Doctor Who: 10 Worst Master Stories Ever

7. Castrovalva (1982)

Castrovalva is a fairly decent Peter Davison story. Heck, Castrovalva's even a pretty good Adric story, if you're into that kind of thing. But Castrovalva is not one of the better Master stories. A lot of this may be because of the sheer build-up that Logopolis gave fans. In that story, Anthony Ainley's new Master is every bit as menacing as Delgado. Here, he acts more like the moustache-twirling villain of the old movie serials that some fans believe him to be. It's hard to say where all that menace went, given that both stories were written by the same author. And yet in Logopolis, the Master is out to either rule the universe or see it burn. Here, he's more interested in stringing Adric up in his web - which, if you look at certain shots too closely, the boy seems not to be minding too much - and trying to kill the Doctor from afar. Then, when that fails, he goes with Plan B. That's something that people seem to have forgotten. Castrovalva, that miracle of block transfer whatchamacallit, is actually Plan B. The original idea was always to kill the Doctor in the hydrogen in-rush of Event One. From afar, mind you, without the Doctor ever knowing who killed him. But if that failed, then and only then would the Master use his cunning Castrovalva gambit. But what is that, precisely? Lure the Doctor into a false sense of security while dressed up in his most elaborate disguise, only to reveal himself long after he could have more effectively killed him? Great. And, t top it all off, we get that whole "My web! My web!" business at the end. Sigh. We can forgive the goofy cast listing for the Portreeve before we can forgive all of this going on.