McGann and Roberts to reunite in multi-Master story for Big Finish

Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor will once again face off against Eric Roberts Master... as well as several other incarnations of the villain.

 

That version of the Master would have to have been pulled out of time during the movie.

Weird.

 

Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey.

 

Are all the Classic Master actors dead now? (other than Roberts, that is; he was the absolute worst of ALL of them, Classic or nu).

That is such a pathetic excuse for lazy writing. They write themselves into a corner and trot out childish phrases to excuse themselves.

It's like they're saying, "It doesn't HAVE to make sense - it's science fiction!"

Well, I don't expect Doctor Who to be a science documentary, but I do expect it to at least try to be logical about it.

 

Nah, that's Doctor Who taking itself and it's time-travel logic as seriously as it always has.

 

YEAH!

*runs off to change the polarity of the neutron flow*

 

GEoffrey Beevers is still around, and playing the Master a lot for BF.

 

Or at least use in-story logic.

I once made a Cheezburger lolpic of the Third Doctor talking on the phone to someone who was having a problem. The Doctor says, "Have you tried reversing the polarity of the neutron flow? You have? Then I'm sorry, old chap, I can't help you. I'm fresh out of technobabble."

 

At this rate BF will have had as many incarnations of the Master as they have of the Doctor

 

That's what "timey whimey" is to me. It has as much logic as technobabble. For me, it's better than technobabble. It does what technobabble refuses to admit: it's all silly made up science.

And science, for me, is the least important part of Doctor Who.

 

I still need to get to The War Master, Missy, and the all-Master River Song (and the rest after volume 2) box sets, before I can even think about this one. Ahhh! Too much great content coming out of Big Finish! Bastards!

 

The explanation given in the River-vs-Roberts-Master audio is...

Spoiler: re Roberts Master

...that falling into the Eye of Harmony didn't actually destroy him, it just sent him to another part of the Tardis where he could be held safely until the Doctor figured out what to do with him. But in the course of some other adventure, the Doctor was forced to eject rooms again, and sadly the room with the Master in was one of those rooms, thus he escaped while still as the Roberts Master. So much more mundane than WWTW.

What has not yet been explained to my knowledge is how we get from Roberts to Jacobi.

 

I'm curious (and I promise this won't be a BF jab, its a legitimate question) does Big Finish hire actors to try to play specific versions of characters whose actors are dead, outside of the older Doctors? By that I mean, I know they have replacement 1st and 2nd Doctors (and maybe a replacement 3rd, although I don't know anything specific about that), but do they ever hire people to play, say, the Delgado Master, the first Rani, etc in a big role? There was definitely a version of the Ainley Master in the first episode of The 6th Doctor's regeneration saga, but he only had to voice The Master outside of a disguise for maybe a few lines (unless I'm misremembering), and he didn't really sound like Ainley, I only know that was the incarnation because of the story context. So, for something like this and other similar things, would they try to get people that sound like Delgado or Ainley's Masters, or would they skip those incarnations?

I'm just curious about how they deal with that stuff. It seems like a bit of a waste of time to try to do a voice copy for a side character that has multiple incarnations, plus copying a voice well seems to be really hard from what I've seen in various voice acted things (like animated shows/movies that have to match an old voice for some reason). If the voice doesn't match well, then it would just confuse people as to who its supposed to be, and make using that specific incarnation of a character over a new version pointless.

 

They’ve recast a few; specifically, Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor, Graeme Garden and Rufus Hound as the Monk (May be new incarnations), Jon Culshaw as Kamelion (default robot form, I’d assume) and Juliet Landau as a new Romana. David Bradley does an alternate Fist Doctor, but otherwise the First and Second Doctors are recreated by other original cast members. There’s a new Rani as well.

In the Sixth Doctor’s final adventure, you’re thinking of the Valeyard, who Michael Jayson return to portray.

Overall, only two definite recasts that I can think of, and the rest are Time Lords, so they could be regenerations.

Edit- BF also created their own incarnation of the Master between Roberts and Jacobi, but that doesn’t specifically fall into your question.

 

I know there are new incarnations, I was just curious if they specifically try to recast for an old incarnation of a character that isn't The Doctor. I figured that its easier to just have a new incarnation, but things like having a big Master team up seems like it would need a few of the older versions of The Master.

I was interested to know if they went with recasting or just restricted themselves to living Masters, which would probably just be Burned Skull Master, Super Campy Snake Master and (apparently) a BF original Master (since there is no way they could get Simm or Gomez, and Jacobi's Master doesn't really work when it comes to having stories earlier in that version's timeline)/

I'm not thinking of The Valeyard. He's a pretty obvious part of the story, but in The End of the Line (the first story in the 6th Doctor Last adventure set) he's in the background, not even being credited. The Master is the one causing the problems in the first story, with The Valeyard manipulating events from behind the scenes. The Tardis wiki confirms the Ainley Master as the obvious villain of the story, although in the vast majority of the story he's in disguise so he doesn't try to sound like Ainley. The Master is basically the "villain of the week" for that story, since three of the four stories in that set have the Valeyard in the background manipulating events while The Doctor deals with other, more obvious villains.

 

They did adapt one of Six's unmade Season 23 stories, The Hollows of Time, which originally was supposed to feature Ainley's Master. They rewrote it to keep him in disguise throughout as 'Professor Stream,' with even Six and Peri dancing around his true identity with the help of a little post-adventure amnesia. David Garfield, who played Stream, tried to mimic Ainley's voice somewhat. If I understand right, Big Finish is not allowed to use the Ainley Master as such; either by the BBC or by Ainley's estate, I couldn't say. Might be the same case with Delgado, as I'm surprised they haven't tried to pit Treloar's Three against him yet.

EDIT: Speaking of Colin Baker's unmade 'second' season, the last unadapted story (at least by BF) from that year will shortly be reaching audio at last.

EDIT #2: It was the BBC who blocked it, as Simm’s Master was about to appear onscreen in The End of Time.

 

Listening to End of the Line again, the Master explains it as a remote avatar, since it's too dangerous to be there in person.

 

Gomez and Jacobi both have entire box-set series as their Masters, plus crossovers with the River box-sets. I assume Jacobi must not actually encounter the Doctor in any of his stories, or else the Doctor would have recognised him in "Utopia". Simm is the only living Master they haven't got... and for all I know that may need a 'yet' on it.

.

 

Didn’t they already do this with River?

 

The Masters meeting each other, including Eric Roberts, yes. But not with Roberts and The Eighth Doctor.