Hearts of Darkness: The Scaramancer

"Use your own weapon against yourself."

Writer: Lisa McMullin

Format: Audio

Released: October 2020

Series: War Master 5.02

Featuring: War Master

Synopsis

"Find the Doctor... stop the Doctor... and, if necessary, kill the Doctor!"

Recruited by the Celestial Intervention Agency to track down his oldest enemy, the Master finds himself thrown into a mission that will take him into deepest Dalek territory.

Abandoned on the planet Redemption, he assembles a crew and acquires a ship – the journey that follows is certain to test them all... and not everyone will survive.

But space pirates and living corpses are the least of their worries. Their biggest threat remains at large: a Time Lord who likes to call himself 'The Doctor'.

Verdict

The Scaramancer was a very good audio adventure to continue my way through the Hearts of Darkness fifth series for the War Master! This followed on immediately where The Edge of Redemption left off with Morski and the Master en route to the Lehar System, except the dynamic of their relationship changed immediately. Morski revealed that he’d killed Ilya in cold blood because he knew who the mysterious Mr Seta actually was. Just having him name the Master gave him some sort of power which was fun. I liked that a similar approach to the previous episode was taken in having a main quartet of characters with Dorada and the Scaramancer replacing the roles of Ilya and Kriket here. I thought the latter was a brilliant character and certainly worthy of being the titular reference. Her backstory with the Master was nothing short of extraordinary and absolutely the shining moment of the episode. I liked the idea of events for him being in his personal future so he didn’t recognise her, but the flashback scene to the disaster on her home planet was a fine illustration of the chaos and destruction being caused by the Time War. She was on a stronghold for access to the fifteen hidden galaxies which was quite intriguing and I’d certainly like to know more about them moving forward, but both sides were desperate for victory and control here. And it seemed the Daleks had it. The Master didn’t seem that bothered and it’s clear he feels no Time Lord loyalty or patriotism. But with the Daleks in control he knew it was time to leave. The Scaramancer was born out of the Master giving her an impossible and option-less choice. He knew a pulse wave was coming and that meant death, but she wanted to save her sister. He’d offered to save her, but just her. He even admitted that he could easily save her sister with his TARDIS, but he wouldn’t. He was giving her a choice as part of a cruel and spontaneous psychological experiment. Survive and your sister dies, or die with your sister. I don’t think she was wrong to pick survival, but the Master revelled in this kind of evil. It was beyond cruel and that’s the War Master at his best. The rumours and myths going around about that story and how the Scaramancer was born was very good. I liked that Dorada had a connection with the Doctor and his being on Nastrond felt a little odd, especially with it being described as the planet of corpses. That was really good. I look forward to visiting there presumably in the finale. Except it seems we have already encountered the Doctor as some of the Master’s nice tendencies may have been answered. The cliffhanger finish was really unexpected as the Master claimed to be merely a face, and he was actually the Doctor! If true, that’s quite something. Could it be that it was the Doctor who was actually sent on his own kill mission by Narvin? That will be quite fun if so. I did have some sort of suspicion the Master wasn’t himself when he prevented Morski from killing the Scaramancer, but I wasn’t expecting that! It was really fun and sets up an exciting and mightily intriguing next episode. Dorada escaping was good and I suspect we won’t have seen the last of her. Overall, a great episode! 

Rating: 8/10