And You Will Obey Me (audio story)

At an auction in the small British village of Hexford, the Fifth Doctor and a young woman in green both bid furiously on an ordinary grandfather clock, as does a chavvy young man called Colin — only for all of them to lose the thing to a mysterious phone bidder. After the auction wraps up, the Doctor and Annie exchange wary introductions while Colin catches up with his associate Helen. As she questions the Doctor about his interest in the clock, Annie is finally told the truth: that the Doctor believes the clock to be the time machine of his old friend and fellow alien, the Master.

The Doctor, meanwhile, learns from Annie that the clock is the only object to have survived a fire that destroyed the derelict cottage of one "Michael Masterson", who the Doctor correctly guesses was "a recluse with a hideously deformed face" — none other than the Master in his decayed form. She talks her into visiting the ruins of the cottage, where they find Michael Masterson's grave. The Doctor begins to dig it up, intent on checking that the body within is indeed that of the Master and not a decoy. He finds the earth disturbed and the coffin empty, and guesses that the Master must have regenerated after burial and crawled out of his grave. As this is going on, the two are being observed by a pair of alien beings, a young female one and her superior the Dragonmaster.

The Doctor learns that the reason Annie was at the auction was that she still possesses the Master's TARDIS key found in the wreckage of Masterson's house; she had been planning to sell the key to whoever bought the clock. Deducing that the Master must still be on Earth, if indeed it is him who bought the clock, the Doctor resolves to find it, heading for the auction-house. There, Colin and Helen have been trying to get the name of the phone-bidder out of the auctioneer, resorting to suspiciously Master-like hypnosis to do so. However, all their plans are interrupted by the descent of the buyers — or rather, their agents: Russian KGB members inexplicably wielding Gallifreyan stasers…

Part two

The mercenaries, led by Grigor, hold the Fifth Doctor and Annie at gunpoint. As they sound each other out for information, it becomes clear that the mercenaries are not, or, in any event, do not believe that they are, working for the Decayed Master, with Grigori revealing that his "master" is in fact female. The Doctor and Annie are serendipitously saved by the arrival of Gomphus and Jade Nymph, whom the Doctor recognises as Dragonhunters, with Nymph rendering Grigor unconscious with her stinger to neutralise the threat of his staser.

The Doctor discourages the Dragonhunters from liquefying the unconscious Grigor's brain for information by showing them the Master's TARDIS key and telling them he will help take them to the Master's TARDIS so long as they refrain from killing. Though mistrustful of Time Lords, and not yet convinced that the Doctor and Annie are not bounty hunters seeking the Master for self-serving reasons, the giant alien dragonflies accept the bargain. The Dragonhunters abruptly pick up the Doctor and all three fly off. Left on solid ground, Annie tells Colin and Helen, whom the Doctor also convinced the Dragonhunters to leave alone, to come out of hiding. She voices her intention to wake up and interrogate Grigor. As he wakes up, Grigor can only repeat the word "strekozy" ("dragonfly" in Russian) over and over; Helen suggests to Annie that Colin tie him to a chair.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has succeeded in convincing the Dragonhunters to land near his TARDIS instead of continuing the journey through flight. He invites them in and explain to them that he is using the telepathic circuits to home in on the Master's TARDIS on the basis of the key. However, the short-wave transmissions, long-wave transmissions, frequency modulated transmissions and microwave transmissions at "ground level" drown out the signal, forcing the Doctor to take the TARDIS up vertically "a few thousand feet up" in the hope of being able to home in on the "whisper" of the other TARDIS.

