When River met the Master(s), and what they did next
Having acquired the licence for Twelfth Doctor era characters, Big Finish wasted no time and went for Missy first, which means she now showed up both in the big "River Song vs the Masters" Vol.5 installment of The River Song Diary and got her own audio series, the first volume of which was released only in February this year.
The Diary of River Song, Vol. 5: consists of the episodes The Bekdel Test by Jonathan Morris), Animal Instinct by Roy Gill, The Lifeboat and the Deathboat by Edie Robson) and Concealed Weapon by Scott Handcock. In each of these stories River Song meets a different incarnation of the Master, but because she's River, she does not meet them in linear order.
Though actually, she does, except for meeting Missy first, then Geoffrey Beevers!Master (good old Crispy, the only one of the Classic Series Masters to be still alive and for many a year therefore the main Master to be employed on the Big Finish audios), Eric Roberts (yes, him, the American from the TV Movie, aka We Don't Speak of Roberts!Master) and Derek Jacobi (who also recently got his own Big Finish series as the War Master). Early on, I was wondering why there wasn't a bigger mix of chronology but then I realised there is actually a point. If, say, River had met Jacobi!Master first, she'd have killed any of the other versions the first time she saw them, or died trying.
Now, given both River's and the Master's fates are canonically fixed (though you have a bigger leaveway with the Master, given that except for Jacobi-Simm and Simm-Gomez, we don't know when and how exactly they regenerated), the main attraction of such a combination would be wits matching and exploring of parallels and contrasts. The opening story in which a River who's fresh back from Lake Silencio meets Missy shortly after the Master's regeneration (which Missy can't remember) is the most lighthearted and great fun, with the "River and Missy need to team up to break out of third party holding them captive, but are aware the backstabbing possibilities are endless" premise offering the chance for a great many one liners and quips. It's also the one I'll relisten to as soon as I can, in terms of now knowing that Missy has had all these other, quite darker encounters with River first at earlier points of her life. They both get to show off their cleverness and inventiveness, and are being presented as pretty evenly matched, and respecting each other's abilities, with River only once getting the better of Missy verbally, which is when she works out who Missy has to be:
R: The Doctor's classmate from the Academy, more brilliant than any of the others, he had a bit of a crush on you, of course! You're the Rani.
M: What.
R: Or..you're not Romana, are you?
M (for the first time losing her languid drawl in favor of quietly seething): No, I'm not Romana!
R: Ah, then you must be the nemesis that's occupying him so often. Forgive me, I just didn't expect the Monk to have regenerated into a woman.
M: The. Monk!
(At which point Missy realises River was messing with her and of course has figured out who she really is.)
Incidentally, they don't talk about the Doctor all that much, don't worry, the episode takes its title pun seriously, but he does inevitably come up. Due to the nature of their surroundings and the plot premise, the only lives truly at stake in this outing are River's and Missy's, which means River doesn't get exposed yet to just how vicious the Master can be, which is why it makes narrative sense to place it first, because, like I said, the stories get gradually darker.
She encounters Crispy (aka the Master of the Fourth Doctor era, stuck in a decomposing body before he stole that of Nyssa's father Tremas) next at a point in her timeline when she's already an archaelogy professor. This episode milks the combination of River's flippancy with the Master's old school villainy and verbal formality for all it's worth, but here there are a lot of other people this time, and River's idea that you can handle a team-up with the Master for the shared goal of escaping the PlotMcGuffin with pragmatism undergoes some revision. In the extra material, the episode writer said he took his cue from the Husbands of River Song in that River sans the Doctor can be very ruthless herself - up to a point. The episode ends up highlighting where River does draw the line, and also reminds the audience the Master really delights in cruelty. River still definitely outmatches him.
What surprised me most about Big Finish's take on Roberts!Master was that he gets to be the least flamboyant of the lot, which is probably a wise choice, given the hamming was painful in the tv movie of doom, even for the Master who was born to ham. Not so here, though. Any series of stories involving the Master ends up including one where he's in disguise in a different identity, and Roberts doesn't even use an anagram, he's downright low key before the outing, and not hammy afterwards, either, which is justified by his situation; it's what happened to him post TV movie, and he's really motivated to change the position he's in. It's a solid space adventure, though probably the least interesting of the four.
