The Masters of Luxor (2012)

I find myself a little confused with First/Second Doctor Lost Stories. This is due to the fact that as the Doctors themselves are no longer with us it just becomes a special Companion Chronicle. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because whether its William Russell, Carole Ann Ford or Frazer Hines then it becomes a joy and not a chore to listen to. The idea from this story came from Anthony Coburn who wrote the first ever Doctor Who story back in 1963. Sadly he passed away in 1977 so it falls to Nigel Robinson to adapt his story for Big Finish. The story was supposed to form the second story after An Unearthly Child but got replaced with The Daleks. The first thing I liked was the opening episode, I thought that it moved quickly despite nothing happening apart from the setting the scene for the rest of the story. The TARDIS losing power that occurred in the first episode isn’t something that is new to the world of Doctor Who as it’s just a different way of preventing the regulars from leaving as soon as they arrive (which they hadn’t intended on doing in the first place).

It’s quite a while before we encounter any alien life, this is quite unusual but it’s something that I liked because I always enjoy scenes with just the TARDIS crew. The TARDIS crew think that they haven’t been picked on deliberately but decide to wait for their captures to make themselves known. There is a wonderful scene in episode two when they decide whether to press a button to summon their host/captors. It’s a nice scene which shows how they have gelled since they were first thrown together though there was a moment where Barbara is the one that seems to not be wowed by what she sees. Similar to the Keys of Marinus. It’s quite good that they decided to desist from using this as a plot thing because anyone who had seen that story (like myself) would have got bored with it.

Darivatrons are the robots that we first meet. They ask the Doctor if the masters are happy with their meal. It was unusual that the Darivatron don’t consider the TARDIS crew the enemy or intruders. I thought that the idea of the Darivatrons was well realised and they were very well used throughout this story. The Perfect One has been created by the Darivatrons. He was created to destroy the Masters and he is the one that has taken the power from the TARDIS. I liked how he was seemingly given everything except for life and at the end of Part 2 we learnt that he basically wanted one of the TARDIS crew to sacrifice their life for him. He has been taking people’s lives and this is when I found this character to be quite creepy because he wasn’t shouting or being very aggressive yet he still managed to maintain a hold over the regulars.

The performances of both William Russell and Carole Ann Ford were very strong from start to finish. The way that they took over from each other without disrupting the flow of the storytelling was impressive. I have always been a fan of William Russell’s reading from his companion chronicle adventures. As the other cast member, Joseph Kloska provided the rest of the voices well and was very good as The Perfect One. I don’t know why they did get more people involved because the more I think about it the more it feels like a Companion Chronicle has found its way into the Lost Story series.

Quite an abrupt ending I felt. I know that during that era of the show they weren’t known for their clean cut ending but I just felt that this story would have been better suited to a proper ‘off into the sunset’ ending. That’s more a bit of nit picking on my part. It’s always difficult to maintain the flow and feeling over the course of six episodes. I think there were moments in Farewell Great Macedon where my mind did wander however it was more frequent in this story. I don’t think that its Nigel Robinson’s fault because he was doing the best that he could but I think that this story would have benefited from being a four parter because I thought that there were scenes which could have been lost and it wouldn’t have had a negative impact on this story. As it is I thought that it was ok and it started great but went off the boil slightly after episode three.

Rating – 7/10