35. The Master Escapes.

1. The Master Escapes.

For the Master in the Judoon "Master Palace" prison it is just another long day. He has assessed all his options to escape, and they have all been shown to be impossible.


The Judoon Master Palace prison is in orbit around planet Albatross Seven Ex Two. It had been specially built to detain the Master, knowing all his powers and all of the known possible rings with their own powers. With all of this security he has been permitted to retain his rings at his own insistence – they don't work in there. .

The planet is a sister planet to one traded for Earth (ref. 15). That planet had been swallowed completely by a black hole, narrowly missing the Judoon Master Palace, then in orbit around it, but damaging it permitting the Master to escape. But that was a while ago and he had been re-captured; the Judoon facility repaired and moved to orbit another planet, nearby.


The daily guard visit irritates the Master. "Why do I need to be kept in lonesome solitary confinement in this palace built just for me?" he asks his guards, mostly to provoke them.
They have no answer, but then they don't know the Master or how easily he could escape from any lesser prison. The guards aren't the prison designers! .

The guards favour sending a "Weeping Angel" to play with the Master, to scare him while they avoid watching. They call the Weeping Angel Angela.

Weeping Angels, so named as they look like stone statues of angels burying their faces in their hands, create fear in most lifeforms they meet. But will they do this for the Master?


Angela enters the room behind him. A noise alerts the Master, and he turns to see what's happening.
Angela freezes as she must.
The Master laughs. "Company at last!" He jests. Angela can still hurt him badly. He must avoid Angela; she must never touch him. He has no idea what would happen if she did. Her appalling enstonement "disease" may infect him leaving him prone to re-infection at any later time, or he might shake the infection off; he doesn't know.
Her favourite trick is to throw something at a lifeform to cause it to go back in time.

As he moves to the opposite side of the room the Master allows a momentary blink. In that moment Angela advances towards him and freezes again. Her disease turns her to solid stone when anyone looks at her.

A cup and saucer remain on the table from a long-drunk coffee. The Master knows what he must do to escape. He manoeuvres to permit Angela to grab the saucer. Her gross infection changes the saucer to stone; a stone with a difference.
When the Master deliberately blinks again the saucer is travelling towards him at speed. Angela's throw is accurate. The Master relishes being hit by it - this is his immediately devised escape plan! The stone impacts him.


Angela's stone sends him back in time. Quite a long time; well before the Judoon built the Master Palace to contain him.

The Master finds himself in space, in his own personal solo orbit around the planet around which the Judoon will eventually place their Master Palace. A long time before any life support systems would be there for him. .

The Master has escaped! But what sort of escape is that? .

The Master quickly uses a ring of communication to summon help to that instant.


Trelim, an old schoolfriend, if that might be what he might have been in earlier years, contemplates whether or not to assist the Master. He sits in his basement flat in a hovel on Gallifrey. He despises himself and dislikes his flat. He has no access to a Tardis, but has a hyperspace armband, recently delivered by Kerblam! (Ref. TV episode Kerblam!). He fully recognises that time might be of the essence for the Master, but right now he doesn't want to help him; he has never received any thanks for helping him in the past!


Does anybody? .


Meanwhile the Master recognises help isn't going to arrive immediately. He's in immediate difficulty and retreats into a different ring he is wearing; a ring of consciousness. Now the ravages of the vacuum of space can do their worst on his body and he will still come through it and be able to take over someone else's body! Maybe. He can hope. He knows that eventually the Doctor will look for him. But he isn't in any sort of control of this!


Crystelle One hears he's gone missing almost immediately and instantly travels to attend a Judoon briefing. She knows the Doctor would never allow any Gallifreyan to perish, even the Master! (Ref. TV episode Last of the Time Lords.)
As no self-respecting translation equipment exists for Judoon, and the resident translator is indisposed, she jots down her contributions, and receives theirs in written form, too. .

Having ascertained the instant of transportation, along with the method, after the meeting she calculates just when and where the Master has gone to. Angela's type send beings back by a standard amount of time. She orders an air lock, takes it there and floats it up to his gasping body. He is encompassed by the air lock and the air is let in. His body breathes again.

