Doctor Who: Dark Gallifrey: Master! – Part 1 from Big Finish Review

The Dark Gallifrey range has had many foes exploring and exploiting its strange phantasmagoria and murky recesses. Now it’s the turn of the movie Master Eric Roberts, who returns in a trilogy of Big Finish adventures by Lizzie Hopley, to be released over July, August, and September this year. 

Dark Gallifrey Master Part 1 sets up some high stakes as a young Gallifreyian woman, Gamara, is forced by an investigator, the Mind Shield, to revisit an incident from when she was a student. Two people died. When they crashed on a ravaged Gallifrey in a psychic forest, some of the group were injured, and the Vector was one of the people who died on the trip. What is interesting to me is that we are exploring two different time streams through her memories. There is the past of the field trip. Also, the present is with Gamara, now a councillor, a politician on Gallifrey, where her friends are being picked off one by one and killed. The reason is why and by whom. 

The cast features the writer of the story, Liz Hopley, as the Mind Shield and Claire Huckle as Gamara and they are excellent together. As they work through events, it’s compelling to find out more. Gamara doesn’t like the Mind Shield as she probes Gamara and the layers of her memory, whether deliberately hidden or by trauma. The recollection is slow but with the Master involved, the audience knows his malign presence is causing havoc somehow. The tone is purposely dark; it’s the worst nightmare crashing and in an alien environment. 

The 12-step phases by the Mind Shield to help Gamara remember are a great framing device but unlike the 12-step recovery programme for addicts, they don’t feel as if they will bring Gamara any comfort. There is a certain reluctance from Gamara initially to reveal what happened to all the others from the field trip. Gamara softens at one point at the thought of her friend Soolinda, or “Sooli”, also on the field trip, as there seems to be a very close friendship or relationship between them. However, the Mind Shield reveals Soolinda is in a living death state, which shocked me. First phase: Honesty, Second phase: Faith, Third phase: Surrender, and then they get to Phase four: Soul Searching.

Slowly, as Gamara opens up, it’s apparent that the tutor on the field trip was Eric Robert’s Master in disguise as an examiner, “The Vector”, and she understands they were tricked by him. As Gamara recounts her memories, it is clear that whilst he is seemingly a benign if spiky character to the students, he has influenced and exploited their normal lecturer, the Archwarren. I think in his final regeneration, “your mind has proved useful” for a larger purpose. It’s very clear that the Mind Shield and Gamara have no clue to the Master’s real identity but as it is revealed by Gamara, “the vector” died but then came back as a hologram.

In a psychic forest the Master begins a sinister experiment… but is it for the benefit of Gallifrey or does it serve a darker purpose?

Several years ago, the Master, disguised as a tutor, took a group of Time Lord Academy students with promising futures on a field trip that went disastrously wrong. Now in the present, they all turn up dead. Gamara is the last survivor – but to save herself, she will need to reveal the truth about the monstrous experiment the Master made them conduct all those years ago.

There were two challenges for me listening to this story: firstly, it is quite wordy at times with unfamiliar Gallifreyian terms for structures or things in use, so I had to pay close attention to the audio when I wanted subtitles. It crossed my mind that this story would really make an excellent television serial because of the darkness in tone and story.

My second challenge, and this is a personal thought that having six students was a challenge to listen to, as not all the voices were significantly distinctive to my ear. But each character has their moment and by listening to inflexions so as I learnt more about them, I liked them, felt sorry for them. These students are academically very bright but because of the interference or planning of the Master, they are really out of their depth in understanding his cunning. Is it all an assessment?

They crashed on a ravaged nightmare world, and it becomes a matter of survival. It’s clear, though, that the group aren’t necessarily united. One of the students, Olzel, is sensitive, a telepath and she is afraid of being alone, and another student, Tabreen, assures her she will look after her. Torliss, the youngest of the group and a brood cousin with Borin, doesn’t trust Tabreen and is suspicious of “the vector” and this is borne out by his later choice of profession as a judge. 

Gamara, at one point on the field trip, says she trusts “the vector”, and that surprised me. Eric Roberts as the Master is back, and it is delicious to listen to him and that nonchalant whisky-soured voice. He’s cool and in control here; that is the word with his Master, well, except when his Tardis is crashing. There is no manic craziness on show here as with some other versions. He has some feigned concern for the students but he wants these students’ skills. I’m not quite sure I quite believed his final lines, as the purpose they are there in essence whisked away from Gallifrey for some purpose as yet unknown.

I loved this story. It built slowly but felt tense throughout. There’s no real let up and it held my interest as one of the better releases from Big Finish. I think because we know so little about Eric Roberts’ Master, there’s an opportunity to place him in different aspects of the Big Finish universe, totally separate from the TV series characters, and he can fly. As the set-up episode, it’s a dark mystery, it’s terrifying, and I can’t wait for Part 2!

 This release is 75 minutes, which works very well for busy persons like me. You can buy 4.1. Dark Gallifrey: Master! Part 1 – Dark Gallifrey – Big Finish from £8.99 download and slightly more with the CD included.