Start to Finish: 8.01 - Mastermind

Image (c) Big Finish Productions

The final season of the initial run of Companion Chronicles begins with a return to the UNIT Black Archive and its custodians, Captain Ruth Matheson and Warrant Officer Charlie Sato, joined by the totally surprising antagonist - or perhaps villain-protagonist - of Mastermind.

Deep beneath Gateshead, something is stirring. A grandfather clock chimes midnight, signalling that the Prisoner, the most dangerous artefact in the 'Museum of Terrors' is about to wake up. For Ruth and Charlie this means that they will have the chance to talk to, interrogate, and try to recruit the most dangerous being on the entire planet, the Gallifreyan supercriminal known only as the Master. They want to pick his brains, he wants to control theirs, and before they are finished, we'll learn a little bit more about everyone.

In a clever reversal, Mastermind brings back non-Companions Ruth and Charlie, and as in Tales from the Vault they are both the protagonists of their own little bottle episode and the audience for the main Chronicle, as they seek to learn how the Master came to be discovered in a sealed penthouse apartment in Las Vegas. Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso are once more solid support, but the star of the show is Geoffrey Beevers, if not the most prolific Master (four episodes on TV and a couple of dozen on audio compared to Roger Delgado's 43) is the longest running, on and off from his debut in 1981.

The story plays with the idea of the Master, not as a diabolical pantomime villain, but simply as a highly effective criminal mentalist; and of course as an unreliable narrator. After all, how can you trust anyone who uses a phrase like 'deathworm morphant'?

From the present to the past, and from science fiction to historical, we move on to the First Doctor story The Alchemists.