River’s sojourn with various incarnations of the Master comes to an end with the Scott Handcock story Concealed Weapon. This time it’s Derek Jacobi’s War Master whom River crosses paths with in a story that seems curiously clear cut and that’s how it draws the listener in…

Spoilers will follow;-)

Concealed Weapon

The product page does its best to set our expectations:

A deep space exploration mission nears its end – when suddenly, the crew start to die.

River must try to protect her colleagues and work out what else is on board their ship.

Something is stalking them, and the deadliest Master of all has his own plans for River Song…

In some ways this is an Agatha Christie story set in space. River and three others are trapped on a spaceship and somebody is killing them off one by one. First assumption it will be the War Master, an assumption backed up when scanner reveal an extra person onboard. Curiously (and no more than that in a set opening with The Bekdel Test) the crew are all female and the apparent villain is male. Tom Price is part of the cast, but as he plays an irritating computer AI called Hugo he might not count.

There are more reveals near the end and for a change the amount of cooperation required between River and Master is low. Just as well as the War Master’s aims in this story are particularly unpleasant even by his standards. There’s perhaps not enough scenes with the War Master and River together but a great cast makes up for that. Cast members include Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble),Vineeta Rishi (Line of Duty) and Orion Ben (The Detectorists). Overall it’s a good story in a rather strong set.