The Unwanted Gift of Prophecy

"Marry a Time Lord and you forget we can change bodies."

Writer: Richard Dinnick

Format: Short Story

Released: June 2017

Printed in: Myths and Legends 03

Featuring: The Master, Lucy

Synopsis

The Master, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, recruits his wife, Lucy Saxon, to go on a mission though time to meet his past incarnations and offer them a deal in return for use of their TARDIS. There's one catch though, they believe Lucy is a recruit from the Doctor and it will lead to the Master's demise...

Verdict

The Unwanted Gift of Prophecy was another terrific story in the Myths and Legends collection! I was really impressed with this one and I absolutely love that it was set during the events of The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords in The Year That Never Was. It was a Doctor-less adventure but that absolutely fine as Lucy Saxon got to take centre stage! She might not be everybody’s favourite or most memorable character but I’ve always felt that she deserves more depth and this adventure provided that in abundance. The Master was clearly at the height of his power here and he was loving it, much to the expense of Lucy. She admitted she hated him but not to his face (at least the one she married) and I liked how this provided a lot of hints and provided direction and motive for Lucy’s actions in the events of the aforementioned finale. She would go on to shoot him after being pushed here. However, before all that the Master had a mission for her and it involved matrix data splices containing information on all the times the Doctor defeated him. He sent Lucy all the way back to meet the first televised incarnation during the events of The Sea Devils but he was not at all interested in giving up access to his TARDIS to Lucy’s mysterious employer and instead believed that it was a ploy of the Doctor himself. I wasn’t keen with the story not counting Big Finish meetings between the Doctor and the Master but I can appreciate the difficulties in cross-canonisation. We then flashed forward to the events of Castrovalva with the Tremas incarnation of the Master and he recognised Lucy after she managed to stumble into his TARDIS. He was more inclined to listen to her offer this time but since the terms had changed with just six data splices, he was not interested. The Harold Saxon version of the Master was irate and intended on sending Lucy to the same incarnation but at a later time, but he got the calculations wrong and instead Lucy Saxon met Missy which was terrific! The latter’s reaction to that was superb and she knew all about the Master’s plan and she warned her ex-wife what her husband would do. She advised what she should do next which was quite something and it ended up with Missy acquiring the Matrix data splices that we saw in Dark Water/Death in Heaven which was really clever. Missy understanding how Lucy was feeling was really good and she knew that she had done wrong in her past. As a whole, the story was pretty simple but just worked extremely well! I had no idea about the myth it was based upon but I thought the short story format worked really once again. Overall, a brilliant adventure!

Rating: 9/10