Doctor Who: 5 things you should know about Day of the Master

After facing the Doctor’s wife one by one earlier this year, these four Masters will be teaming up next month in Ravenous 4!

(Image credit: The Diary of River Song/Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

With Doctor Who: Ravenous 4 being released next month, we thought you should know about five things to be excited about regarding its two-part finale, Day of the Master!

Right now, we are extremely excited at Doctor Who Watch regarding the upcoming box set, Ravenous 4. Along with being the final volume of the Eighth Doctor’s current series, the two-part finale will feature something extremely special: Day of the Master!

As you can imagine from that title, (obviously, a huge nod to fiftieth anniversary story The Day of the Doctor,) it’s a big story for the character. With Geoffrey Beevers, Eric Roberts, Derek Jacobi and Michelle Gomez starring, this will be a Master story like no other!

Now, as you can imagine, we’ve been eager for more details. And Big Finish has been revealing such details and hints over the past few weeks. From interviews in Vortex magazine, new trailers and brand new story details revealed, there’s a lot that we know about this finale. Not enough to spoil it, just enough to make us very, very excited about it.

But there’s also a lot we’ve learned from looking at Big Finish’s wider mythology, too. For example, one thing we’ve recently realized is that, for one companion, this will be the first time that they’ve met the Master. But for another, she’s had plenty of experience with one of their incarnations already.

So before Ravenous 4 is released, here are five things you should know about Day of the Master. Starting with…

Day of the Master won’t just act as the biggest multi-Master story yet, but will also resolve the current Eighth Doctor series Ravenous.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

1. Day of the Master will be the finale to Ravenous

So we’ve covered this a little already, but it’s still important to know. Ravenous has been the current ongoing series for the Eighth Doctor since April last year. Starring Paul McGann as the Doctor, Nicola Walker as Liv Chenka and Hattie Morahan as Helen Sinclair, the series has seen this particular TARDIS team head into a mixture of standalone and arc-y adventures. Some of them have been scary, some of them have been inspired by fairy tales and mythology, and some of them have been a mixture of both.

What’s also worth noting is that Ravenous continues directly from the previous Eighth Doctor series Doom Coalition. While that previous series did resolve all the key story arcs, it also set up Ravenous by having Helen disappearing with Time Lord criminal the Eleven (Mark Bonnar), the latter of whom has also been a key character in this series.

Previously on Ravenous…

If you just wanted to dive into Ravenous 4 for Day of the Master (and honestly, I wouldn’t blame you), then here’s the story so far. The titular Ravenous are an ancient and monstrous race that were imprisoned for a long time before returning in the previous volume. They can virtually feed on anything, but they especially love Time Lords. In particular, they love feasting on their regeneration energy.

In the previous volume, the Eighth Doctor and his friends allied themselves with their old enemy the Eleven to escape from them. At the end of Ravenous 3, they believed that the Ravenous had been defeated for good. More than that – the Eleven seems to want to change his ways and be a good man.

However, what they currently don’t know is that the Eleven has discovered that – due to having a condition where he retains all of his previous personalities – the Ravenous don’t find him appetizing. In fact, he’s probably one of the only creatures in the universe that they definitely won’t feed on. So he’s been able to make a deal with them. What his plan is has yet to be discovered…

Geoffrey Beevers has been performing as the Master for Big Finish for a long time now, and will have a solo story of his own before the main event in Ravenous 4.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

2. Geoffrey Beevers’s Master will be in preceding episode Planet of Dust

After opening standalone episode Whisper but before the main event itself, we’re treated to Planet of Dust by Matt Fitton, a story focused on Geoffrey Beevers’s incarnation of the Master. Here’s the official description for the episode.

"On the parched world of Parrak, the Master holds sway. But he is exhausted and desperate, and his final hope for survival lies somewhere beneath the desert. When the TARDIS arrives, alliances will be made and trust will be broken – and feuding Time Lords will discover the Ravenous never, ever give up."

For those unfamiliar with this incarnation, Beevers plays a scarred incarnation of the character. This particular incarnation has a complicated history, at least in regards to Big Finish’s stories. Originally played by Peter Pratt in Fourth Doctor story The Deadly Assassin, this Master is at the end of his own original life cycle – the one who’s on his last life.

To survive, he’s possessed others in his lifetime: first Nyssa’s father Tremas in The Keeper of Traken, played by the iconic Anthony Ainley, then paramedic Bruce in the TV movie, played by Eric Roberts. The audio story Mastermind showed him possessing several bodies since then.

Mcgann vs Beevers

From what’s been revealed by writer Matt Fitton in this month’s issue of Vortex magazine, it sounds like this could be post-TV movie and Mastermind for this particular Master.

"This is the Master at the end of the first set of his incarnations. We know he has used many means to extend his lifespan – including stealing the body of a human paramedic – but his body will always return to its decayed state."

