Doctor Who: The War Master: Future Phantoms from Big Finish Review

The latest The War Master boxset Future Phantoms from Big Finish was released in November 2024 just in time for the seasonal festivities. One of the traditions of Christmas is telling ghost stories and in the vein of MR James, the four stories in the boxset see the Master recounting unsettling ghoulish stories to the students at St Simeon’s college all with a nasty twist of the tale.

Whilst Christmas has now long given up its twinkling brightness the dark long nights of winter persist. The War Master cordially invites you to pull a chair near the crackling firelight and listen to a dark tale. At your peril of catching a chill or worse. Draw a little closer my dear reader so you can hear…

I’m not a lover of ghost stories as a rule but Derek Jacobi as the War Master is always an irresistible draw for me. I think it first goes back to seeing him in the TV series I, Claudius many years ago which told the early history of the Roman empire, and his performance as Claudius left an indelible mark.

Derek Jacobi understands the cadence of the War Master and captures his sardonic malevolence so beautifully each time in his performance. Almost deceptively kind in tone to his uninitiated naively youthful listeners he recounts the stories to the students his voice is a velvet glove within solid ice. The War Master has previously taken residence at Braxiatel university and the academic setting suits the War Master. He can easily blend in as an eccentric hidden away from the tragedy of the Time War.

11.1 His Close Companions by Jonathan Barnes

As an introduction to the boxset, it’s a strong but unusual start. I rather liked the initial atmosphere created by using the university setting as the device to bring characters together. This story plays rather interestingly with the idea of a story within a story. The War Master is narrating his story to a group of Victorian students but adds the seeming element of truth to the tale by the involvement of his “cousin” interacting with the adult Hollyman.

Hollyman played by Steffan Cennydd recounts a chilling encounter from his school days very effectively realised in the austere environment of his school. This story begins something that occurs through all the stories as Derek Jacobi narrates and plays characters within the tales. As well as allowing Derek Jacobi to play different characters in the boxset it becomes a device to allow the War Master to adeptly take on disguises and meddle in various times of history.

At a provincial school, the headmaster seemingly conjures up a vengeful creature from another world. Years later, only one witness remains… and the Master knows the truth of what’s to come

I do love the depth of description in the script of how Hollyman reacts with his two pals to the authoritarian school regime of Dr Christie played by Mark Elstob and the comfort he finds as a young boy in the kindly words from matron Miss Kendall. It adds emotional depth to the young boy and effectively realises the austere environment of the school. Miss Kendall is in love and the War Master recounts was planning “a moonlight flit” with the history teacher.

The Master delights to tease and mock his listening audience with the language he uses and also within the story to Hollyman. “Didn’t you feel abandoned? “He remarks to Hollyman seemingly irritated but sounding entitled. Its almost as if he wants to bring Hollyman’s anger to the fore. It does say more about the War Master’s character as Hollyman shakes his head coming to terms with conditions at the school. But the history teacher goes missing.

Being audio our imaginations are allowed to do all the hard work as we travel in dark corridors and forest copses and a terrifying creature is brought to being by Dr Christie.

The story explores various ideas of belief in the occult which is interesting to view from the 21st century. It offers the cold perspective from the Master that humans shouldn’t meddle in things they don’t understand. The idea that the creature has never been banished and haunts the school and Hollyman’s life and his death is deftly told and is terrifying. As is that the Master knows where the creature is from but then again, he is an alien.

I must admit the story had a surprise with Miss Kendall and unravels some of the earlier events of the creature’s birth into existence. I wasn’t completely convinced by the twist and never saw that revelation coming but it reminded me how much innocence there truly is in the impressions of youth.

11.2 The Foxglove Cylinders by James Goss

The Master narrates the second tale, a story set in the 1920’s at St Simeon’s college. The main character Merton Jones is a young academic on a scholarship who seeks out the elderly “archivist” to view the Foxglove acquisition of several mysterious cylinders and scrolls discovered by a man called Foxglove. Merton subsequently through curiosity steals one of the Foxglove cylinders from the archivist’s library. I’ve noticed before how the War Master seems to like to cultivate unlikely partnerings with human characters when there is a common goal.