Concealed Weapon, otoh, takes its cue from the original Alien as River is travelling with a small crew and finds out they've taken a truly dangerous passenger on board, i.e. River plays Ripley to the Master's Alien. When I say "cue" I don't just mean the basic situaton but actual plot beats, including body horror and the realisation one of the crew members has been selling out the others due to behind the scene commercial scheming. In terms of the Master's timeline, this is mid-Time War. We've only seen two scenes of Jacobi as the Master on tv before he regenerated (he was chilling, though); his take here is one of verbal courtesy (lots of "my dear.." and "oh, I must apologize") married to utter disdain for anyone not himself and a very pointed cruelty that operates on a psychological level as well. What he does here to everyone, including River, is part of what makes this installment a straight horror story. (Much as Alien is one.) Though obviously she makes it out alive, but then, so did Ripley, and her only win is surviving the tale. As mentioned before: If she'd met this version of the Master first, she'd shot any of the others on sight with his own laser screw driver, just to make sure no regeneration happens.
When I heard there would be a Missy audio series, I looked forward to it but was also a bit worried it would do what, say, the Harry Lime radio series did with Harry Lime as opposed to his characterisation in The Third Man, i.e. take an attractive villain and downplay or ignore what makes this character a villain rather than an antihero. I'm happy to report this wasn't the case here, and as a whole, this first installment keeps a balance between what makes Missy fun and sympathetic and what makes her so dangerous and at times revolting. As with the four River Song vs the Master installments, the four Missy solo episodes start off on a light and cheerful note and get gradually darker and darker.
Missy, volume 1, consists of A Spoonful of Mayhem by Roy Gill, Divorced, Beheaded and Died by John Dorney, The Broken Clock by Nev Fountain, and The Belly of the Beast by Jonathan Morris.
Given Missy's costume deliberately invokes Mary Poppins and so does she on a Watsonian level in the s8 finale, doing a what is essentially "Mary Poppins with the Master as Mary Poppins" story seemed obvious; it's pulled off in a fun way in A Spoonful of Mayhem, with a plot device giving Missy reason not to kill the kids (and their father) (though the chimney sweeper has a less happy fate). Points for making the girl the one to figure out Missy isn't just fun but might actually be very dangerous. In general, this is good natured fluff.
Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated, otoh, is hilarious. I knew Big Finish had used the Monk before, but hadn't listened to any of the audios he was in, so for me it was the first time I encountered him after his original debut in the First Doctor serial The Meddling Monk which I watched some years ago. (Back in the day, I'm told, it was the first time the show ever showed a member of the Doctor's species other than himself and Susan, and the first time it showed a TARDIS other than the Doctor's own). (I know there was another Monk story on tv, but I haven't watched that one yet.) In the extra material to the episode, the writer says what attracted him to a "Missy and the Monk" story was the combination of a character who just wants to survive at all costs with a character who kills at the drop of a hat at cross purposes, and the result is indeed golden. I mean, this is another DW tale where you have to switch your inner historian off from the get go (think Elizabeth I. in the big anniversary episode, that's the kind of Tudor England you get here as the Monk is for plot reasons impersonating Henry VIII.), but it's honestly so much fun I don't care, the constant Time Lord outplotting and double crossing each other is delicious, and I only hope the inevitable rematch will live up to this outing.
The Broken Clock doesn't quite pull off its narrative device as far as I'm concerned - Big Finish occasionally experiments with forms of storytelling, and sometimes the results are great, but here the early annoyance about the narrative device isn't cancelled out by the curiosity as to what is actually going on. Otoh, the eventual reveal as to what is going on is both dark and not a little heartbreaking. Especially if you like your TARDISes, and which DW watcher doesn't? And definitely a reminder of Missy's evilness. I also recalled Stephen Moffat mentioning in an interview that the main reason for Missy killing Osgood in the s8 finale was that she's such a fun character the audience can easily handwave the horror of what she does if it's just aimed at random extras, but not if she does it to a beloved character. It's that kind of thing which happens here.
The Belly of the Beast steps up on this. There is a content connection to the previous episode which isn't immediately obvious but becames so as the story goes on, but what is clear from the get go is that we're exposed to what the Master, unchecked by the Doctor, can mean the way the setting of Last of the Time Lords did, as Missy is busy working people she made into her slaves to death here to achieve her purpose. It's also an episode solidly in said people's pov (except for the ending, by plot necessity, when we're in Missy's pov again which manages to make everything even darker due to what she does), in particular one character who if this was a DW episode would either be a future companion or at least the one shot heroine of the tale, but because the episode delivers on the series "this is what Missy does when the Doctor is not around" premise, the victories said character manages are short lived. Again, as with the last installment of the River Song volume,this is the most disturbing tale of the lot.