The Master has already retreated into the ring. He knows nothing of his rescue, bodily revival and replacement into the Judoon Master Palace - at a moment soon after he left when Angela had been restrained again.

The Judoon are puzzled that he stays supine, refraining from any interaction, but are content to let this continue for a while as it's considerably less work for them! .


Crystelle One is a clone of Crystelle. She was cloned a long time ago and has developed many skills in the meantime! She has been permitted to retain her own Tardis to help her to protect her original Crystelle.


A short while later, Trelim arrives in the Judoon foyer with his hyperspace armband. In his uncertainties, he has veered temporarily towards helping the Master and has decided to visit him.
Trelim arrives in the Judoon foyer and learns that the Master is in a sleep-like state and cannot be woken.


Not at all like Sleeping Beauty! .

(There's no beauty and he can't be woken!)


Trelim is granted access to see the Master in person.

He approaches the Master's body and accidentally brushes against his ring. He soon wishes he hadn't! A white mist quickly swirls, grabbing Trelim, and the Master takes over Trelim's body forcing him to submit. It all takes just a few moments.

"Now! I've some business to attend to!" the Master says sternly from Trelim's body.
"What business?" Trelim asks timorously.

"Crystelle!" the Master says tersely from Trelim's body, hissing. "Where is she?"

Trelim knows and needs little persuasion from the Master to divulge this. "Tinsel," he says, noticeably trembling.

"Is there anything else I need to know?"

"Crystelle keeps something meriting an Auto-Annihilator device in the room on the left of her front door," Trelim divulges something else he knows.
This interests the Master, and he instantly changes his plans to accommodate discovering what's so valuable in Crystelle's house.

"And?" the Master continues to be demanding.
"The front door is a beautiful colour - cornflower blue."
The Master is annoyed with such a ridiculous titbit of information. "Fool!" he says.
Trelim was right - he won't get any thanks from the Master! .


The Judoon have no difficulty seeing Trelim out and restoring his hyperspace armband. But it isn't just Trelim! It's the Master they are letting out, too, inhabiting Trelim's body!

The Master quickly programs Planet Tinsel into the device and activates it...


Having not done any research, he has no idea where to go on the planet, but he knows what Crystelle looks like! And, to his advantage, he's in disguise - he looks like Trelim!

"Trelim!" the Master commands. "Tell me where Crystelle's house is!"
Trelim refuses to help. "No! You tricked me! I came to help but you reviled me. Help stops here!" A brave stand against the Master! .

As a very old-looking man, the Master shuffles slowly along a leafy road in Trelim's body. Houses are visible a hundred metres away and a young boy approaches walking a dog.

The Master decides he needs to ask the boy. "Hello, do you know where Crystelle lives? I'm losing my memory and I need to see her." .
The excuse of forgetting ought to work, he hopes.

The boy pauses and thinks for a moment. This is not a good sign. He may smell a rat! He may not tell the truth!

"Tell the truth, boy!" the Master rumbles.

The boy starts to move away. This is definitely a bad sign. .
The Master clasps his hands together to activate another ring - a ring of confidence. He feels much more confident, and the boy is now struggling to think clearly.

"Two streets that way!" The boy points away from the forest, then runs away.

"Hmph," the Master grunts belatedly with begrudged appreciation, if that's what it was, and steps slowly in the indicated direction. .

Having a very old body has its drawbacks!

He approaches the house that has a cornflower blue front door. This must be the house. Trelim was right, this is useful information but the Master thrusts this to one side. He wants to visit and see what's inside the house for himself.
He catches sight of Crystelle around the side of the house and decides to head around the other side of the house. There will be plenty of time later to deal with her.
A low wall attracts his attention. The top of the wall steps up its height as it nears the back corner of the house and provides access to a low roof. If the Master had been in his own body, he would have little difficulty mounting to a balcony there. Will this decrepit body possibly take him there? .

Even lifting his foot to the top of the low wall requires him to lift his knee with his hand. He stands on the low wall. Can he balance or not? He starts to sweat as the difficulty of his predicament impinges on his progress. He decides he must do this thing slowly and carefully. .