This story is no different as whilst initially angry the archivist relents and then offers a collaboration to solve the mystery of the scrolls. Merton is highly intelligent and inquisitive. However, there is an element of naivete or arrogance also there and the War Master exploits any weakness. The War Master has to outmanoeuvre Merton as he plans to use the scrolls to try to secure his position in the college. The War Master declares the cylinders and scrolls are fake at the academic panel knowing he will be believed over a “mere poor student”

When Merton, a young academic, investigates the Foxglove Acquisition, he uncovers a set of cylinders that could conceal voices of ancient cultures. But are they recordings or transmissions?

I suppose we all have historical characters which we are fascinated by but what would you do if you could hear them speak from across the centuries? The premise of the story begins as that but also plays on the fascination with historical discoveries and the obsession that can develop within academia to discover answers about the past.

The story the War Master tells isn’t a fairytale where you discover your heroes in this case. James Goss develops the idea of something sinister and it’s effectively realised through the audio medium.

I think one of the most chilling parts of this story is when one of Merton’s friends accidentally receives the scroll during his birthday party celebration and decides to play it much like a record. The sounds that come out of it, the voices seemingly released from the past that start to haunt Merton did send a shiver down my spine. They are otherworldly and strange.

As Merton decodes that the voices are asking questions and that there is someone or something there listening for answers the story takes us to the territory of something non-human. The audio of the voices is very effective and adds intensity to the story. Merton’s descent into apparent madness as the story progresses and the voices seem to appear more and more lead the War Master to ponder what happened to Merton. Did he give the right or the wrong answer? Recommended if you enjoy something macabre.

11.3 The Sitter by Lizzie Hopley

The War Master narrates his third tale which is set on the 23rd July 1982 in a normal town, an ordinary-looking street, Waterfront Close. There is a house where something has manifested itself on the sofa downstairs and is encroaching on an elderly lady Mrs Stubbs, who also has her son living with her initially. If anyone has seen the story of the Enfield haunting this story will resonate so much as there is in my mind nothing more petrifying, I think than having a domestic setting where unsettling things are occurring.

Coming to the house to investigate is a behavioural psychologist Dr Marina Khatri played by Maya Sarova to investigate the entity. She has her tape recorder set up to record her thoughts as she stays over at Mrs Stubbs’s house and logs the encounters on her nightly investigations. Dr Khatri isn’t a complete sceptic, but I like how events are seen through her eyes and reactions to an extent.

Marina is our eyes into the story having been hired by “William Clayton” an obsessive scientist writing a paper on how the power of the mind can manifest a group delusion. How War Masterly that he has a key to the house and slips in and out at night and is watching the whole close of houses!

There is something very calculating at play where the War Master almost pushes Marina further than she would probably ordinarily go to keep investigating. So there are the conversations between Dr Khatri and Clayton regarding reasons for a rational explanation for events such as vengeful tenants, and disputes about selling houses in the close but these seem to go against Marina’s professional reactions and also empathy for Mrs Stubbs.

Dorothy Stubbs is plagued by an entity: a man who comes to her house in the dead of night and sits downstairs. Is it just a figment of her imagination? Or is the Sitter of Waterfront Close a thing to be feared?

There is a really interesting dynamic within the story as there are the commonplace descriptions of the cluttered bedroom where Mrs Stubbs spends most of her time. The rhythm is reflective, a matter of fact, as the War Master narrates her bedroom, is lived in “by someone who doesn’t like to go downstairs”.

There are the moments which feel quite ordinary, the conversations with the neighbours but the pace of this story is punctuated with moments of sheer terror such as Marina going down the stairs on her first night and not being able to quite see from her viewpoint the sofa where the entity has been seen, or the scratches described on the paintwork inside the house when Mrs Stubbs tries to escape outside on one occasion from the phantom.

Themes are being explored in this story that a home should be a refuge but, in this case, has reports of an unwelcome intruder but is this just the effect of fear on the mind? There are times when because Mrs Stubbs, played by the marvellous Annette Badland (she played Margaret Blaine and Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen in Boom Town in the tv series) is on her own when the entity is supposedly there with her and the complete terror, she holds seems entirely plausible.

