The story of the first female Master will continue. Doctor Who’s Missy will get an official tie-in novel full of adventures in 2018.
One of the best things Steven Moffat did during his time on Doctor Who was to introduce Missy, a female regeneration of the Master. Not only did this move lay the groundwork for the eventual arrival of a female Doctor on the series, it added an entirely new layer to the long running relationship between the Doctor and his best nemesis/sometime frenemy. And it was fantastic.
Sadly, Michelle Gomez decided to leave the show alongside outgoing Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi, which means we probably won’t see Missy onscreen again any time soon. (Her return is not impossible, obviously – this is Doctor Who, after all. But, it’s unlikely.) However, that doesn’t mean we won’t be seeing more of the story. Because Missy’s getting her own official tie-in novel.
Entitled The Missy Chronicles, the book will hit shelves on Feb. 22, 2018. It will feature a series of short stories written by multiple authors, including Cavan Scott, Paul Magrs, James Goss, Peter Anghelides, Richard Dinnick and Jacqueline Raynor. They’ve all written for Doctor Who before in some capacity, including tie-in novels, Big Finish audio plays and Titan Comics adventures. So it would seem that Missy and her story will be in very good hands. Thank goodness.
The novel’s descriptive blurb over at Amazon UK is basically perfect:
"Know your frenemy.‘I’ve had adventures too. My whole life doesn’t revolve around you, you know.’When she’s not busy amassing armies of Cybermen, or manipulating the Doctor and his companions, Missy has plenty of time to kill (literally). In this all new collection of stories about the renegade Time Lord we all love to hate, you’ll discover just some of the mad and malevolent activities Missy gets up to while she isn’t distracted by the Doctor.So please try to keep up."
The idea that Missy isn’t irredeemable–or even completely evil–is an idea that Doctor Who leaned into pretty hard during Season 10. Actually, throughout most of Capaldi’s entire run. Sure, Missy did some pretty terrible things. And she didn’t always seem the most stable, mentally-speaking. But her motivations were crystal clear: She missed her BFF. And their “infinitely complex” relationship.
As a result, it seems a safe guess that The Missy Chronicles won’t be full of stories about the Time Lady burning civilizations to the ground. Or at least, not all of them. They’ll probably end up a bit more complicated than that. (Hopefully.) Though, if we could find out how exactly she escaped from Skaro back in Season 9, that’d be pretty great. And maybe whatever she did that she was meant to be executed for in Season 10’s “Extremis”. Heck, just give me all the Missy stories, thank you. (And also Michelle Gomez doing Big Finish audio dramas if I’m asking for the moon. But that’s another post for another day.)
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You can pre-order The Missy Chronicles right now on Amazon UK. And hopefully, us Yanks will be able to do the same shortly on regular old American Amazon. (It’s just not available there yet. Trust me, I looked.)