In 2016, Big Finish released a trilogy of stories featuring three Doctors and two Masters:
I’ve just finished listening to these and I’ll admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing.
The first and last stories were hugely convoluted and confusing, with both of them jumping backwards and forwards in time with very little to help the listener work out what was going on (and some things I would argue working against allowing the listener to fathom it out).
The second story has some weird callbacks to The Sea Devils which seem to be there for no reason other than ‘fanwank’.
The last story hinges on the revelation that the two Masters have swapped bodies but there is not enough in the performances to make this clear and with the non-sequential story structure it’s almost impossible to work out which Master is in which body at any given moment.
Geoffrey Beevers and Alex MacQueen are marvellous and provided some genuinely laugh out loud moments but as stories these three really were disappointing. The only reason the second one was enjoyable was because it’s basically a bog standard Doctor Who but even then it’s far more ‘Third Doctory’ in its isolated island, missing scientists vibe so isn’t particularly inspiring.
Anyone else have thoughts on this trilogy - did I miss the point?
I very much enjoyed all three of these, they felt like they all did something very different from the norm for a Doctor Who story, with the result that the trilogy was a breath of fresh air for me. It’s also one of those trilogies that got better with each story, which is my favorite kind of progression with a trilogy!
In my opinion, Vampire of the Mind is the strongest of the three in that it’s the only one of the three where you can actually kind of tell something is off with the Master’s characterization. ‘And You Will Obey Me’ is kind of a convoluted mess and I remember ‘The Two Masters’ feeling like it should have been able to stand on its own two feet by virtue of the Master tagteaming with himself and that the inclusion of the Rocket Men was unecessary and kind of ruined it. Basically Two Masters suffered from the Spider-Man 3 issue of using too many villains.
I was very underwhelmed by the trilogy as a whole.
Its interesting cause going into this I hadn’t read this thread, but I’ve heard nothing but HUGE praise for And You Will Obey Me for years now, and it was like fine for me? I didn’t think it was this extraordinary story. The second one was better IMO, quite enjoyed Macqueen here for a change. Halfway through the Two Masters and its great thus far.
Yeah… I really don’t see why this was done in the way it was. It didn’t really land for me as I had it spoiled but it just was over complicated for the sake of it.
BF does love a body swap story but I don’t think this one landed because we didn’t know about it till long after you’ve listened to the scenes. If we had an inkling about it from the beginning it might have landed better.
This is interesting—I thought the general opinion on this story was that is was pretty bad! I’ve always seen The Two Masters praised myself. Funny how different opinions proliferate in different spaces.
I want to listen to this trilogy for its sake but the other two stories don’t compel me so I’ve been putting it off for a bit.
As a trilogy? I don’t think it’s very good. It feels a bit disjoined at times, and you really couldn’t tell the twist of the body swap sometimes (and I listened to the other two AFTER the two masters!)
As their own stories? Very hit and miss.
I do find ‘And you will obey me’ has great aspects to it, especially beevers and I do think he behaves somewhat more differently than he usually does, which is a plus in the context, that said it was also just a bit of a weird one really. I don’t know where exactly I would land on this. It has its moments, but it doesn’t quite compels me as much!
Vampire of the Mind is the most recent one in my mind, as I only listened to it recently (for some reason, haven’t done so before!) I think this one has a lot to like. MacQueen is great, even if the personality does feel too different to his usual one, but that’s more to the writing really. I think this Story works greatly for me, because it showcases how well honestly a who story can be when there is no sonic screwdriver, which is an odd thing to think about, I admit, but at times I really thought “Oh that would have been done much more boring if he had this Gadget”. I do think it falls a bit apart around the last part, my interest in the story really sank there, but the first part and the other two were quite enjoyable & fun really! Also like how we play with the ‘obvious’ here.
The two Masters is an incredible story, admittedly I might be bias because it was my very first BF Play, but it’s such a good fun story. McCoy, MacQueen & Beevers give it their all and even now, I still think this one is just the most rich story of this entire set we have gotten! A lot of fun, great use of the characters and honestly looking back, if I did it as the last of the trilogy, I might very well have liked it much more than I otherwise would have, because while I don’t think either of the first stories blew me up, this one is somehow a very good conclusion to them and makes it all feel more satisfying. Did I mention MacQueen & Beevers are incredible here?