Meanwhile, the interrogation of Grigor is interrupted by the Auctioneer, objecting to the use of his auction house as a "torture chamber", just as Grigor is starting to wake up, but Annie uses the staser-gun to stun the auctioneer so they can continue in peace. Grigor jeers that "interfering" English civilians won't dare to hurt him, and vows to tell them nothing — prompting Annie to reveal both to him and to Helen and Colin that she's actually part of MI5. Frightened, Grigor gives her the GPS coordinates of the abode of the "mistress". The three rush out, but Annie goes back in, claiming to have forgotten her handbag, just long enough to shoot Grigor with the staser again (despite her reassurance to him that she wasn't going to). On the way there, Annie, Helen and Colin exchange data about the Master.

Meanwhile, the "mistress", Janine, has the Master's TARDIS unloaded from the mercenaries' helicopter as it arrives at her helipad, only to be threatened by a man in sunglasses who reveals himself as her old acquaintance, the real Michael Masterson. Looking into Janine's eyes as she attempts to hypnotise him, Mikey realises that "he is inside [her]!". It is at this point that the Doctor arrives. Janine reveals to him that Mikey is the Master's son, and claims that he is working for his father.

After the Doctor successfully defuses the situation, the three head into Janine's high-tech, voice-controlled house for a drink and a chat. Janine and Mikey reveal that they grew up together and that, in 1984, they fell out of the bus on the way back from school, and this was how it all started. Aghast, the Doctor points out that 1984 is also the year he came to 2016 from.

Part three

to be added

Part four

to be added

Cast

References

Geography

Hexford is near Little Hodcombe.

Individuals

Colin sarcastically refers to the security guard as "Stretch Armstrong", and Annie to the Russian mercenary Grigor as "Boris-not-Johnson".
Colin was a Sea Scout when he was younger.
Mikey's elder brother fought in the Falklands War and his face was badly burnt.
The Master arrived in Hexford in 1984.
Colin and Helen were born in 1968.

Organisations

The Russian KGB had a file on the Master.
The Doctor briefly wonders if Annie is working with MI5 or UNIT, but cuts himself off before he reveals the latter name to her.

Popular culture

Mikey compares the Master to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Technology

The Master's TARDIS must repair herself with the internal reconfiguration system.
The "children of the Master" absorb his symbiotic nuclei.

Notes

This story was recorded on 29 and 30 October 2015 at The Moat Studios.
The image of the Doctor on the cover is flipped, meaning that his celery is on the opposite side of his body than normal.
The audio story The Two Masters revealed that the Master in this story is actually the Alex Macqueen incarnation in the body of his cadaverous past incarnation.
This audio drama marks the first appearance of the Master in the main range since Master in October 2003.

Continuity

The Doctor states that the Master has had a long list of aliases (TV: Terror of the Autons, et al)
The Doctor visits Hexford, where he owned a house, Nest Cottage, during his fourth incarnation. (AUDIO: Tsar Wars)
Lot 47 contains several cricket trophies, including the Cranleigh Cup. (TV: Black Orchid)
The Master's TARDIS is still in the form of a grandfather clock. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, The Keeper of Traken)
The Doctor received the Master's distress signal while in Little Hodcombe in 1984. (TV: The Awakening)
The Doctor mentions that TARDISes can take the form of a Greek column, (TV: Castrovalva) an iron maiden, (TV: The King's Demons) or a Concorde. (TV: Time-Flight)
The Master has several stasers in his TARDIS. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
Jane Hampden was Mikey's third year teacher at Little Hodcombe Primary School. (TV: The Awakening)
Although the Doctor describes fledershrews as a common TARDIS pest, he would later allow an entire colony of them to live in his TARDIS during his seventh and eighth incarnations. (AUDIO: Black and White, Nevermore, Relative Dimensions, Day of the Vashta Nerada)
The Doctor believes that he knows how this incarnation of the Master will meet his end. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
By his seventh incarnation, the Doctor was unable to remember this encounter with the Master due to the time breaks which were slowly destroying the universe. (AUDIO: The Two Masters)
The Cult of the Heretic sent the Dragonhunters and the Transhuman Sisters to kill the Master. (AUDIO: The Two Masters)

External links

Official And You Will Obey Me page at bigfinish.com