The Masters of Luxor (audio story)

 was the seventh story release in the third series of The Lost Stories, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was adapted by Nigel Robinson, from the original script by Anthony Coburn, narrated by Carole Ann Ford and William Russell and featured the First Doctor, Susan, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.

Publisher's summary
The TARDIS is drawn to a mysterious signal emanating from a seemingly dead world. Trapped within a crystalline structure, the Doctor and his friends inadvertently wake a vast army of robots that have lain dormant for many, many years. Waiting...for the Masters of Luxor.

The Cannibal Flower (1)
Thanks to his recent adjustments to the ship, the Doctor is now ready to bring Ian and Barbara home, to Susan's regret. But just as he is inserting the coordinates, the TARDIS is taken hold by an unknown force, causing it to shake and shiver; the travellers are all tossed to the ground and the Doctor hits his head against the console.

When they regain knowledge, the quartet sees on the scanner that the TARDIS has landed on a seemingly dead world. The only other thing there aside from them is a gigantic pyramid-shaped metallic structure, hanging in the sky. The Doctor brings the TARDIS closer to it, but as it approaches, the structure opens and attracts the ship inside it, while the power of the TARDIS starts diminishing. Ian and Susan go out to explore where they got to, while the Doctor and Barbara remain inside the ship, in an attempt to save it.

In the dome, Ian and Susan find themselves in a large banquet hall, complete with a table with fifteen chairs (but only fourteen satchels) and all sorts of food and drinks are disposed, three buttons and two gongs. Susan argues that they are landed into an outpost of some advanced civilization, and that food has been prepared for eventual travellers arriving there. She goes out in the adjacent gallery while Ian presses a button: suddenly, gigantic humanoid robots appear in front of Susan, but remain still.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Barbara's attempts to save the ship prove unsuccessful, and eventually the TARDIS dies completely, only retaining its dimensional trascendentalism. The Doctor only manages to discover a signal in the circuits of the ship, proving that they had been recalled here by the machine they are inside now; Barbara then guesses that this same machine is feeding on the TARDIS' power, just like a cannibal flower. Upon hearing the news, Ian decides to act so they finally meet their new "masters", and Susan prepares to eat one of the dishes at the table, hoping it's not poisoned.

The Mockery of a Man (2)
The food is not poisoned, and the travellers eat and drink until they are satiated, which seems to calm the anxiety of everyone but Barbara. She still feels this place is evil, ill-disposed towards them, of which the Doctor berates her, blaming mankind's instinctual adversion for anything different. All of this, argues the Doctor, has been made by a human-like, technologically advanced civilization, therefore they cannot conclude they are dealing with an evil intelligence. Upon the Doctor's insistence, Ian presses first the second and then the third button, thus calling other robots into the room, whose appearance is much more humanlike. They salute the travellers as "the Masters of Luxor", repeatedly asking if they served them well.

After unsuccesfully attempting to inform them of their mistake, the travellers have the robots bring them through a lift to the highest floors of the pyramid. As they go, a distract Barbara notices the robot are looking more and more human, and suspects they are actually men turned into machines, bringing Ian to ask the Doctor whether it would be possible. They enter into a reception room, a lounge, where other robots welcome them and lead them to a room with baths and new clothing. After they finished refreshing, they are finally approached by Proto, a robot which can finally talk. He doesn't believe their story that they are not the "Masters of Luxor", and instead informs them they have to remain here, as their prisoners, and be presented to someone called "the Perfect One"; he also lets it slip that the robots killed the Masters of Luxor.

Left alone, the travellers escape from the lounge by opening a window and climbing down to the balcony of the next floor, although Ian suspects it to be too easy for them. Wandering about, they enter into what appears to be an operating theatre, complete with two chairs. To the first, the robots attach another man, and to the other, a young man, seemingly perfect in his body, sits; they are both lighted by the robots and the other man disappears in a flash of light, leaving only the young man. The travellers are brought to the young man, who is revealed as the Perfect One: a robot built by the same robots in an attempt to create the perfect machine, similar in everything to their creators, the Masters of Luxor. They perfected the robots (their creation) to the point they became coscient, and decided to overthrow them, kill them and then build the Perfect One as a symbol of their rebellion. However, the Perfect One still lacks life (when there is no power in the station, he just dies like everything else), and that's what he asks from the travellers: their life.

A Light on the Dead Planet (3)
The droid servants (or Derivitron, as they are called) bring into the laboratory a trail with four glasses of wine, which the Perfect One offers the travellers as he explains they are standing in a prison, built by the people on Luxor for the dissidents towards their regime. He proceeds enlightening them about his origin planet, where an elite of advanced scientists rules, condemning everyone who does not agree with them to come here. The prisoners are also subjected to scientific experiments, and it was thanks to these experiments that the robots were perfected by the original scientists, to make the robots more human. The Perfect One shows special interest in Barbara and Susan because, as women, they are capable of creating life, and he makes clear he intends to take their life first. Ian threatens to harm him if he touches them, but the Perfect One tells him that, if he is harmed or destroyed, then the entire complex will be blown to pieces and destroyed. He also does not believe the travellers came here by accident, but also relates that the signal they are talking about (of which he does not recognize the existence) did not originate in the prison, and has nothing to do with him.

As he finishes speaking, the travellers collapse because of the drugged wine. Susan and Barbara wake up in a laboratory, Ian and the Doctor on the lift bringing them down. A sudden technical malfunction, a power failure, allows Susan and Barbara to escape, while the Doctor and Ian are left there by their guarding robots. The Doctor guesses the prison is rapidly exhausting the power it extracted from the TARDIS, and the robots are going back to their original positions; if that is so, they would be stuck there. Unable to budge open the doors of the lift, the Doctor and Ian resolve to break the lift and try descending on the surface of the planet. As they are doing so, the Doctor sees a light far ahead, flashing a repeated signal - with the same frequence as the one which attracted the TARDIS in the first place. The Perfect One was right: whatever dragged the TARDIS there, it didn't come from the prison.

