Doctor Who Review: ‘The Two Masters’ (Audio)

The Seventh Doctor fights not one but two incarnations of his arch enemy in an epic battle across time and space.

So after April’s ‘And You Will Obey Me’ and last month’s ‘Vampire of the Mind,’ Big Finish’s current and heavily ambitious trilogy comes to a close in their latest release, with the very promising title of ‘The Two Masters.’ But does it live up to its promise?

The universe, and the whole of history, is dying. Huge gaps are occurring in space and time in both the future and the past. The Seventh Doctor needs to find out what’s causing it, but he can’t do it alone. He needs help, and the situation is so desperate that it has to be from his oldest enemy, the Master. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he has not only one incarnation of his enemy to deal with, but two…

I’m going to warn you now, this is a story that you have to pay a lot of attention to. It’s so full of twists and turns that what I’ve described of the plot already doesn’t even begin to cover it. And it’s really not that surprising.

First of all, the story has to act as the climax to the events of the previous two stories. More importantly, it has to explore what happens when two incarnations of our favourite villain meet while also providing a decent reason in the story for that to happen.

Geoffrey Beevers and Alex Macqueen play two incarnations of the Doctor’s nemesis. (Credit: Big Finish)

So massive kudos to John Dorney for writing such a great script that not only manages to work as both of these, but also allows for enough plot and twists that it’ll surely have you re-listening to the whole trilogy afterwards to see what you might’ve missed before. (In fact, it’ll probably make you revisit beyond that — without going into spoilers, one scene in particular fills in a very crucial bit of backstory for the Classic Series.) Not only that but, as clever as Dorney’s story gets, he still allows for a lot of fun to be had along the way — particularly with the two Masters, and even some emotion, too.

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The combination of all these elements demonstrates incredibly strong writing, and it’s no real surprise that he gets to write so many ridiculously awesome stories with concepts that are just so mind-blowing for fans, you wonder why the TV series hasn’t done it already. Other than this story, one of the best examples is last year’s ‘Master of the Daleks’ in the Eighth Doctor box set Doctor Who: Dark Eyes 4.

I’ve mentioned before how great both Geoffrey Beevers and Alex Macqueen are in their own stories, and hearing the two together finally is nothing short of joyous. There are times when the dialogue between the pair is very reminiscent of the very best multiple Doctor exchanges, particularly with the constant arguing and strong dislike of each other’s styles. Of course, with such murderous individuals, there’s a little extra dose of black comedy mixed in with the bickering, too.

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Next: The Regeneration of the Master

So, after a truly epic two hours, how can I sum up ‘The Two Masters’? Wow. Just wow. This story obviously had really high expectations for it from just the title alone, expectations which were further raised by the sheer quality of the previous two stories. Amazingly, ‘The Two Masters’ not only met those expectations, it went far beyond them. One of Big Finish’s very best releases of the year, it is well worth a listen for any fan.