The War Master is back, but sadly Solitary Confinement feels extremely safe, touching on all the usual character beats that the character brings but doing nothing new with them. Now, as I always say, Derek Jacobi is amazing in the role and carries the set through all its predictability but this time there really were some stories that I just sat and listened to without any feeling of investment in it. Ah well, let’s take a deeper look.
The set is similar to previous anthology sets in that there is a framing device that allows The Master (Derek Jacobi) to tell the first three stories retrospectively and then the final part is set in the “now” of the framing device to wrap things up. In fact it’s pretty much the same set up as “Self-Defence” except that instead of in a cell awaiting trial he’s in a mental institution cell, claiming to be crazy and hinting that each of his first three stories might tell his visiting nurse Bartholom (Lois Chimimba) how he came to lose his mind. Episode 1 “The Walls of Absence” has The Master talk about a time he searched for a woman called Mendrix (Sian Phillips) who was a famous but admittedly retired “Code Purger of Chift”. The Master himself is acting like a gentle but still quite cynical old man who is losing his memories and needs Mendrix’s help to retrieve them, and during the course of the hour long episode they seemingly fall in love… but we all know how the ending goes there, but I’ll leave it until the spoilers…
Episode 2 “The Long Despair” I enjoyed for most of its runtime. The Master’s TARDIS is stuck on a Time Lord beacon that had been placed on an isolated island that locals refuse to travel to because so many have lost their lives trying to get there. He enlists the help of a local ship Captain (Jason Flemyng) and the two endure an epically long and dangerous ship journey to reach it. There are some fun sea monsters and one particularly grim one that sounds close to the Legion boss enemy from Castlevania in being a jumbled blob of human corpses, but they do make it as a team… but we all know how the ending goes there, but I’ll leave it until the spoilers…
A fun cover as always. A very consistent range cover-art wise… as well as central performance wise!
Episode 3 “The Life and Loves of Mr Alexander Bennett” has a fun premise as The Master has somehow programmed himself into a series of home assistant speakers and uses this to manipulate people subliminally, especially the titular Alexander Bennett (Jacob Dudman), who he manages to convince to kill his ex-girlfriend and then allows him to believe it was a bad dream for most of the story. There were some good scenes but it’s one of those stories where the central character is unlikeable (even before manipulation) and therefore with nobody at the centre of the story to route for you just wait patiently for the lead to get what’s coming to him, but at the same time the people after him are no better! Frankly the whole thing came across like someone wanting to write a Black Mirror episode but not getting it quite right.
The finale, set entirely within the asylum, is called “The Kicker” and sees an odd new lore addition in the “Temporal Inquisition” who work for the Daleks but aren’t Daleks (which isn’t normally in their wheelhouse but whatever) The pair, a human called Sendaya (Eva Pope) and her “synthoid” Mr. Keltus, who can tell when someone is lying and give them electric shocks based on how much they’re holding back, arrive at the Drane Institute because they believe the madman who thinks he’s the Master is truly the Master, an enemy of the Daleks. The whole episode is a long string of clever conversation manipulations leading to a fun reveal that at least was a bit different, I’ll grant it. Overall though I felt the set just didn’t add anything new or interesting to the admittedly still always fun War Master. If this is among your first War Master sets then you’ll absolutely love it, the twists with this incarnation’s cruelty will take you by surprise, but nine sets in its starting to wear a bit thin.
The Continuity:
Apart from feeling very narratively similar to “Self-Defence” there isn’t anything to speak of here, beyond the War Master himself and the Time War he’s caught up in.
Actually looking at the TARDIS wiki to see if I missed anything, there was a mention of The Master being present at the creation of the Magna Carta, which is a reference to Fifth Doctor TV story “The King’s Demons”. Must have forgotten that, I assume it was a passing reference…
Overall Thoughts:
Solitary Confinement is a great box to start your first trip with The War Master as it is well written and acted (especially Mr. Jacobi, naturally) but if you’re like me and its your ninth War Master set it feels very samey and due to that lacks tension. It’s still good, but I won’t be in a hurry to listen to it again.
I mentioned predictable twists for the first two episodes, and here they are! The Master regains his memory in Episode 1 and reveals his memory had been kept hidden until cracked at that moment by Mendrix, at which point one of two warring armadas above the planet gets wiped out thanks to the code hidden in his mind. He then takes great pleasure in upsetting Mendrix and laughing at the idea of him being in love. Episode 2 ends with The Master and The Captain finding out that the long trip to the island was also effected by time and they arrived before the beacon was lit. In order to save the people of the planet they agree not to light it… but obviously The Master almost immediately lights it, laughs at The Captain for thinking he wouldn’t and the leaves him to die on the island “just like his father did”. Two stories in a row where maybe people unfamiliar with the range might think the Master could take pity, but again this many sets in I knew exactly how these stories would end a few minutes in.
As for the overall box finale? Well, it turns out after the whole set saw nurses and administrators talk about The Master being “a patient who thinks he’s the Master” it turns out they’re sort of right! He’s a copy plastered onto a human body (which is tipped off early in Episode 4 when this “Master” says he only has one heart and “beats” Mr. Keltus’s lie detector) which leads to the real War Master arriving and taking care of the Inquisition and his own copy, who he verbally berates for being stupid enough to not realise he was a copy before watching himself die to his own amusement and then heading off…
Hogan Reviews 