Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Brig and the boys find themselves in a predicament. With the Doctor and Jo off on Peladon, a plot from a parallel timeline unfolds back on Earth, and UNIT is forced to do the unthinkable - asking the Master for help.
So, it's brilliant. At the same time that we get a Doctor story without UNIT, we get a UNIT story without the Doctor. This seems fitting, because it appears we are at the point in time where those two entities start their gradual divorce, as the series becomes more comfortable once again with its original time traveling remit. McIntee clearly likes writing for the Master, because here he is again, filling a part of the void left by the Doctor, but doing it in his own unmistakably Master-y way.
As great as it is when Delgado and Pertwee are on-screen together, with the Master acting as the Moriarty to the Doctor's Holmes, the Master is a fascinating character on his own, as this book proves. People make fun of Big Finish for the volume of spin-offs it puts out, but after reading this I think some of those Master spin-offs they've done are going to deserve some special attention from me.
Also helping to fill this gap, Barbara and Ian! (Should I call them Barbarian?) What a lovely surprise. Although the style of this story couldn't be more different from the episodes they once appeared in, they are still perfectly recognizable as the characters they were, if a bit older and more jaded. The only complaint I'd really have is that we're teased a reunion with the Doctor at the end of the book, but it never comes. Still, it's a small quibble. Just having them back at all is such a wonderful treat. They both seem very bemused by what the UNIT guys take for granted, and they both have such marvelous interactions with the Master. Ian's really got that guy's number, correctly guessing about a lot of the Master's neuroses, even if the Master tries to play it off; and the Master's surprise when Barbara asks why he hates the Doctor is quite nice.
Oh, and lest we forget, this story is also a sequel to Inferno. Rather than an alien force, the Earth's government is being infiltrated by human beings from the parallel Earth we saw in that story. It's an interesting twist on the usual invasion motif, because the threat isn't the other, instead it's us. The ease with which the fascists from the Inferno world infiltrate the systems of government using alternate-universe doubles is quite chilling, and I notice that the end of the book does very little to tell us exactly whether they were all taken care of at the end. Much like the primary antagonist, Marianne Kyle, there's a possible sense here that this was intended as a thread for a potential sequel which never came about.
Kyle herself is an effective enough foe for UNIT and the Master, her ruthless, blind ambition acting as both her greatest strength and her greatest flaw. Ultimately, she makes the mistake of believing that the Master wants power for the same reasons she does, and makes one last foolish attempt to take him into her confidence. This ends with a magnificent series of paragraphs on the submarine Redoubt, where the Master, Kyle, and another Conclave member Yu, all hold guns on each other. The lines where they each try to decide who to shoot first are quite brilliantly done, especially in light of how much more the two humans are sweating than the Master is. In fact, he seems to have a blast with it.
I also liked the DI, George Boucher, quite a lot. I found his desire to avenge his nephew's death highly compelling, so I was rather disappointed when he's killed off long before the end of the book. I might have liked to have seen that play out further.
This book is nothing earthshattering for the continuity or anything, but it does a marvelous job filling this particular spot in the marathon. The Sea Devils will be next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 2 April 2021.)
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