Dismemberment

"It was raining blood."

Writer: James Goss
Format: Short Story
Released: February 2018
Printed in: The Missy Chronicles

Featuring: Missy

Synopsis

The leading lights of Missy's private members' club bar her on the grounds that she's female. They're going to regret it.

Verdict

Dismemberment was a great start to The Missy Chronicles! This a collection of short stories I have been very excited about for a while now and just when I was considering purchasing a copy, I stumbled upon it in the local library to my delight. Missy is an incarnation with so much personality and even though she is the same character, she's very different to the Master and I think that is what adds to her popularity. Michelle Gomez contributes a lot to that too and I'm very excited by her upcoming audio series too. I really loved how this story was clearly at the start of life for the Master as a woman and she wasn't quite sure on her name anymore. She subtly referenced the ordeal she had been through in World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls leading to her regeneration but she was still the very same person. The Scoundrels Club was the perfect place for the Master and I liked how it was where he went soon after changing bodies. This time would be no different but the reception might be quite different now that the Master was a woman. She didn't take too kindly to being told to leave and the members would soon pay the cost for not allowing her to maintain her membership. The reference to The Movie was delightful as even snakes were allowed, but women were not. I thought the story's title was quite fitting for Missy's first piece of prose and the delight she took in killing off the members of the Scoundrels Club was somehow wonderful. She was so calm and relaxed whilst her victim was quivering. She just loved being evil and that's why Missy is such a fantastic villain. There was only a slight mention of the Doctor and she was partly a member of the club because it would annoy him, but I loved that this story was all about Missy. It definitely had an early feel with her, on more than one occasion, asking for her vitctims to say something nice which was reminiscent of Series 8. The way she disposed of Ascot on the bridge with the Reissmann Collection was quite extraordinary and then she just tied Bobo to a train track before marrying him and legally taking all of his money. She engrossed herself with evil, but she had a purpose - revenge. What she did with the surviving members of the Club was quite incredible too as she had Saffron, an incredible cook from a slaved sugar plantation, poison their deserts which enabled her to take them back to the eighteenth century and become slaves themselves. Mandeville was going to make his ancestors rich now. One aspect of this story that I particularly loved was that it was the origin story for Missy finding her new name. The Master no longer fitted, so she was Missy. It wasn't messy or fussy. I really liked how Saffron helped her come to that name. Overall, a delightful tale of evil!

Rating: 8/10