All in all, two captivating volumes doing much to help my yearning for new DW content this year.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1341305.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
The Diary of River Song, Vol. 5: consists of the episodes The Bekdel Test by Jonathan Morris), Animal Instinct by Roy Gill, The Lifeboat and the Deathboat by Edie Robson) and Concealed Weapon by Scott Handcock. In each of these stories River Song meets a different incarnation of the Master, but because she's River, she does not meet them in linear order.
Though actually, she does, except for meeting Missy first, then Geoffrey Beevers!Master (good old Crispy, the only one of the Classic Series Masters to be still alive and for many a year therefore the main Master to be employed on the Big Finish audios), Eric Roberts (yes, him, the American from the TV Movie, aka We Don't Speak of Roberts!Master) and Derek Jacobi (who also recently got his own Big Finish series as the War Master). Early on, I was wondering why there wasn't a bigger mix of chronology but then I realised there is actually a point. If, say, River had met Jacobi!Master first, she'd have killed any of the other versions the first time she saw them, or died trying.
Now, given both River's and the Master's fates are canonically fixed (though you have a bigger leaveway with the Master, given that except for Jacobi-Simm and Simm-Gomez, we don't know when and how exactly they regenerated), the main attraction of such a combination would be wits matching and exploring of parallels and contrasts. The opening story in which a River who's fresh back from Lake Silencio meets Missy shortly after the Master's regeneration (which Missy can't remember) is the most lighthearted and great fun, with the "River and Missy need to team up to break out of third party holding them captive, but are aware the backstabbing possibilities are endless" premise offering the chance for a great many one liners and quips. It's also the one I'll relisten to as soon as I can, in terms of now knowing that Missy has had all these other, quite darker encounters with River first at earlier points of her life. They both get to show off their cleverness and inventiveness, and are being presented as pretty evenly matched, and respecting each other's abilities, with River only once getting the better of Missy verbally, which is when she works out who Missy has to be:
R: The Doctor's classmate from the Academy, more brilliant than any of the others, he had a bit of a crush on you, of course! You're the Rani.
M: What.
R: Or..you're not Romana, are you?
M (for the first time losing her languid drawl in favor of quietly seething): No, I'm not Romana!
R: Ah, then you must be the nemesis that's occupying him so often. Forgive me, I just didn't expect the Monk to have regenerated into a woman.
M: The. Monk!
(At which point Missy realises River was messing with her and of course has figured out who she really is.)
Incidentally, they don't talk about the Doctor all that much, don't worry, the episode takes its title pun seriously, but he does inevitably come up. Due to the nature of their surroundings and the plot premise, the only lives truly at stake in this outing are River's and Missy's, which means River doesn't get exposed yet to just how vicious the Master can be, which is why it makes narrative sense to place it first, because, like I said, the stories get gradually darker.
She encounters Crispy (aka the Master of the Fourth Doctor era, stuck in a decomposing body before he stole that of Nyssa's father Tremas) next at a point in her timeline when she's already an archaelogy professor. This episode milks the combination of River's flippancy with the Master's old school villainy and verbal formality for all it's worth, but here there are a lot of other people this time, and River's idea that you can handle a team-up with the Master for the shared goal of escaping the PlotMcGuffin with pragmatism undergoes some revision. In the extra material, the episode writer said he took his cue from the Husbands of River Song in that River sans the Doctor can be very ruthless herself - up to a point. The episode ends up highlighting where River does draw the line, and also reminds the audience the Master really delights in cruelty. River still definitely outmatches him.
What surprised me most about Big Finish's take on Roberts!Master was that he gets to be the least flamboyant of the lot, which is probably a wise choice, given the hamming was painful in the tv movie of doom, even for the Master who was born to ham. Not so here, though. Any series of stories involving the Master ends up including one where he's in disguise in a different identity, and Roberts doesn't even use an anagram, he's downright low key before the outing, and not hammy afterwards, either, which is justified by his situation; it's what happened to him post TV movie, and he's really motivated to change the position he's in. It's a solid space adventure, though probably the least interesting of the four.