The fact that it is set so late in this Master’s lifetime could be extremely interesting to explore. But regardless of when it’s set for him, it’s nice that Beevers gets his own solo story against McGann’s Doctor, something that surprisingly hasn’t happened before. The two did meet in The Light at the End, but the Master was facing many Doctors at that point. So it’s nice to have these two particular incarnations face each other – especially before the roles are reversed…

While the Eighth Doctor does meet the War Master later in his life in Rage of the Time Lords, they won’t be facing each other in Ravenous 4.

(Image credit: War Master/Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

3. The Doctor won’t be facing all the Masters at once

For Day of the Master itself, you’re probably wondering about a key aspect of the story. Namely: how come the Doctor won’t recognize Derek Jacobi’s or Michelle Gomez’s incarnations of the Master when he’s Ten or Twelve if he’s faced them already in this audio?

The simplest answer is that he doesn’t face them at all, not at this point, anyway. From the official description of the story, it sounds like the Doctor won’t be facing all of the Masters at once.

"The Doctor investigates a mystery in the vortex, Liv follows the trail of their enemy, and Helen searches for a god. Everywhere they go there is a Master or Mistress, but is the Doctor’s oldest enemy there to hinder them, or to help?"

So it sounds like the team is separated in this story, with each of them facing a different incarnation of the Master. This is definitely a neat way to tell such a story, especially since it can have the Eighth Doctor neatly avoid the War Master and Missy. (Although I have a good feeling of exactly who he’ll be meeting.)

That doesn’t mean that we won’t be hearing the Masters interact with each other, at least if the trailer is anything to go by. Which is great, because I think we want some multi-Master action for some of the story, at least. Not necessarily for all of it, but it’d be good to hear what the Masters make of each other. We’ve got four very different incarnations featured in this story, and it’s going to be exciting to hear them all together.

Liv originally met the Master during the events of the Dark Eyes saga. But that was a very different Master to the four she’ll soon be meeting…

(Image credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

4. Only one of the Eighth Doctor’s companions has met the Master before

This is something that I’ve only just realized. Regarding the Eighth Doctor’s companions of Liv and Helen, only one of them has met the Master before, while for the other, this will be their first time facing him. So this will give us two different perspectives when they face the Doctor’s oldest enemy.

In Liv’s case, she has history with the Master. In the earlier Eighth Doctor series Dark Eyes – the series where she became his companion – she encountered the Master many times. Played by Alex Macqueen, this incarnation was from towards the start of a new life cycle for the Time Lord. Initially, he had been resurrected by the Time Lords to help them fight the Daleks.

Of course, he went rogue and came up with several grand schemes, such as trying to use a powerful force called the Eminence for his own ends, or allying himself with the Daleks to completely change Earth’s history. This incarnation won’t be featuring in Ravenous 4 sadly, (seriously, Macqueen is fantastic,) but it does mean that there’s a chance that when Liv meets at least one of the Master’s incarnations, they’ll already be familiar with them.

However, this won’t be true when they meet the Beevers Master in Planet of Dust, which is explicitly before Macqueen’s. So this will be quite the interesting encounter, as Liv will know her enemy’s future.

In Helen’s case, however, she won’t know anything about the Doctor’s oldest enemy. Since she was first introduced in Doom Coalition, she’s met quite a few evil Time Lords. But she hasn’t met possibly the most dangerous, yet. Will she be as prepared as Liv for facing one of the Doctor’s greatest enemies?

Eric Roberts returned back in January in The Diary of River Song: Series Five. What will happen with McGann’s Doctor faces him once more?

(Image credit: The Diary of River Song/Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

5. Paul McGann’s Doctor will be reunited with Eric Roberts’s Master

This is especially major. Thanks to Alex Macqueen, we have had stories of the Eighth Doctor facing the Master post-TV movie, from both of their perspectives. But it’s still extremely exciting again to hear these two particular portrayals face each other once more – for the first time in over twenty-three years!

Of course, there is the big question: how does this incarnation of the Master even exist? The last time the Doctor faced him, he was sucked deep into the TARDIS through the Eye of Harmony.

Thankfully, that question has been answered already, due to the fifth series of The Diary of River Song. In the episode The Lifeboat and the Deathboat, the Doctor’s wife encounters Roberts’s incarnation, although it takes her a long time to work out who he really is. The Master then explains that while he was briefly trapped inside the TARDIS, he was able to escape into a spare room – a room that was ejected from the TARDIS into the vortex where he was stuck for hundreds of years.

More from Winter is Coming

While this is an interesting explanation, it does seem to conflict with Mastermind, which gave another explanation for the Master escaping the TARDIS that didn’t quite seem to match. If there’s one thing I’m hoping for from Day of the Master, it’s an explanation for how those two explanations don’t quite match up, especially with Beevers’s Master in the same story.

Regardless, it’s going to be extremely exciting to hear these two face each other once more. What will Roberts’s Master make of McGann’s Doctor now? How will the Doctor react to seeing this particular Master again? And what is this Master’s particular role in this multi-Master story?

We can’t wait to find out when Doctor Who: Ravenous 4 is released in October.

Next. Should we have seen more of Derek Jacobi’s Master on television?. dark

Are you excited for the biggest multi-Master story ever? Have you followed Ravenous so far? What are you most excited to hear in the finale to the series? Let us know in the comments below.

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