Being the Master, he never considers the wrongs of what he is doing. Any sentient proper-minded person would recognise that what they are doing is wrong and stop.
At each step up that the wall takes, he must balance on one foot and use his hands to lift his knee to get his other foot high enough to place it on the next step. .
Finally he reaches the balcony.
In a stride he would normally reach the doors. What has Trelim been doing in this ancient body? It must be centuries old! This is appalling, he thinks. He shuffles towards the balcony door and leans on it panting from the effort. The door opens as he leans on it, and he almost stumbles to sit on the immediately available chair.

But wait! The chair was moved for him to sit on. Who moved the chair?
The Master turns to see who it is behind the chair.

It's Crystelle. She is smiling back at him, almost laughing. .
The Master feels his anger rising as the person solely responsible for putting him into the Judoon Master Palace prison is so close by.
He bends forwards to aid his getting up from the chair.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Crystelle One says gently. She can see that Trelim is panting from exertion and seems likely to need to rest for a while. She has researched Trelim and knows him fairly well while he has been unaware of her observing him. She knows what his reaction ought to be to her carefully placed question. She had moved the chair to ensure that Trelim would make it and not land on the floor.
"Of course I'm sure!" the Master thunders.

Crystelle One jumps away quickly. This surely isn't like Trelim! She has researched his likely reactions, and this isn't one of them (ref. 34). Her eyes tell her it's Trelim. Something is wrong, badly wrong! But what is it?
She has assumed that this is simply Trelim! She has made her assumption and things aren't going to be as easy if her assumptions are wrong! Her plans may be about to fall apart. Her stomach tightens as she realises she might have made a mistake somewhere. This might possibly be the Master arrived to take his revenge!

The Master finds that Trelim's body can hardly stand. He pants for breath. .

He again recognises that visiting in this body was a mistake! He must rally his ideas from here. Maybe this time he must just learn as much as he can, ready for a later time.

What would Trelim have said? Trelim isn't co-operating.
But Trelim's body is letting him down further. "I'm sorry," the Master says. "I must use your bathroom." .

Crystelle One has heard that ruse before. "I'm sorry, but the bathroom's in use; it's locked." she says more calmly than she feels while fighting to keep her cool head in possible adversity. This reaction is more like Trelim. She calms her fears.

The Master considers another tactic. He might suddenly run through the open bedroom door and find something more out about what Crystelle has in the room on the left of the front door as Trelim had told him. He steps quickly towards the bedroom door, but his legs give way, and he crashes to the floor with a thud. .

To his surprise, Crystelle helps him up, laughing. He considers combat with her there and then but recalls the frailty of his current body.

"I'll take you home," Crystelle One says kindly while thinking that maybe these outbursts are another side of Trelim which she hasn't encountered before.
Home? Where's home? the Master thinks. His nearest idea of home is Alphon Three, a very rough place, but he'd never call it home.

Crystelle One leads him towards the open bedroom door. The Master in Trelim's body walks with her on her arm. He can do no more.


As they pass the bedroom doorway, the landing beyond shimmers into ... an uneven road outside a run-down rough hovel. The portal Crystelle One had placed there in anticipation worked well.

The Master looks around, surveying the horizon. Surely this looks like Gallifrey! This is beyond his dreams! He has his feet on Gallifrey! He has been blocked from setting foot on Gallifrey so many times recently. Now he's excited for his plans. Yet he must somehow contain his excitement while Crystelle is around.

The Master turns to Crystelle, excitement still in his eyes, but he thinks maybe with his eyes cast down she might not notice, so he lowers his eyes.

Crystelle is alarmed; more so than before. Is this the Master after all? she thinks. That sudden excitement in his eyes certainly means something's wrong. Trelim has never reacted like that.

"Thank you for bringing me home," he says. Crystelle will surely expect him to walk to the nearby hovel. He staggers off in that direction.

"You're welcome," Crystelle One says as calmly as she can. Her stomach has never been so tight. She recognises the enormity of the mistake she has possibly just made. She has surely let the Master onto Gallifrey. She has tried desperately to avoid this and the Gallifreyan authorities will go mad!
What can she do about it?


Disaster! The Gallifreyans have done everything they can to keep the Master out!