As Susan and Barbara are captured again by the Perfect One (the power failure was only a temporary one), the Doctor and Ian come down to the planet's surface and reach the origin point of the signal: a crater, filled with broken statues and relicts, at whose centre there is a black pyramid.

Tabon of Luxor (4)
The crater is indeed a graveyard, where the Masters of Luxor seem to be buried. Ian and the Doctor reach the pyramid and opened it: it's a supposed tomb, with an old man laying down into a sarcophagus, and a radio device sending out the signal which attracted the TARDIS here. The Doctor touches him and, finding him alive, decides to waken him, explaining to an amazed Ian the man is in a state of suspended animation (with a technique not dissimilar from that used by the Doctor's people). The man awakes and presents himsel as Tabon, leader and head of the Masters of Luxor, the man who conducted the experiments, created the Devitrons and eventually conceived the Perfect One - but without creating it. He was too afraid, he said, of his own conception to proceed, and ran away here, in this tomb, out of shame and regret.

In the laboratory, the Perfect One is pleasantly surprised by the unusual reaction of Barbara and Susan to the first experiments, and dreams about finally getting real life, and a soul. Barbara and Susan awake in the lounge, and they decide to try and counterattack. They smash the camera with which the Perfect One was watching them, barricade the door and stretch some wire at the entrace, in order to make trip the first robots which come in and grant themselves a chance to run.

In the meantime, Ian and the Doctor had forced a reluctant Tabon to help them and, with his help, sneak back into the prison through a tunnel in the mountain behind it. They emerge into the atomic armory, where the robots stored the atomic devices sent there by the Luxorites to be deactivated. The Perfect One is connected to them, they understand: if he is harmed (and since the Devitrons cannot repair him), the liquid in a tank will go up and set the explosion of the entire base, so ensuring that all of this would be destroyed with him.

Up in the lounge, the Devitrons and the Mark I Robots manage to destroy the barricade and they are about to enter, bu the Perfect One stops them: he is curious to know why Barbara and Susan acted as they did. He enters the room and trips over the wire, falling to the ground, without hearing Barbara's attempt at warning him: she remembered only too late that, if he is damaged, all will explode.

An Infinity of Surprises (5)
Luckily for everyone, the Perfect One recovers, stopping the process, and faces Susan and Barbara. He tells them the Doctor and Ian escaped outside the prison, and they will die of hunger and thirst - but Susan instead laughs, showing himself happy that they managed to get out. When the Perfect One does not understand Susan's reaction, Barbara realizes that, for all his advanced mind, he is still very much a machine, unable to really comprehend life. The two women then start saying nonsense, confusing the Perfect One, and showing to him how much he is not like the man he pretends to be. Frustrated, the Perfect One stops them and has them brought to the operating theatre.

The Doctor, Ian and Tabon plan a strategy: while the schoolmaster locates the women, Tabon and the Doctor will create a diversion, by redirecting the power of the prison back to the TARDIS, away from the robots. Following Tabon's instruction, Ian reaches what once was Tabon's office, just in time to see the Perfect One leaving the room. In the laboratory, Susan and Barbara strapped to a table in the laboratory, singing and reciting nonsense, and in this way confusing the Derivitrons, who do not continue with the operation. Ian reaches them and confronts the Perfect One, telling him that Tabon is alive and that he despises him. The Perfect One refuses to accept that (he does not find logical that he could survive for seven years on the planet and, what's more, as the greatest product of Tabon's mind, he is convinced Tabon should love him), and has Ian strapped to a chair, ready to extract his life.

The Doctor and Tabon fiddle with the power control of the prison and take power away from the robots, which register their former Master's presence and relates it to the Perfect One. He orders the old man to be brought to him, as he continues the procedure on Ian to extract his life, so he can face Tabon as his equal - as a man.

The Flower Blooms (6)
Taking advantage of the Perfect One's distraction, Susan releases herself from the straps and stops the process, saving Ian's life. Tabon and the Doctor are brought into the laboratory, and Tabon faces the Perfect One: he confirms that he has horror of him, that he would destroy it if he could, and that he does not appreciate what he did. Horrified and desperate, the Perfect One asks first the travellers, and then his robots to destroy it - but they can't understand the order it gave them, since it goes against their logical thinking. They go crazy and attack the more and more frantic Perfect One, whose vein in the head start pulsating: the signal of the impeding destruction of the place.

As Barbara and Susan run back to the TARDIS, which is regaining power, the Doctor, Ian and Tabon bring out the Perfect One and attempt to find a way to slow down or stop his destruction, in order to get enough time to get away. All attempts are however useless: the Perfect One is dying, and with him all this place will explode. With a last gesture of generosity, Tabon elects to stay behind as the others go, thus finally gaining some redemption for his past sins. Ian and the Doctor reach Barbara and Susan in the TARDIS, and after some attempts, the ship finally manages to dematerialize, one moment before the entire complex blows up, destroying the work of the Masters of Luxor.

Cast

 * Ian Chesterton - William Russell
 * Susan Foreman - Carole Ann Ford
 * The Perfect One / Tabon / Mark Ones / Derivitrons - Joseph Kloska

Worldbuilding

 * The natives of Luxor were the Luxorites.
 * Tabon was a Scientific Master.
 * Drispo III was buried in the graveyard.

Continuity

 * Barbara mentions seeing the Emerald Sea on the planet Fragrance (AUDIO: The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance) and meeting Alexander the Great in Babylon in 323 BC. (AUDIO: Farewell, Great Macedon)