War Master: The Master putting on a Texan accent? You can’t say that he doesn’t throw himself into every guise. He’s willing to offer $2000 for the chameleon, which is a considerable sum.
Standout Performance: I don’t want to be one of those people that cast aspersions on peoples accents especially since half the time when actors are called out on dreadful accents they turn out to be their own. So, I guess the diplomatic thing to say that some are more convincing than others. There’s one scene around the 30-minute mark where they were extremely unconvincing.
Audio Landscape: The direction was far more apparent in this story. New York was conjured up very atmospherically by Peter Doggart, although I might have been leaning more on the sound design this time around because the story wasn’t gripping me as much.
Isn’t it Odd: I really admire this ranges willingness to try new things all the time and to not just stick with the status quo. After its reception it would have been so easy for the producer to stick to the Master of Callous format and do something similar again but instead the War Master series heads of in a completely different, seemingly random (although I think we all know that when it comes to the Master that nothing is random), direction. The consequence of that is that there’s a 50/50 chance that you will prefer the new direction or not and right now this isn’t quite to my taste. These character vignettes, the Master travelling the universe to acquire weapons to fight the Tie War in the most diverse of locations. It does mean that we get to visit the Second World War in England and the New York carnival scene, proof that you literally have no clue what is coming next. With this set I guess its how these stories contribute to what is clearly going to be the two-part finale, a showdown between the War Master and the eighth Doctor. That’s where all the meat is going to be, this is two hours’ worth of set up beforehand.
Result: This really dragged, and the twist at the climax lacks the punch of previous attempts at this sort of thing. It might have been more interesting and less time consuming if this story and The Survivor had been blended into one, since they are essentially the same story, and have the Master achieve his goals in half the time. It would certainly make the first half of this set drag less. It would have been pretty unique to skip between two such diverse locations and to come to the realisation that the Master is collecting skilled people to fight in the Time War in both. Instead we have two separate tales, neither of which is distinctive enough to standout and because of their similarities one is bound to be weaker than the other. And The Coney Island Chameleon loses out. It’s not that the performances or the characterisation are unimpressive, I think my problem was I never found myself invested in these people that we dropped in on. It’s nice to see what the Master gets up to away from the Doctor and how he pieces his plans together, but his turn as the insidious Priest in the previous story was much more uncomfortable to listen to than his guise as the wealthy American businessman here. I was waiting for the story to take on dramatic turn as in the previous story, that all the ponderous talking was leading to something more memorable that promised much for the second half of the set but this really lack momentum all the way through. When the Master does finally show his true colours, I was hoping that he would kill the lot of them and get on with something more interesting, a sure sign that this hadn’t clicked with the characters. An unusual misfire for this range, which typically blazes a trial for the Time War Big Finish narrative. Let’s hope that things get back on track when the Doctor joins the action: 4/10
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