room they deserve to really stand on their own.

But once again there is some brilliant and catty interplay between the Master and Vienna to be had, the Master once again getting to prove why this incarnation is one of the most dangerous and deranged, literally killing almost everyone simply because he can. Roberts does a great job of being utterly terrifying and it’s a joy to behold.

It all comes to a close with Passion by Robert Valentine. I don’t think I can review this one without sounding a little mean, but Passion makes the previous two episodes feel completely superfluous to where the boxset was going. Very little from them is even referenced here, making one have to wonder what the point of the previous episodes actually was.

That’s not to say that Passion is a bad episode, it kept my attention all the way through, but what it does do is highlight the issues with this boxset as a whole. Vienna and Passion have no character arc at all beyond trying to get this gem that Vienna boarded the train for in the first place and apart from trying to stop the Master, there isn’t really any arc for him. I also felt a little cheated that the Master once again becomes his snake form and goes into the time vortex, rather than remaining in a corporeal form, which given his actions throughout this set would have been the perfect punishment for him.

It’s such a shame that this episode doesn’t build on the previous two and build to a satisfying conclusion. Why where are they hunting the Chronovores? Why was the Master actually there? Why did he have the gem? And why did he suddenly want to crash the Kairos train into Earth? None of those questions really get answered and it’s a shame because what is otherwise another good set just falls completely flat at the final hurdle.

It sounds like I didn’t enjoy Nemesis Express. I actually did, I thought it was a perfectly entertaining way to spend a few hours. Eric Roberts and Chase Masterson are in fine form, as usual, it’s just a shame that the script doesn’t give their characters anything new to do. I do hope that, Master! gets a third boxset, but one that gives these characters the final showdown they deserve, and one that shows how much the characters have grown since their inception. I was never bored listening to Nemesis Express, but it didn’t wow me either, it’s perfectly fine, but far from one of the best Big Finish releases from this year.