We open in Donna Temple-Noble’s kitchen. Novice Chen is checking her over, and noticing her eyeballs twitch. She’s both awake and asleep, in a REM state, at the same time. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to jiggery-pokery on Novice Chen’s medical scanner, and detected that what Delgado-Master had injected Donna with is a Time Lord drug meant to stall regeneration, presumably to try to do surgery to save the person and avoid regeneration. This will keep Donna, whose memories of the Doctor are rapidly returning, from burning up for a few hours. The question is, why would Delgado-Master appear and save Donna?
Rex Runyan, Time Agent, walks in and explains that he had Roberts-Master in the alley, but that Master teleported away. At this point Wilf is waking up, and is concerned that the Doctor and other characters are there. They bring him up to speed. The Doctor figures with the fob watch he can save Donna by putting her Time Lord bits away, except his TARDIS doesn’t have a Chameleon Arch any more. The Master’s TARDIS might, however, and the cat’s-head ring is a TARDIS key. They need to find Delgado-Master.
The Doctor, Rex Runyan, Katie and UNIT Sgt. Streebek head to the Doctor’s TARDIS to try to get a fix on where the Master’s TARDIS may be. The interior of the TARDIS is now a dense rainforest, and they get lost looking for the control module.
Wilf heads upstairs to clean himself up, leaving Donna in the living room in the care of Novice Chen. There are four knocks on the door. Again. Louder. More urgent. POUNDING. Donna’s conscious but out of it. Novice Chen answers the door, and Simm-Master pushes his way in. He hypnotises Novice Chen and tells her to go upstairs and get Wilf. Donna snaps back to realize Simm-Master is in her house, which pisses her off enough to bring her fully conscious. Wilf comes in, sees Simm-Master, and lunges at him. Simm-Master laughs and mocks the old man. Donna grabs an afghan off the sofa where she was laying down, and throws it over Simm-Master’s head. Wilf clocks him, knocking him off his feet. This breaks the hypnosis over Novice Chen, who injects him with a tranquilzer and knocks him out.
The Doctor finally finds the control module, and detects a large time energy leak, like a nuclear reactor leaking radiation. He traces the source, and decides it must be a badly damaged TARDIS. It must be the Master’s TARDIS. They head back through the rainforest and out of the TARDIS, to see Wilf, Donna, and Novice Chen carrying the unconscious Simm-Master toward them. At that point, reavers appear again. The Doctor opens the TARDIS door, and it’s just a police call box. Everyone runs.
Katie decides to try to hide, and ducks into a doorway. The reavers fly past. Novice Chen decides to make a stand, unleashes her claws and turns to face them, and they fly past her. Realizing they can’t outrun the reavers on food, the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to hotwire a delivery truck. The other characters pile in and the truck races off, leaving Novice Chen and Katie on the street watch the truck drive off chased by reavers.
The Doctor leads a merry chase, around corners and over sidewalks and under bridges, but the reavers continue chasing. At this point, Streebek and Runyan have re-tied the unconscious Simm-Master with zip ties. They end up back on the street where the started, going the opposite direction. Novice Chen flags them down, and the Doctor slows the truck down so Chen and Katie can jump in. As the Doctor is driving while turning back to talk to the others, trying to figure out what to do, Delgado-Master steps into the street in front of the truck, pointing a Tissue Compression Eliminator. The Doctor slams on the breaks to avoid hitting him. Everyone else piles out the back, taking Simm-Master with them, and gets ready to run. Delgado-Master hops into the front, and orders the Doctor to drive so they can talk. Unseen by Doctor or Master, Rex Runyan slips into the back of the truck.
Delgado-Master tells the Doctor that he’s going to help him stop those mongrels, the other Masters who aren’t truly Time Lords at all. They’re after his TARDIS. He blames the Doctor for the glimpse of what he’s become, but those insane, inferior mockeries of him won’t get his TARDIS. At this point, Rex Runyan steps forward and blows Delgado-Master away with his shotgun. the blast wasn’t enough to kill him, but flying out of the truck, which is going very fast, and bouncing off the street, does. In the rear-view mirror, the Doctor sees the Master start to glow and regenerate as the reavers set upon him. Delgado-Master and the reavers disappear.
The Doctor chews out Runyan as they drive back for the others. As they get there, Simm-Master is waking up. He explains that he hired Captain John Hart to steal the TARDIS key from Roberts-Master, as he couldn’t go back into his own timeline himself, as that would cause exactly this sort of paradox. Roberts-Master had recovered the TARDIS key from where his previous regeneration had left it. Roberts-Master tried to steal Delgado-Master’s TARDIS, but Simm-Master had the key, so Delgado was after Roberts and Roberts was after Simm. The 3 Masters aren’t working together at all. Quite the opposite. Why did Delgado save Donna? Because he needed the Doctor to fight the other two Masters — again, he couldn’t do it directly without creating paradox — and the Doctor couldn’t do that if he was distracted by Donna’s exploding head. But Delgado-Master is right; due to the Rassilon Impremature, Roberts-Master can’t operate a TARDIS because he has no Time Lord DNA. Even Simm-Master could only operate the Doctor’s TARDIS because it was locked to visit two points.
The Doctor takes Simm-Master to his TARDIS, which is now a swamp. He has Novice Chen knock the Master out, and leaving him there. The Doctor re-opens the door, and it’s now an open plain. The Master is on this uninhabited planet inside the TARDIS, and even if he finds the control module he probably can’t operate it.
Two down, one to go. Where is Roberts-Master? Since Delgado-Master wasn’t around on his last scan, the Doctor checks and find the Master’s TARDIS, in addition to the time-energy leak. They go to the TARDIS, which is in the form of a grandfather clock back at the bookstore. He uses the cat’s-head ring to open the Master’s TARDIS, while the others watch for Roberts-Master. Rex Runyan follows him inside, and closes the door. The Doctor confronts him — he’s figured out that Runyan is Roberts-Master! The Master took over his body! Runyan drawns his shotgun, and chases the Doctor around the control console. The Doctor says wait, I’ll let you go, if you let me use the Chameleon Arch to save Donna. The Master agrees. He opens the door and calls Donna in. The Doctor gives him the cat’s head ring, and using Runyan’s vortex manipulator he teleports out — he can come back for the TARDIS later. The Doctor pulls out the fob watch, and he and Donna head deeper into the Master’s TARDIS.
END CREDITS
Props to John, who had fun playing his character-as-Master. I left it up to him to do his reveal. Props for Cameron for figuring it out, and waiting until the right moment to confront him. He’ll have a new character next time.
In the end, the Eric Roberts Master was the one who got away.
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