Doctor Who - I Am The Master: Legends of the Renegade Time Lord
I Am The Master contains 6 short stories - each starring a different Master. It’s an impressively strong collection of stories.
Anger Management by Peter Angelides
The Delgado Master is forced to help a biomechanoid capture 3 alien warlords hiding on Earth. It’s a fun story with some good ideas. I don’t think it’s likely to surprise anyone (or that it’s meant to) but it’s enjoyable. Delgado’s voice is recognisable without it ever needed to be explicit that it’s his Master.
The Dead Travel Fast by Mark Wright
A Dracula tribute with Bram Stoker and the decaying Master. Stoker narrates and is very readable and it captures the voice and tone of a Dracula story perfectly. The Master as a genuine villain in it is brilliantly creepy. There’s not a huge amount of story to it though.
Missy’s Magical Mystery Mission by Jacqueline Rayner
Missy, disguised as a hologram, summons some of the most evil beings in the universe and a cleaner named Daphne. Rayner’s story in the Missy Chronicles was the best of the bunch there and she proves again here that she and Missy are a perfect match. My favourite of the six stories, it’s clever, it’s engaging and it’s laugh out loud funny.
A Master of Disguise by Mike Tucker
The Master’s disguise maker is dying unless the newly regenerated Ainley Master can pull off a daring heist. Featuring an appearance by the Fourth Doctor! This one surprised me with how great it was. It’s fun the whole way through and even touching at times. Definitely a stand out.
The Night Harvest by Beverly Sanford
The Simm Master investigates mysterious plant life with a native farm worker called Tala to discover a horrific secret.
I think this pretty much the first time I’ve encountered the Simm Doctor out of the tv show (apart from a very small role in the Missy Chronicles) and as he was my childhood Master I was prepared to judge this one harshly. In fact, I loved it. He has a hilariously sadistic voice in it as he should and I could picture him perfectly the whole way through. It also gives a fantastic sense of scale by the end of the story that shows us how much evil he was able to achieve between his goodbye to the 10th Doctor in The End of Time and his actual ending in World Enough and Time in The Doctor Falls. It’s just nice to actually see his Master out there doing his thing in his own time. He might be a little too nice for some people at points in this but it worked really well for me.
The Master and Margarita by Matthew Sweet
Finally in the main story of the book, the Dhawan teams up with a Silurian in the Soviet Union during his 77 years stranded in his own past on Earth. A much longer story than the others, Sweet gives us a lot in a very readable story: Soviet politics, mushroom science, Silurians, The Master remembering Jo Grant, a 3rd Doctor cameo, a mysterious adversary named Comrade Cap and an obsessed neighbour with a pet parrot (Margarita). For our first out of show appearance of our new Master, it’s definitely not bad. It didn’t all quite click for me and the manic energy of the new Master isn’t captured, but a lot of the rest of his portrayal is, and there is a lot to love. It’s an ambitious story and more works than doesn’t, making it a fun read. Plus who doesn’t want a spin off about the Master and his pet parrot?
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