Released November 2014

After learning the truth behind just what the Master’s seemingly benevolent actions entailed, the Doctor committedly jumps into action in Matt Fitton’s ‘The Reviled,’ acting just as much on his increasing anger while the Master, the Time Lords, and the Eminence each command his attention with innocent deaths mounting on all fronts as on his usual and noble motivations to simply help others and to leave the universe in a better state that that in which he found it.

With Molly at the Master’s side, Liv Chenka serves as the Doctor’s sole companion here, though the Time Lords first send her without the Doctor’s knowledge to the colony world of Ramosa that was abandoned by the Earth Alliance armed only with medical supplies to provide their best chance at stopping the Master’s own scheme. Once he discovers this, the Doctor is naturally suspicious of the Time Lords’ aims even with his implicit trust in Liv’s character and compassionate motives, but although his unease and mistrust are proven correct when the true intentions of the medicine are revealed, the two never give in to the increasing pressures and darkness surrounding them. The Doctor considers human beings looking for vengeance the most fearsome danger in the universe, but neither Liv nor he can stand idly by as the Eminence continues to seek out humans to add to its ranks of Infinite Warriors, and the sensor shield the Doctor erects helps to keep these people out of the Eminence’s grasp while he acts as the only force not out for his own gain through the exploitation of the colonists.

Even with the conflict between the humans and the native Ramosans still very much at the forefront even if as shown it amounts to little more than the Ramosans complaining about how unkind the humans are and the humans doing little to disprove it, it’s the conflict between the Doctor and the Master that again comes to the forefront as Sally Armstrong tries to get the humans to leave the planet while she appeals to the Ramosans’ natural sense of nationalism to nullify any prospect of a continuing if uneasy peace between the two races. The Ides Institute has taken a very personal interest in the colonisation of Ramosa through every step of the process throughout these many years, and it all comes to a head when the Master shockingly outwits the Doctor and claims all of the human lives for his own as the Eminence arrives with a subtly ingenious use of his TARDIS’s chameleon circuit when he materialises around the very ship that Liv is on awaiting the colonists to take them to safety. These two Time Lords have engaged in a battle of wills on innumerable occasions, but Alex Macqueen’s incarnation continues to prove himself as a force to be reckoned with, and the Doctor’s gradual realisation of what must have occurred is played to perfection and deftly raises the personal stakes for this series to new heights.

‘The Reviled’ is the grand entry that the Eighth Doctor needed to make after watching the Master set his latest plan into motion, and though the inevitable confrontation between the two is rightly being saved for a future story, the interactions between Paul McGann and Natalie Burt still brilliantly capture the foes’ underlying motivations and sentiments. Although to this point Liv hasn’t quite reached her maximum potential despite another impressive turn from Nicola Walker and her character’s good-hearted intentions, paired with the Eighth Doctor out in the universe at large she has already cemented herself as another strong addition to the Eighth Doctor’s ever-growing roster of companions, and the Doctor having defeat snatched from the jaws of victory is a dangerous and exciting turn heading into the second half of Dark Eyes 3.