Every writer seems to want to create their own Bernice Summerfield. Not necessarily a clone of the character but a personality who will keep cropping up across the wider Whoniverse and who will be a nice little source of income for no extra work. Perhaps I’m being cynical – after all there is very little money to be made, relatively speaking, being a Dr Who writer – but to own a character means being part of history. Bob Baker and Dave Martin are remembered for a series of fairly ordinary scripts. They are better remembered for creating K9. Paul Cornell has had more credits as creator of Benny than he has as an actual author. Which brings us to Bev Tarrant and Dust Breeding.

There are too many Tarrants in British sci fi. It’s like one of those word games – get from Louise Falkner to Steven Pacey by changing one letter at a time and making a new character. Bev Tarrant to Dev Tarrant (Jeremy Wilkin in B7’s "The Way Back") to Del Tarrant (Steven Pacey). Easy as pi. What else do we know about her? Well, she’s a bit of a dubious character – a little bit woo, a little bit waay – but underneath she’s got a heart of gold. She debuted in Mike Tucker’s pretty good Dalek tale and returns in Mike Tucker’s rather more surreal Art in Space. She served a purpose in the former but just crops up in the latter because Tucker seems to think she’s a popular character worthy of a comeback. And who am I to argue otherwise?

I wonder if her return was just another piece of the smokescreen to distract attention away from you know what. Casting Caroline John as Madam Salvador – a role about as far away from Liz Sensible as you could imagine, Geoffrey Beevers comes along because they’re married and, like Susan Jameson and James Bolam, it saves a bit of money if two of your cast share a hotel room. Toss in the return of someone from another play, a famous painting, an accent which can strip paint and a cover that invokes the more sombre Seventh Doctor than we’ve been used to thus far in the audios and you’ve got lots to keep us entertained. You certainly wouldn’t be expecting a surprise guest cunningly hidden behind the worst anagram since French Connection UK.

Then, in the words of Paul Merton during the first Have I Got News For You video-only special, "fuck me – a surprise guest".

It is three years since Dust Breeding came out so I don’t think we need to pussy, the hell, foot around any longer. Geoffrey Beevers plays Mr Seta which is a devastatingly complicated twisting of "Master" and returns to plague Sylvester McCoy like the letter R. The explanatory dialogue establishes that the Ainley Master – then an improbability due to his demands and now, sadly, an impossibility – had degenerated back into the Beevers Master. Which rules the Master out of ever facing Peter Davison or Colin Baker as the Seventh Doctor is unaware of his degeneration. Sadly his plan is same old same old. Huge and vastly powerful creatures that are going to be released, or something. Dust Breeding sought to be so original with its setting of a distant art colony and the psychic creature trapped inside a famous painting. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that it turns into a bog standard monster fest by the end. It is an all too typical Big Finish flaw that they have to force monsters in wherever possible just because they can.

Without the limitations of 1980s TV technology and budget, they can have armies of giant creatures tearing a spaceship apart. It doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea. Without the pressures of TV ratings and casual viewer attention spans they can do more intelligent stories with fewer monsters and more imagination. And to an extent they do but, as with Dust Breeding, they still have to put in some monsters at the end.