The Biggest Doctor Who Moment We Never Saw On TV
Big Finish, which is unfortunately the name of an audio drama production company and not a Scandinavian mob boss, has been keeping the TARDIS's occupants cruising the time vortex since 1999, well before Russell T. Davies reintroduced the world to Time Lords in 2005. Their contributions to the Who-niverse have served not only as a reliable source of beer money for Tom Baker, but as a font of extracurricular Doctor shenanigans, expanding on the stories of the protagonist's most beloved iterations. The business model is sound: While Christopher Eccleston might not physically hold a sonic screwdriver for less than the cost of Wales, getting him into a sound booth for a couple of days is a manageable goal.
Across more than two decades, the biggest complaint that fans have had about the Big Finish stories — glasses-pushing pedantry aside — has been that we'll never see them brought to life on screen. Listening to Alex Kingston's River Song interact with Michelle "Missy" Gomez is a treat, but it would be so much cooler to actually see the two of them in a posh accent Tom and Jerry time travel throwdown. In short, even with its undeniable position as the money bed that the BBC doesn't want to wet, Doctor Who, as a visual medium, is still tethered to budget constraints. Having CGI pterodactyls attack children at a London park is one thing, but a full-on production featuring digitally de-aged actors who are now 40 years older or significantly more dead than they were when they first appeared is, sadly, not currently within the realm of possibility.
Which is a shame, because the upcoming Masterful story being produced by Big Finish would be freaking bonkers to watch.
Doctor Who's Masterful teamup
Masterful, which is set to release in January of 2021, marks a special occasion for fans of the Doctor's most ambitious and long-running frenemy. It's a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Master's on-screen debut in 1971's Terror of the Autons, and it seems to be pulling out all the stops, antagonist-wise. While The Day of the Doctor saw a cleverly edited team-up featuring all 12 — no, 13 – iterations of the Doctor, this one is bringing every Master into play.
Actors returning to the role for Masterful include recent performers like John Simm and Michelle Gomez. Derek Jacobi, who played the part briefly and surreptitiously during the Tenth Doctor's run on the series, is also set to join, along with Eric Roberts of the ill-fated 1996 TV movie, and Geoffrey Beevers, who played the character during the Tom Baker years with an aesthetic that screamed, "What if Two-Face just had one messed-up face?" Mark Gatiss, a frequent contributor from the Steven Moffat years, is also credited as playing an incarnation of the Master, presumably a position left vacant by since-passed actors Roger Delgado or Peter Pratt, or possibly as a version who has yet to be seen.
While the 10th series finale, The Doctor Falls, saw two Masters working in uncomfortably close proximity to one another, a filmed outing featuring a whole bevy of the Doctor's nemesis would, without a doubt, kind of rock. Until the BBC decides to double down on a story featuring dozens of regenerations worth of Machiavellian Time Lord skullduggery, fans will just have to put on their headphones, close their eyes, and imagine a more masterfully magical world.