Concealed Weapon, otoh, takes its cue from the original Alien as River is travelling with a small crew and finds out they've taken a truly dangerous passenger on board, i.e. River plays Ripley to the Master's Alien. When I say "cue" I don't just mean the basic situaton but actual plot beats, including body horror and the realisation one of the crew members has been selling out the others due to behind the scene commercial scheming. In terms of the Master's timeline, this is mid-Time War. We've only seen two scenes of Jacobi as the Master on tv before he regenerated (he was chilling, though); his take here is one of verbal courtesy (lots of "my dear.." and "oh, I must apologize") married to utter disdain for anyone not himself and a very pointed cruelty that operates on a psychological level as well. What he does here to everyone, including River, is part of what makes this installment a straight horror story. (Much as Alien is one.) Though obviously she makes it out alive, but then, so did Ripley, and her only win is surviving the tale. As mentioned before: If she'd met this version of the Master first, she'd shot any of the others on sight with his own laser screw driver, just to make sure no regeneration happens.
When I heard there would be a Missy audio series, I looked forward to it but was also a bit worried it would do what, say, the Harry Lime radio series did with Harry Lime as opposed to his characterisation in The Third Man, i.e. take an attractive villain and downplay or ignore what makes this character a villain rather than an antihero. I'm happy to report this wasn't the case here, and as a whole, this first installment keeps a balance between what makes Missy fun and sympathetic and what makes her so dangerous and at times revolting. As with the four River Song vs the Master installments, the four Missy solo episodes start off on a light and cheerful note and get gradually darker and darker.
Missy, volume 1, consists of A Spoonful of Mayhem by Roy Gill, Divorced, Beheaded and Died by John Dorney, The Broken Clock by Nev Fountain, and The Belly of the Beast by Jonathan Morris.
Given Missy's costume deliberately invokes Mary Poppins and so does she on a Watsonian level in the s8 finale, doing a what is essentially "Mary Poppins with the Master as Mary Poppins" story seemed obvious; it's pulled off in a fun way in A Spoonful of Mayhem, with a plot device giving Missy reason not to kill the kids (and their father) (though the chimney sweeper has a less happy fate). Points for making the girl the one to figure out Missy isn't just fun but might actually be very dangerous. In general, this is good natured fluff.
Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated, otoh, is hilarious. I knew Big Finish had used the Monk before, but hadn't listened to any of the audios he was in, so for me it was the first time I encountered him after his original debut in the First Doctor serial The Meddling Monk which I watched some years ago. (Back in the day, I'm told, it was the first time the show ever showed a member of the Doctor's species other than himself and Susan, and the first time it showed a TARDIS other than the Doctor's own). (I know there was another Monk story on tv, but I haven't watched that one yet.) In the extra material to the episode, the writer says what attracted him to a "Missy and the Monk" story was the combination of a character who just wants to survive at all costs with a character who kills at the drop of a hat at cross purposes, and the result is indeed golden. I mean, this is another DW tale where you have to switch your inner historian off from the get go (think Elizabeth I. in the big anniversary episode, that's the kind of Tudor England you get here as the Monk is for plot reasons impersonating Henry VIII.), but it's honestly so much fun I don't care, the constant Time Lord outplotting and double crossing each other is delicious, and I only hope the inevitable rematch will live up to this outing.
The Broken Clock doesn't quite pull off its narrative device as far as I'm concerned - Big Finish occasionally experiments with forms of storytelling, and sometimes the results are great, but here the early annoyance about the narrative device isn't cancelled out by the curiosity as to what is actually going on. Otoh, the eventual reveal as to what is going on is both dark and not a little heartbreaking. Especially if you like your TARDISes, and which DW watcher doesn't? And definitely a reminder of Missy's evilness. I also recalled Stephen Moffat mentioning in an interview that the main reason for Missy killing Osgood in the s8 finale was that she's such a fun character the audience can easily handwave the horror of what she does if it's just aimed at random extras, but not if she does it to a beloved character. It's that kind of thing which happens here.
The Belly of the Beast steps up on this. There is a content connection to the previous episode which isn't immediately obvious but becames so as the story goes on, but what is clear from the get go is that we're exposed to what the Master, unchecked by the Doctor, can mean the way the setting of Last of the Time Lords did, as Missy is busy working people she made into her slaves to death here to achieve her purpose. It's also an episode solidly in said people's pov (except for the ending, by plot necessity, when we're in Missy's pov again which manages to make everything even darker due to what she does), in particular one character who if this was a DW episode would either be a future companion or at least the one shot heroine of the tale, but because the episode delivers on the series "this is what Missy does when the Doctor is not around" premise, the victories said character manages are short lived. Again, as with the last installment of the River Song volume,this is the most disturbing tale of the lot.
All in all, two captivating volumes doing much to help my yearning for new DW content this year.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1341305.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.