Doctor Who — Page 37

He looks good in Matt's old clothes. Almost a shame to change them really.

Ziggy Returns!!

Bingowings said:

He looks good in Matt's old clothes. Almost a shame to change them really.

 but it wouldn't seem right to have the new Doctor continuing to where the old Doctor's clothes.

I got Enemy Of The World too. Is remarkable how the writing leaps in quality from rather stodgy stories like The Savages (nice ideas but written like a couple of five year olds recounting the plot) to similarly idea rich tales like that just a few years later.

Troughton's accent is terrible but his body language is a masterclass of acting.

Two totally different characters and the nuances employed when they each have a go at impersonating each other.

A rather sad story but I like to think she found Gallifrey.

yes, that is very sad : ( .     I shall wear blue in her memory tomorrow. 

The Master, like the Doctor is the same person whatever face he wears (or in the case of Pratt/Beevers doesn't wear). He is essentially the universal sociopath, disdainful of everyone other than himself,throwing extra disgust towards inept authority figures (usually by shrinking them to death so they match the mental image he has of them). He wants to control things because he can't see anyone else as equipped for the job as himself.

Delgado portrays this in an urbane manner as does Derek Jacobi.

He will politely enquire as to the state of Miss Grant's Coccyx while planning to send a time devouring Atlantean god to kill her and the Doctor.

The Master was originally devised to be a Valeyard type off-shoot of the Doctor's own mind. Both Delgado and Pertwee play their roles as bon vivant gentlemen. One is the hero, albeit the sort of hero who would rather not stick around and the other is the sort of villain who comes up with the idea of killer plastic daffodils and is more than willing to put it to use. Both are snappy dressers, where the Doctor has an eye on the fashions of the past the Master seems to prefer then futuristic Nehru jacket look.

The Master got his TCE around the same time that the Doctor's sonic screwdriver became a multi-tool rather than just a device for removing/ replacing screws.

Ainley wanted to play the Master as dark and twisted but he was constantly over-ruled and forced to camp it up, Simm suffered practically the same fate where as Roberts seemed to revel in camp.

Only the decayed form played by Pratt and Beevers is lacking in some form of twisted charm.

There is some debate as to whether originally the characters of The Monk and The War Chief were meant to be earlier versions of the Master.

In Terror of the Autons the Doctor dismisses the threat posed by the Master by calling him "an unimaginative plodder" which matches the Monk

and the War Chief certainly looks the part.

Indeed the War Chief (also urbane and polite and trying to conquer the universe for it's own good) wears a pendant that was previously seen in The Dalek Masterplan by Zephon

who looks more than a little like the Pratt/Beevers Master

.

Like the Monk and the Delgado Master works with the "stupid tin boxes"

which would seemingly execute him in the TVM.

Yet the First Doctor (in The Five Doctors) claims to have no memory of him even though they were supposedly both at the academy together.

The books and audios however do not follow this theory and have the three villains clearly separate people.

Interestingly in The Armageddon Factor we meet two other characters who could have easily have been the Master but for some reason were not.

Drax is another Prydonian contemporary of the Doctor. A criminal who sells weapons for personal gain and is skilled at Matter Condensation (only in this case not killing the shrunken person). He works with the Doctor against the agent of the Black Guardian called the Shadow who looks like this

when the Master was still looking like the above.

Finally you have Salyavin the boyhood hero of the Doctor who was a notorious renegade apparently locked in the Time Lord prison of Shada because of his dangerous powers of hypnotism and his ability to move his will into another being (something the Master does too).

He escaped by causing his guards to forget he existed (a ploy also used by the Master).

So you have a pantheon of pseudo-Masters.

Even the Rani (her name meaning Queen) is sort a female version of the Master. More amoral than evil. She mocks the Master for his pathetic feud with the Doctor but past incarnations of the Doctor mock each other when they bump into each other in much the same way.

If you are familiar with the first few Hartnell stories there is a comparison to be made between the Doctor before being exposed to the human influence of Barbara and Ian etc and The Master.

In Logopolis the fourth Doctor has to work with the Ainley Master to prevent the end of the universe.

He needs access to a radio telescope and there is a technician in the way of their progress. The Master is about to kill the chap when the Doctor proposes another way. This is a reference not only to The Master's first screen story but also to the Doctor's first story. In 100.000 BC the Doctor is escaping from the cave of skulls and is being slowed down by an unconscious caveman. Ian catches the Doctor (our hero) about to dash the guy's brains out with a stone and stops him.

The Master is essentially the Doctor without the support of others (if you are a BTVS fan he is Faith to Buffy).

No apology required I often repeat myself.

No I don't really like much of the Simm performance but that isn't because of the actor himself, who is a proven talent, but more the way he is written.

There is a parallel with the portrayal of Moriarty in Sherlock and Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon (2002).

There are these characters who are arch by nature, they don't need to be played archly.

There are some amazing scenes with Simm (the Gasmask scene for example) but they would probably worked better if the character was a bit more cold and less like a sixties Batman television villain.

His 'origin' story is hopefully something that will be unwritten soon too as boiling the character down to cosmic tinnitus does have a retromingent effect.

Anthony Ainley was also a proven talent (and a real giggle too by all accounts) but he was cursed in the same manner as Simm to play the role as a camp pantomime (not to say that The Time Monster is a display of understated acting by any means).

Once again that was down to the direction the production team wanted him to go in.

Derek Jacobi got more out of his few minutes as the revived Master than we had seen on screen since probably The Deadly Assassin and that was just the punchline to an otherwise dull story.

People slag off Eric Roberts but his camping around was as skillfully done as either Ainley or Simm and he could have been great if he wasn't a one hit wonder.

It's Worzel Gummidge actually.

I love how Jon called Pat, "Scarecrow" in The Five Doctors.

Jon was the first Doctor I can remember.

The first story I can remember was Carnival Of Monsters, I still think there is something unnervingly awful about the Drashigs.

Tobar said:

I've just worked my way up from the First Doctor to the Third. I'm going to miss the Second. =(

 I'm just trying to watch the second doctor's stories, but I just can't make it through the recons :-(

Yes Doctor Who and the Retcons was a pretty rubbish story it has to said ;-D