However, it is not witnessed directly but told in panicked calls or the War Master’s narration so there is no actual proof of any thing there. Is it a delusion and is Mrs Stubbs losing her mind? How her son Alan just wants to get on with a normal life and turns against Marina when the press turns up questioning her presence and the story of the entity being declared a hoax is just so heartbreaking. Mrs Stubbs is moved to a home by her son without her story being completely validated or proved.

Marina is too involved at this point to let the investigation go and stays one final night alone in the house. As with the other stories in this box set, there is no happy ending as whatever Marina experiences during the night the War Master narrates, she is “found incoherent” and babbling the next morning and is committed to a hospital as mentally ill. It’s a conclusion that had me reacting no this cant be happening as her experience doesn’t make sense to the rational mind. The War Master muses to the rapt students wondering if was there an occurrence of a manifestation having taken hold and having lodged itself in her mind.

11.4 Signal and I’ll Come to You by Tim Foley

The last story is set in the modern day and St Simeon’s college feels less grand than its earlier incarnations. A young female student played by Sarah Naudi is investigating trying to find the rumoured ghost storyteller of the college and at one point decides she wants to take a selfie with the War Master. The story the War Master decides on takes place in 1899 involving an elderly Mr Eliot. He is played by Robert Glenister who was in the tv serial Caves of Androzani. Mr Eliot is a signalman who lets trains through on the line and thirty years previously witnessed as a young man a train collision in a train tunnel nearby.

At that time there was a smiling creature seen leaving the fire. Now a train has gone missing again in the same tunnel and the company boss Mrs Carruthers, played by Chandrika Chevli arrives with an entourage of helpers to understand what has happened. Within her team is an engineer with “a great deal of experience ” she is unfamiliar with (Voiced by Derek Jacobi and I assume the War Master again in disguise). She didn’t ask for this engineer, but it is who Mr Eliot is ordered to help.

After a train vanishes in a tunnel on a rural branch line, Mr Eliot has no choice but to revisit his past to tackle the present. Why is history repeating itself? And will this be the Master’s final tale?

This story didn’t appeal to me if I’m honest. The characters I didn’t care about. Mrs Carruthers was formidable but unlikeable. She pushes her helpers to go down the branch line with the trolley as Mr Eliot carries a light in front. There are some spooky moments in the story. Mr Eliot and Mrs Carruthers are thrown from the platform as they progress and the presence of the creature in the carriages stalking them when they find the lost train sets a tone of anticipated dread. As Mrs Carruthers sends her secretary, a young man called Lively down the track ahead to go alongside the lost train there is a certainty that he won’t be alive later.

When Lively is glimpsed later motionless in one of the carriages despite the protestations of Mr Eliot for her not to go Mrs Carruthers goes to rescue him and dies screaming. What I did like is the mystery of the train Mr Eliot saw thirty years previously is resolved through a time loop.

Reviewing the whole boxset the middle two stories shone for me from James Goss and Liz Foley. Returning in time for the final story from Tim Foley felt like a misstep for me but that was a personal preference as we were moving forward in time with the stories the War Master told and there was a sense of him waiting as we moved forward. The War Master loves playing the academic in a university setting and that made sense to me.

In terms of the War Master’s motivation, my emotions marvelled at how the War Master lacks any real empathy in his encounters with humans time and again and won’t rescue them. He stands back and watches the results whilst delighting in disguises. The positives are Derek Jacobi gives credibility to the Master whatever the story. He imbues The War Master with a hypnotic quality so you are drawn into the stories.

The final story does explain why the War Master has been telling the stories all this time but if I’m honest the mission statement felt weak and didn’t make sense to me of him being trapped in a different dimension, reaching out, telling stories and searching for a pilot. I understand this may be something that was set up in the first released boxset which I haven’t heard.

As a casual and relatively sporadic in taste and style listener to Big Finish boxsets it seems enough for me that the War Master investigates these strange creatures each time for his amusement. He’s smart enough to hide his meddling, working with subtle manipulation to ensure a human subject plays the game for him and be damned to suffer the consequences. The War Master enjoys the macabre and its manically genius well in keeping with his dark soul.

The War Master Future Phantoms from Big Finish is available to buy from £29.99 at 11. The War Master: Future Phantoms – The War Master – Big Finish.