The War Master: Anti-Genesis

 

The War Master: Anti-Genesis

I was expecting truly amazing things from Anti-Genesis, based on it’s really good reputation, but I’m not entirely sure it was my thing, despite the excellent performances throughout and amazing final episode. I’ve never had a thing for 4 hour long tales in any Big Finish sets - for me 3 hours is pushing how long you can make the story, and it needs to be an event to even reach that three part status - kind of like Masterful or Torchwood’s Outbreak/Believe. Yet Anti-Genesis is four hours, and I’m not entirely sure it needed to be, despite having strong, killer individual moments, and indeed, a fucking HIT of a finale. UNIT struggled to do these four hour epics, and it seems War Master is too... This review might be contrarian towards most opinion towards this set, but hey. It’s me talking here. My opinion. I’m not saying yours is wrong. I’m saying mine is mine.

From the Flames by Nicholas Briggs

Scene setting, scene setting, scene setting. That’s what this episode amounts to, and it’s, well, fine. Sir Derek Jacobi is excellent. That is one consistent quality throughout the set, all the regulars are quite nice. And by regulars, I mean Derek Jacobi, Narvin, the Daleks and Mark Gatiss Master, because the other ones are just fine. I’ve done a bit of Gallifrey, so I know who Livia is, but I’m hardly attached to her, and she doesn’t really do much anyway, merely being a Time Lord presence for Narvin to bounce off of. And the other characters are, well. Characters. Technically. This episode takes quite it’s time, the whole thing of Narvin going through the Matrix for twenty minutes, (or fourteen years, but even so, the momentary age-up has little impact) but the final few moments are really good, with the War Master fucking murdering Davros. It’s the kind of shock like that that really starts to make you excited for the next story, and yet it also nigh guarantees this set will be the Master screwing with alternate timelines and it will all be undone. It’s fine. 7/10

The Master’s Dalek Plan by Alan Barnes

Minus the bloody brilliant title, what does Master’s Dalek Plan offer us? Not much. The war torn fields of Skaro, and the Master trying to take Davros’ place. The only person that could possibly stop him is Time Agent Lamarius - oh who are we kidding. He’s the MASTER. She was only just introduced in the previous story. While I like Lamarius, half of the tension of the episode is gone, because well, it’s a given Lamarius is going to get absolutely trashed. Yet there are bits that are quite fun, the War Master stealing Davros’ chair, and humming about as he rolls through the Skaro bunkers. There’s also weirdly a bunch of Lord of the Rings stuff here - an extra is named Elrond, and the Muto from the trenches is literally just Gollum. It’s kind of distracting. Lamarius is given some real good character development in her one hour to live, though, and some of the ideas of the trenches - living barbed wire, a call out to the irradiated clams, are excellent. I only wish there was some more tension here, if the plot of this set is the Master’s grandest plan yet, I kind of want the Master to go through a lot of crap in order to succeed. To earn his ultimate victory at the end of the set that ultimately proves to be meaningless. Bogged down with the problems of the set, The Master’s Dalek Plan continues all of the same amount of great and bad from the previous episode. 7/10

Shockwave by Alan Barnes

I have a bit of a problem with how the time war is presented in this set. The time war is supposed to be eldritch, constantly changing timelines, beings that have no origin, or that have died millennia ago being called back into the war, all as a result of the Daleks and Time Lords attempting to assassinate eachother with time travel. That’s how I always envisioned it, yet Anti-Genesis says they made an agreement to not do that. Bit odd. Yet the time war shenanigans are best in this story, Shockwave, where it really is that. Constantly changing timelines, insane bonkers and actually slightly confusing rewriting of civilizations of the time lords, of the universes tracks changing constantly, it’s pretty brilliant and how I would like a lot of time war stuff to be. It’s held up by Mark Gatiss ABSOLUTELY NAILING it as The Unbound Master. I love everything about his performance, he’s unique, and fun, yet sinister. While I’ve always loved Sir Derek, I do think he might be my new favorite Master thanks to both this and Masterful. Stellar. On the other hand of the coin, Sir Derek ain’t much of a slouch either. He has an incredible moment in this episode, where the mad lad does it, he kills the Doctor. And listens to the recording of it. Over and over. Laughing. It’s brilliant. Yet it does make me disappointed Tom Baker didn’t make a cameo. This would be the one set to do it. Tom Baker versus Derek Jacobi. Can you imagine? Nevertheless, it’s a brilliant moment, in a much improved episode.  8.5/10

He Who Wins by Nicholas Briggs

By far the best story in the set, this story really does a deep character study on what the Master even would do if he won at last. While it’s similar to Masterful (and I prefer that) (and yes I know this predated Masterful shut up) it’s material that Sir Derek really can sink his teeth into, essentially punching Mark Gatiss in the face for daring to be such a good Master in the previous story and saying “no, I’m the best one!” He Who Wins is nigh perfect - perfect utilization of the Gatiss Master as a sort of dream to offput the Master’s victory, while not stealing the show too much from it’s Star. Sir Derek Jacobi’s performance is ridiculously good, and it also proves Nick Briggs is a hell of a writer when he’s not overworking himself and pooping out mediocre Dalek stuff. It’s just incredible. While I have plenty of issues with this set, I don’t have much with the payoff. Although I do kind of get confused by the fact that on like 700 attempts in the previous story, the Dalek time Controller and Gatiss never noticed Crazlus. But that’s a little thing. It’s a big thing that this story is so incredible after I’ve questioned about this set’s ideas so much. 10/10

Overall, yeah, I don’t think Anti-Genesis is flawless. But it does have a really good payoff to it’s weird crap in the first two episodes. While I’m not completely onboard, and think this set would be much better if it was more focused on Jacobi working for his victory against the Doctor and Davros in the first two episodes, it would be perhaps the best thing ever. But I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth too much. It’s a very pretty set that I’m happy to have on my shelf. Set Overall: 8/10 (yes I know that’s not an average but that’s what I think it is overall)