Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Derek Jacobi, Mark Gatiss, Sean Carlsen, Nicholas Briggs, Zaraah Abrahams, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Vokash Bhai, Daniel Brocklebank, Richard Clifford, Ben Crystal, Christopher Harper, Will Kirk, Jordan Renzo, Gavin Swift, Franchi Webb.

To defeat a Master, you have to find someone of equal stature and terrifyingly frenetic mind; after all, no matter how many times The Doctor seems to vanquish his old friend and best enemy, somehow, no matter the incarnation, they always seem to fall short of complete victory.

There really is no mind like The Masters in the Who-Universe, one built for self-serving and control, not even the Daleks come close, and whilst everybody it seems loves a good story involving the metal encased mutants from Skaro, it takes a Master to give the scene the gravitas it fully deserves.

The moment of creation of the Daleks at the hand of Davros is arguably still one of the long running series finest moments, Tom Baker in full enquiring mode, an understanding of what Genesis actually means, and the back story to end all beginnings, and as with the audio drama series, I, Davros, the plane of existence is all the better for knowing how the Daleks came to be. But if you could undo all that, if you could destroy Davros before he became tied and bound to his electric mode of conveyance, if you could produce a moment of Anti-Genesis, then surely that would undo all the evil that has happened since the moment the evil of the creatures and mutant Kaleds was first revealed.

Nature so abhors a vacuum, and if one Master in charge of the “salt and pepper pots” wasn’t enough to gives the thrill of the story the boost it required, then the addition of another from an alternative universe is the kind of grab that makes multi-doctor stories so enjoyable, so sacred, and so it is with Anti-Genesis, for who can best a Master, but the Master themselves.

Complementing Derek Jacobi’s polished War Master is the effervescent Mark Gatiss, a perpetual addition to the Doctor Who family, and who makes the other Doctor such a perfect foil for the conniving thoughts and merciless narcissistic and self-absorbed man out of time.

Such a combination of chess like statesmanship is to be expected, but across the four stories that make up the fourth volume of The War Master chronicles, Nicholas Briggs’ From The Flames, and He Who Wins, and Alan Barnes’ The Master Plan and Shockwave, what comes across perfectly is the allusion to the confrontation of inner madness, the battle between the Id and the Ego, the supreme act of will to be found in battling one’s own perception of themselves.

With history threatened, with the Doctor taken out of creation, and with the Daleks ready to be created, the Time War looks as though it is finally there to be won, but with two Masters fighting an unwinnable war with Time, only time will tell.

Ian D. Hall