This title was released in July 2025. It will be exclusively available to buy from the Big Finish website until 31 August 2025, and on general sale after this date.
In a psychic forest the Master begins a sinister experiment... but is it for the benefit of Gallifrey or does it serve a darker purpose?
Several years ago, the Master, disguised as a tutor, took a group of Time Lord Academy students with promising futures on a field trip that went disastrously wrong. Now in the present, they all turn up dead.
Gamara is the last survivor - but to save herself, she will need to reveal the truth about the monstrous experiment the Master made them conduct all those years ago.
**Please note: the collector’s edition CDs are strictly limited to 1,000 copies**
Recorded on: 20 January 2025
Recorded at: The Soundhouse
Writer Lizzie Hopley said: "Master! is currently fighting amid my top fave Big Finish commissions. Eric Roberts is so deliciously cruel, I shocked myself with some of the things he says. To pitch him again against McGann's Eighth Doctor, who I've written for many times, was a gift and their scenes are as electric as you'd desire.
"We recorded with an outstanding young cast, I'm so proud of them and the relationships they quickly formed. They weren't afraid of playing the high stakes which this story insists on. Mother Quiver first appeared in my Doctor Who Audio Novel The Box of Terrors and I’ve been waiting to use (and play!) her for ages. This is a dark and twisted tale; one of the darkest moments was inspired by a Richard Matheson short story - I wonder who can spot it?"
Eric Roberts said: "I love it because I love the Master. He is such a master! He's so in charge and he's so not nice. It's always fun playing bad guys because you always get the best dialogue."
Producer Noga Flaishon added: "The Master is one of my favourite elements in the Doctor Who canon. I'm a big fan of characters who are the foils, the nemeses. With the Master, we have a Time Lord who is just as knowledgeable, just as clever, but where the Doctor will always seek to heal, the Master seeks to corrupt.
"And in this story from Lizzie Hopley, we definitely see the Master as a corruptor. We have reveals and twists and turns, but at the core, it's about six people who are being manipulated and coerced by a charismatic monster. When I first saw the story, my thought was, are we allowed to go this dark? Thankfully, I had the amazing John Dorney and Rob Valentine to assure me that yes, this is Dark Gallifrey. This is very much what we came here to do."
Jason Haigh-Ellery and Eric Roberts
