Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, John Leeson, Geoffrey Beevers, Mark Frost, Olivia Poulet, Damian Lynch, Pat Ruins.

The renegade Timelord from Gallifrey is fighting for his life in a trap. Considered to be lethal, dangerous and with a personality that can be abrasive and charming, the Universe’s greatest bounty hunters are in for a slice of the reward money placed temptingly before them, for after all would rank so high in the list of most wanted criminals than The Master.

The Fourth Doctor has his own troubles, hunted and shot at on a shopping planet, he is as trapped as he has been for quite some time but the question that hangs in the air is not how he gets out but why have Leela and K9 turned against him?

If you want a story that can capture the enquiring mind of The Master, portrayed once more by the graceful Geoffrey Beevers, then it seems to turn to John Dorney in which that story can be told. In Geoffrey Beever’s especially the role of the Master in his skeletal, burnt out and decaying self is one that has not been really grasped, even on screen in the classic series, the thought is magnified that they really could have done so much more with this incarnation before the tremendous Anthony Ainley took the role on.

John Dorney seems to have instinctively dug deep into how Geoffrey Beever’s Master works when the tables are turned on him. Unlike the excellent Joseph Lidster story, Master, in which the malevolence simmers like a over boiled pot of stew, Requiem for the Rocket Men frames the idea that the Master is not always in control, not just of his emotions but of his own narrative. It is a character’s life made in heaven as John Dorney and Geoffrey Beevers combine to give more direction, a sense of the hunted animal playing for time before ultimately turning the tables.

It is a permanent game of chess between these two goliaths of Time, a game that sees dire consequences for one of the Doctor’s most trusted allies and one in which shows the hands of both for what they are deep down, caked in blood, it is though to the Master with at least the honesty of actions acknowledge his bitterness.

A great psychological tussle in which the tables are turned more quickly than at a buffet for 300 people, John Dorney has captured a side rarely seen and it is full of future expectation!

Doctor Who: Requiem For The Rocket Men is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall