The Dead Travel Fast (short story)

The Dead Travel Fast
Main character(s):	Bram Stoker
Main enemy:	Decayed Master
Main setting:	30 July-7 August 1890, Whitby
Key crew
Writer:	Mark Wright
Release details
Part of:	I Am The Master: Legends of the Renegade Time Lord
Release date:	5 November 2020
I Am The Master: Legends of the Renegade Time Lord
← Previous	Anger Management
Next →	Missy's Magical Mystery Mission

The Dead Travel Fast was the second short story published in I Am The Master: Legends of the Renegade Time Lord. It was written by Mark Wright and featured the Decayed Master as played on TV by Peter Pratt.

It also proposed another explanation of how the Decayed Master acquired such a likeness.

Summary

Holidaying in Whitby, Bram Stoker is plunged into a world of horror when a grandfather clock washes to shore together with the hideous remains of the dying Master – who will do anything to survive.

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Bram Stoker
• Decayed Master
• Emma Veazey
• Isabel Smith
• Marjorie Smith
• Miss Stokes

Worldbuilding

• Stoker compares the control room of the Master's TARDIS to the burial markers of Highgate Cemetery, and the control console to the works of Mr. Verne.

Notes

• Mark Wright has said that, when writing, he intended that this story immediately follows the events of the Doctor Who Magazine comic Doorway to Hell from the Master's perspective, with several narrative details supporting this placement:
  • At the end of Doorway to Hell, Delgado's Master begin to decay in his final moments and begin to regenerate using golden regeneration energy, which is known to damage TARDISes. At the start of The Dead Travel Fast, the Decayed Master emerges from a regeneration attempted in his own TARDIS, burning much of the interior.
  • The Dead Travel Fast establishes that the reason for the Decayed Master's decayed form was that he attempted to regenerate while he had an artron energy deficiency. Doorway to Hell shows the Master being mortally wounded through an unintended "temporal circuit breaker", which dissipates the abnormal temporal energies possessed by both the Master and the family he attacks, including the family's artron energy.
  • The Master's mention of revenge in The Dead Travel Fast echoes his final words in Doorway to Hell.

• However, Mark Wright's statement is facing several narrative obstacles too:
  • It is unknown where did the Master get his burnt clothes with a hood.
  • It is unknown why his TARDIS looked like a grandfather clock. It may be, that the Chameleon circuit automatically activated or that the TARDIS adopted its exterior following the Master's traumatic experience, but it is unknown why the Goth's TARDIS also had such an exterior (TV: The Deadly Assassin).

• Wright's statement also contradicts the events of the Big Finish Productions's so-called "multi-Master trilogy", released 4 years prior, that suggested that the "UNIT era" Master did successfully regenerate unknown amount of times before adopting the likeness of Geoffrey Beevers and then being burnt by his future self. The experience left his memory of the events scrambled, as his future self recalled before attacking his past self (AUDIO: And You Will Obey Me, Vampire of the Mind, The Two Masters).
  • It also contradicts the account suggested in the 1998 novel Legacy of the Daleks, where the "UNIT era" Master was disfigured after being shot with his own TCE.

Continuity

• The Master is rendered into a decaying state after undergoing a failed regeneration. (PROSE: Meet Missy!, The Doctor vs the Master; COMIC: Doorway to Hell)
• Low artron energy prevents normal regeneration. (PROSE: The Banquo Legacy)
• Stoker is shown a glimpse of his own future death. (TV: The Haunting of Villa Diodati)
• The Master says he is "desperate for revenge" on the person who caused his failed regeneration. (COMIC: Doorway to Hell)