DWMR213_thetwomasters_1417Gaps are appearing in history and the Master is at the centre of it – twice over…

Up there with the best Big Finish main range stories, this conclusion to the Master trilogy is suitably epic, with Sylvester McCoy, Geoffrey Beevers and Alex Macqueen all diving into the drama enthusiastically. It’s one of those tales where if any one of the key cast misjudged their performance level, it could go horribly wrong, but director Jamie Anderson keeps a firm hand on things, never allowing it to reach the levels of melodrama that it could so easily have done. The scenes between Beevers and Macqueen are everything you’ve hoped for since the introduction of the latter’s incarnation – the one-liners and the reactions to them had me laughing aloud at one point (which might have been inappropriate, given that it was during a massacre scene!).

John Dorney’s script is convoluted enough that you have to wonder if he’s hiding an Osiran cerebellum (look it up in Pyramids of Mars!), but it all hangs together well, explaining all of the elements left hanging after the previous two stories and dealing with the apparent inconsistencies and continuity cock-ups. As with those adventures, Dorney and Anderson don’t hesitate to let the sound tell the story, with some of the normal explanatory dialogue stripped away so the listener can use their imagination to the fullest. That’s helped by excellent work from Martin Montague and Jamie Robertson, whose soundscape and music are once again cinematic in scope – and use silence very effectively. The ends of episodes in particular are very different from the norm and while it’s not something you’d necessarily want all the time, they are extremely effective in this particular instance.

Verdict: An excellent end to the trilogy. 10/10

Paul Simpson