Mastermind (2013)

Mastermind is the first story of the eighth and sadly final series of the Companion Chronicles. This is the second story from Yee Jee Tso and Daphne Ashbrook who reprise their roles of Ruth Matheson and Charlie Sato who appeared in the 2011 story ‘Tales of the Vault’, I thought that it was a good story but I can’t say that I thought it was screaming out for a sequel. Any doubts that I may have had about this release were quickly dispersed when I discovered that Geoffrey Beevers would be returning as the Master. The first thing about this story is that it doesn’t actually feature a Doctor.

There is a wonderful build up to Sato and Matheson’s scene with the Master. There are basically rules to how they should be with him and there seem to be water-tight precautions to prevent the Master from escaping. When the Master does finally appear we get a nice explanation as to what happened to the Master after the TV Movie. It’s an interesting one which works well and would have looked great on TV. Once that explanation has been given then the story moves on a bit more to the Master being on the Titanic and how he ended up in Las Vegas. He wants to use Earth’s technology to become a Timelord again but had to wait for the technology to get up to the standard that he wanted but didn’t want to help otherwise he would attract the attention of the CIA and also the Doctor. It’s quite a good excuse as to why the Master doesn’t speed up the technology.

The idea of the Master running casinos is quite a fun idea and also the scene where the he is left to die is a great scene and is played well between Beevers and Tso. The whole theme of the story is about the Master’s survival and how he leaps from one body to another. At the end of the story he has escaped from what seems unescapable and it hopefully means that we are going to get more Master stories in the near future. I like what Jonathan Morris has done with the Master because we get a lot of the story from the Master and its all really fascinating stuff and well done.

I love that after all the speeches about how not to listen to the Master and to speak to him for only a short time and the other person watching them, they are still possessed into doing the Master’s bidding without even realising. It leads to arguably the best scene in the entire story (which is quite a compliment) where they realise that they have both been had and that they will be effectively imprisoned for the rest of their lives. They wont because Big Finish will find a way of getting them out because I get the feeling that this story will be very popular and will lead to another story but obviously it wont be in the companion chronicles series.

Geoffrey Beevers is one of those people that has a truly wonderful voice and every time he has featured in a Big Finish audio. Here he doesn’t disappoint and easily steals the show. Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso are both really good in this and well in what is effectively a supporting role. They were always going to be in that position against Beevers but that doesn’t mean they are below par because we learn a bit more about their characters and they deal with it well.

Mastermind is a fine story and a great way to start the final season of Companion Chronicles. It’s a good story told well and it has an ending which some may have seen coming but it doesn’t mean that its not a great way of ending it and its crying out for a next instalment.