Big Finish’s War Doctor saga has been one of their most ambitious feats that paid off well and is one of their most celebrated ranges to date. With the sad passing of John Hurt early this year, they decided to go the prequel route by with Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor, and now they’ve also included a spin-off companion to that series that follows the exploits of Derek Jacobi’s appropriately named War Master. Ten years ago, Derek Jacobi’s Master appeared all too briefly in the episode ‘Utopia’ before regenerating into John Simm, which was a shame as he proved in those brief five minutes how he was much more malevolent and menacing than Simm’s OTT loony portrayal (yet Simm would rectify that in the 2017 two-part finale). Fans have been clamouring to see Jacobi return as the renegade Time Lord and now they’ve got their wish with the four-part story ‘Only the Good’, which chronicles some key events of the Time War that involved Jacobi’s War Master, which would inevitably lead him to turn himself human as seen in Utopia.
Throughout the four-part adventure, we see the War Master flirting between good and evil where you see him committing some good deeds and even pretended to be the Doctor (even though it was for his own intentions), but every time his malevolent nature gets the better of him and we truly see his dark side emerge. Even when maintaining the element of disguise, he manages to indulge in his own villainy, even murdering allies as a means to an end. Derek Jacobi completely nails all these sides to the Master, and his Master has elements of all of the best Masters. He has the suave charismatic charm of Roger Delgado, the gritty nastiness of Geoffrey Beevers, as well as some of the wry cheekiness of Alex Macqueen, but nevertheless, he is very much his own Master. It’s such a shame that we’ll never see John Hurt’s War Doctor against Jacobi’s War Master because having those two acting legends against each other would’ve been legendary!
The first chapter, Beneath the Viscoid by Nicholas Briggs, does a good job at serving as a reintroduction to Jacobi’s Master, establishing him as a renegade Time Lord playing both sides of the Time War while being stuck within a desperate situation. The Good Master by Janine H Jones, is where the story properly begins, pairing the Master with sole survivor Cole Jarnish, setting up their fragile alliance, as well as the events that are to follow in the second half. ‘The Sky Man’ by James Goss is an emotional powerhouse of a story that sees the Master allowing his ‘companion’ in Cole indulge in his own fantasy of saving a world from the fallout of the Time War, but this story raises the concept of whether or not noble intentions can actually lead to something horrible and is issued in an intelligently adult way. The last story, The Heavenly Paradigm by James Goss, is where everything comes together with the Master wanting to end the War once and for all by the use of an ancient Time Lord weapon, but much like the last story, this shows how good intentions can have terrible consequences. It’s through these events that eventually lead him to make the decision that set in motion the events that would transpire in Utopia, and that ending was masterfully (no pun intended!) handled.
The War Master: Only the Good is the perfect companion piece to the Eighth/War Doctor Time War range that is helped enormously by Derek Jacobi’s brilliant War Master, and it’s great that we’ll see him again in both the forthcoming Gallifrey: Time War and UNIT Vol. 6 – Cyber Reality. He truly is the Master and you will obey him!
DOCTOR WHO – THE WAR MASTER: ONLY THE GOOD / WRITERS: NICHOLAS BRIGGS, JANINE H. JONES, JAMES GOSS, GUY ADAMS / STARRING: DEREK JACOBI, NICHOLAS BRIGGS, JACQUELINE KING, DEIRDRE MULLINS / DIRECTOR: SCOTT HANDCOCK / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
