Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Paul McGann, Alex MacQueen, Ruth Bradley, Nicola Walker, Sean Carlsen, David Sibley, Georgie Fuller, Geoffrey Breton, Natalie Burt, Sacha Dhawan, Sarah Mowat, Laura Riseborough, John Banks, Jonathan Forbes, Beth Chalmers, Georgia Moffett.

The Doctor and The Master, a tale of perpetual war and distrust between two titans of Gallifrey and all those caught between them. Whether it is Jo Grant, The Cybermen, Tegan Jovanka’s aunt, the citizens of Logopolis or even Adric, nobody and no one benefits in this private war and certainly not the woman who has become the latest buffer between the former friends, Molly O’ Sullivan.

Big Finish’s latest excursion into the world of Paul McGann’s Doctor is the thrilling third box set release of the Dark Eyes serials and his time under the supervision of Doctor Who writing stalwart Matt Fitton. The antagonism and intrigue is ramped up to a new and exciting level as Alexander MacQueen is given perhaps the greatest compliment of all, by being thought of more as the true missing link between Anthony Ainley and Derek Jacobi’s incarnation of the only one who could match Davros as the most insane and face of true evil in the Universe.

Throughout the four interlinking stories, The Death of Hope, The Reviled, Masterplan and The Rule of The Eminence, the almost monastic power struggle between the liberal values of The Doctor and the scheming self glorifying fanaticism of The Master is heightened to that of the terrific Master story by Joseph Lidster and Sylvester McCoy and Geoffrey Beever and the tension filled Derek Jacobi/John Simm episodes of David Tennant’s television tenure. To carry that immense feeling of audio gratification over four hours requires true ability, not just from the writer, but from the overall cast. The true delight behind the third Dark Eyes series doesn’t lay just with Paul McGann, who always seems to give the Doctor the gravitas that would have seen the television programme enjoy success if the B.B.C. had not bottled it in the 1990s, nor does it lay with his audio bonding with Alexander MacQueen, it lays with all.

In Ruth Bradley’s Molly O’ Sullivan, the woman who holds the fate of humanity within her and the superb Nicola Walker reprising her role as Liv Chenka, the power game between The Master and The Doctor has a reason to be fought. In the dim and distant past, towards the bitter end and the B.B.C. pulling the plug on the original series, the appearance of The Master was one that really felt as though it was scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Anthony Ainley was one of the most gifted actors to appear in the original series but it always felt as though he was under the cloud of the much missed Roger Delgado’s interpretation of the Yang to the The Doctor’s Yin. The schemes were fruitless and frustrating. This irritation carried on maddeningly in the film version in 1996 and it was only the tremendous appeal of Paul McGann’s introduction as The Doctor that stopped it from being the final nail in the coffin.

In Alexander MacQueen, this same self assurance and swaggering style that Roger Delgado, early Anthony Ainley, Derek Jacobi and John Simm provided in the television series and the astounding attributes that Geoffrey Beever’s bought to the audio range, is returned to the listener and fan alike.

The sheer titanic conversation that takes place between the two men from Gallifrey as they struggle to overcome impossible odds is one that many an amateur psychologist could work themselves into a frenzy over and it ranks in many ways alongside the talk of murder between Lady Macbeth and the man who would be King in terms of sheer insights into the workings of the mind.

Matt Fitton has done superbly with the third box set of Dark Eyes and it shall be a moment of sorrow when the story is finally concluded.

Doctor Who: Dark Eyes 3 is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall