Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Derek Jacobi, Paul McGann, Mina Anwar, Taj Atwal, Paul Clayton, Lu Corfield, Su Douglas, Youssef Kerkour, James MacCallum, Shvorne Marks, Ricky Nixon, Katherine Pearce, Laura Riseborough, Aniela Lauren Smith, Liz Sutherland, Dominic Thorburn.
If you are always holding out for a hero, then there is more than a chance you will be disappointed, for heroes, should they exist, don’t work to a timetable, of scheduled appointments, they arrive only when the time is right, when space and chaos demands their presence.
It is to chaos that we can depend more upon, always there in the background, encircling us, nipping at our skin, taking us down when it feels the urge for more than just a tasty entre, and those that take advantage of this have learned how to play a longer game than the vast majority of us can ever hope to master, for in their anger, The Rage of the Time Lords knows no bounds.
The exploration of the long game was one that was at the heart of the War Master’s previous audio adventure, and yet in this new four part serial, which utilises the writing of Tim Foley and David Llewellyn with great effect, the sense of Time being weaved strand by strand is overwhelming, and as the lives of Alice Pritchard, played superbly by Katherine Pearce, Giuseppe Sabatini and Mandrake become more entwined with the Master and his menagerie of collected interesting people, so too does the necessity of bringing a reluctant hero into play.
The point of the long game is to make you think several moves ahead, to be proactive, not reactive, that having a queen decimate the board is the ultimate chess move, when being able to move several pawns to other side and changing their complexion, their ability, that is how the battle between light and dark is met.
Through the stories, The Survivor, The Coney Island Chameleon, The Missing Link and Darkness and Light, the ultimate aim of The Master is revealed, and it one that requires in the end, a Doctor to become a hero, and to regretfully forget, all that was in the act of heroism, of saving one life. In the pathos of such actions there is sadness and grief, but in the crossed swords of Derek Jacobi’s Master and the illuminating force of the eighth incarnation of The Doctor, the assuring presence of Paul McGann at the helm, there is much to take satisfaction in, much to enjoy as an audio spectacle.
The Rage of the Time Lords is a reminder that often the hero we need is the one who will never remember what they have done for us, in any form, in any deed, what they have is an aura that defines them, not the actual rage that which drove them our way in the first place.
Ian D. Hall