Hogan Reviews

When this was announced it sounded like a fun idea and the stunning cover art only pressed that thought deeper. Now it’s here (or now I’ve found the time to review it…) I can say that two episodes lived up to my expectation, the other two varied in quality but at least were all enjoyable in their own way. Another extremely solid War Master set, who’d have thought?

I love the premise here: The Master is fleeing from Daleks and so slides his TARDIS sideways through time and ends up in the Land of Fiction The Doctor has arrived in a few times during his lives. What does The Master do though? He starts to test if the weapons and artifacts created in this fictional world could work in reality or not, and if they do then it could be the key to stopping the Time War, and making him immortal while he’s at it. He sees the wonderous Land of Fiction as a weapons vault and nothing else, very in character for Derek Jacobi’s always fantastic War Master.

Episode 1 “The Wrath of Medusa” sees The Master in the fictionized Greece seen in their old myths and legends, complete with the Greek God pantheon, Medusa (Ella Smith) and Perseus (Greg Austin). Interested in the power of the Gods The Master joins Perseus and Athena (Sakuntala Ramanee) on their quest to slay Medusa, using his knowledge of the myths to his advantage along the way. It has a really fun ending I’ll cover in the spoiler section that plays with the idea that the myth has been re-written and added to so much over the years that its own characters are confused.

Episode 2 “The Shadow Master” is based on classic European folklore, specifically “The Shadow” by Hans Christian Andersen, but has bits and pieces from other stories, some of which I had no idea about. Basically the first half of the story is from the point of view of The Master’s Shadow (Gethin Anthony) as it gains sentience and self-awareness, much to its “owner’s” confusion. It has its moments towards the end but I have to admit it too far too long to actually get going. I appreciate a boxset based in the Land of Fiction having a story that for half of it plays out more like an audiobook but still…

Episode 3 “The Adventure of the Deceased Doctor” sees Dr. Watson (Richard Earl) come face to face with his own corpse and needs the help of his old friend Sherlock Holmes, though we the listener recognise the voice as The Master. As more and more slightly different Watson corpses start turning up, along with several versions of his wife, it becomes clear that The Master has teamed up with one of the Moriartys to play a game where they try and kill as many Holmes and Watson interpretations as they can. I mean in the end there’s more to it than that (and I’ll get to the details!) but it was every bit as crazy and fun as that sounds.

Finally Episode 4 “The Master of Dorian Gray” sees The Master try and steal Gray’s anti-aging picture “technology” for himself. Gray is voiced by Alexander Vlahos, who has voiced the character in a long-running series of Audio Dramas for Big Finish that I’ve never tried, and really in my eyes this was the weakest of the set. Stripped of any “crossover appeal” it just sort of meandered along, had some characters I didn’t recognise in, and then ended with The Master heading back to the real universe. A flat note for such a fun boxset to end on, frankly…

The Continuity:

Love the fact that the version of Medusa is actually from the Second Doctor story. Adds a little layer of authenticity to everything!

Obviously The Land of Fiction is the main one, The Second Doctor TV story “The Mind Robber” is where it all started and it was used heavily in a Sixth Doctor audio trilogy starting with “City of Spires”.

The only other major connection (beyond the Time War itself, obviously!) is when The Master casually name dropping a time when he captured Kronos and enslaved the dreaded Titan, a callback to Third Doctor TV story “The Time Monster”.

Overall Thoughts:

“Escape From Reality” is everything I want from a War Master story, with the first and third episodes doing a great job of having our favourite villain manipulate and scheme his way through a plot full of fun characters, its just this time they’re fictional characters … well, they’re all fictional characters, but fictional within the Who universe… Anyway, a fun set but I will have to split the scores though, especially for Episode 4, sadly.

Episode 1 “The Wrath of Medusa” and Episode 3 “The Adventure of the Deceased Doctor”:

Episode 2 “The Shadow Master”:

Episode 4 “The Master of Dorian Gray”:

Just a few things to touch on that I thought were great. Episode 1, as I mentioned, sees The Master use Medusa’s many origins to manipulate her and Perseus into joining forces with the other Gorgons and attack Mt. Olympus, though The Master soon disposes of Perseus and once again manipulates Medusa by revealing her tragic origin was actually a Roman addition to the story and her true original version she was just a monster, end of. He sends her and her sisters to the real world to see if their powers worked on Daleks, and indeed some do turn to stone giving the Master hope, though they soon fell to Dalek blaster fire. It ends with The Master sipping nectar as the new ruler of Mt. Olympus. That actually continues in Episode 2, though in the end due to some shenanigans to do with his now-sentient Shadow, the Devil and some magical bullets he ends up leaving for the myriad of Victorian Londons he could see from mountain top.

The big twist in the Holmes story is that The Master knows there is one version of Sherlock Holmes that was written with a more fantasy slant and includes an encyclopaedic book that grants its holder all knowledge so he decided to go killing around countless Holmes worlds until he found the right one. He does find it and stores it away, after killing the last Moriarty and Watson for good measure. As for the Dorian Gray one? Not much to say, he retreats because Dorian’s love interest Sibyl Vane (Jessye Romeo) somehow manages to break free from his hypnotism and sends him packing. Like I said, something of an anti-climax. It should also be noted that by the end of the Box the Master has Zeus’ all powerful Lightning Bolt and an Encyclopaedia that grants all knowledge but unless its followed up on in the next box he just keeps them on his TARDIS and doesn’t use them, I guess? I assumed they’d be some scene where he either loses them or they disintegrate as soon as he returns to reality. Something like that… Oh well, fun stories are the main thing, and this box had at least three!