I promise this isn’t turning into a Doctor Who fan blog. Not yet, anyway.
The latest crop from Big Finish’s lucrative “alliance” with the BBC and the resulting welding of the “official” continuity and Big Finish’s own corner of the Who universe is another mini-series starring everyone’s favorite frenemy, the Master…or rather Missy, with Michelle Gomez returning to voice the role. Missy, Series 1 takes place sometime before Missy’s botched judicial execution in “Extremis” and the subsequent efforts of the Doctor to single-handedly keep her imprisoned and redeem her. So, yes, we do get Missy in her full villainous glory all throughout.
In the first story, “A Spoonful of Mayhem”, an unhappy, upper middle-class family in Victorian London have their lives changed forever when the father hires a governess for his two adolescent children. The new governess becomes part of the family overnight, introducing the kids to a new, hidden world of magic and miracles and giving them the education of a lifetime. So, yes, it’s a lot like Mary Poppins; well, if Mary Poppins was a mass-murdering sociopath imprisoned on Earth…
Next is “Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated”. Henry VIII is about to meet the woman who will become his sixth wife. Except she isn’t Katherine Parr. And Henry VIII isn’t really Henry VIII either, but the renegade Time Lord widely known as “Meddling Monk” who in this case isn’t a monk but is still meddling with human history. However, he’s about to learn he’s not the only one who is where and when he shouldn’t be. “Henry VIII’s” new royal bride-to-be is secretly the “artist formally known as the Master” and, as if that wasn’t enough for him to have to deal with, there are a pack of violent aliens hot on his trail…
The most gloriously odd pick out of the pack is undoubtedly “The Broken Clock”. It’s time for another episode of Dick Zodiac’s America’s Most Impossible Killers. This episode, New York City detective Joe Lynwood is investigating a string of murders that simply shouldn’t have logically occurred at all. Luckily to deal with this improbable case he does have an unexpected ally, a veteran homicide detective all the way from Scotland Yard, DI Missy Masters…
The last episode on the box set is probably my personal favorite, “The Belly of the Beast”. On a small, unnamed planet, slaves have been collected from various worlds and brought together to tunnel underground for a mysterious object at the behest of a ruthless tyrant named Missy. Stuck between Missy’s brutal troops and slavemasters and hostile monsters called the kobolds, three friends in one slave group strike out to join the fabled rebellion set on ending Missy’s reign of terror and misery once and for all. Unfortunately for them, their true circumstances might be even more horrific than they ever imagined…
The stories seem extremely disparate, but they actually do form a very loose arc that ends on a sequel hook. They are also united in that, if you listen to them in order (which I recommend), they slowly build up Missy as being as much of a ruthless villain as her predecessors as the Master. “A Spoonful of Mayhem” does present Missy as a sympathetic anti-hero with some dark edges but is clearly capable of empathy. However, by the time you get “The Belly of the Beast”, she gets up to some downright cruel and callous actions that make her schemes from the TV show look like vandalizing mailboxes in comparison.
To be honest, I am a bit biased because I have a soft spot in my heart for stories starring established villains. And the Master/Missy is one of my all-time favorites in that regard. That said, though, Michelle Gomez’s Missy and Big Finish is a match made in Heaven (well, Hell, honestly, but in a good way!). Big Finish has always cashed in on its license to be both darker and weirder than the TV series, allowing Gomez to take her flamboyant, grimly whimsical, fourth wall-winking interpretation of Missy/the Master to the next level. This is especially true for “The Broken Clock”, which threatens to kick all suspension of disbelief out the window, but by the end it does walk it back enough that it steers well clear of “the Doctor meeting the cast of EastEnders” levels. Overall, “The Broken Clock” as well as the mini-series as a whole is a bizarre but satisfying mix of the grim and the playful, much like Missy herself.
If I had any complaints, it’s that, as usual, the quality of the voice acting is a bit uneven, as is often the case with Big Finish. Also as much fun as it is to see Rufus Hound’s Meddling Monk bicker with Missy, I feel like there was a wasted opportunity in adding some not particularly interesting alien villains in the mix, instead of having it just be a story with two time travelers facing off against each other in a historical milieu much like the original Meddling Monk story.
Overall, though, the mini-series manages to capture the spirit of the character better than, dare I say it, the TV show itself. Add me to the list of people who are already eager for Series 2. Fans of Missy won’t be disappointed and it’s definitely recommended, even for those of you who are fans of the franchise but haven’t given Big Finish a shot before.
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