A Master's Degree

[philipdalton]

This thread is for those who wish to have a discussion on The Master, the wicked Gallifreyan who has now passed away.

[The Cloaked One]

My brother and I like to joke on the origins of the names.
First timelord: "I graduated Gallifrey with a Doctor's degree. I shall be a Doctor!"
Second timelord: "I graduated Gallifrey with a Master's degree. I shall be the Master!"
Doctor: "Ha, beat ya!"
Master: "Oh my dear Doctor, it's not the title that matters."
Third timelady: "I beat both of you. I graduated Gallifrey with a Rani's degree."
Master: "This is outrageous! To be defeated by you two!"
Fourth timelord: "I hope you guys aren't busy. I graduated Gallifrey with a Bachelor's degree. I shall be the Bachelor!"
Fifth timelady: "Not for long my friend."
XD, ok, maybe that wasn't all appropriate.

[Who dat?]

Don't we all just love to hate the Master? Regardless of the events in the latest adventures I don't think the master is dead and gone. He's just too nasty for that. Besides, how can Mr. Tom get his chance to portray him if he's dead? And don't pretend that we're not all waiting on the edge of our seats for that! He's mentioned that he would like to play the part several times and I believe the powers that be at the Beeb will find a way to make it happen.
Since the Master has been played by eight actors, nine if you count the young one, it seems he has as much resiliency as the Doctor. Besides, the whole story line just wouldn't be the same without him.
Anthony Ainley was my favorite.

[philipdalton]

Does anyone think the 1st actor to play the Master, Roger Delgado, bears any resemblance to the DJ John Peel?
One question I'm dying to ask Tom is what his relationship was like with Anthony Ainley off-screen as he was the one who technically murdered his character on-screen in front of mega numbers of viewers.
One thing I've found out off Wiki is that the Master's horrible appearance in 'The Deadly Assassin' is not due to him being burnt, as I thought it was, but because of his body being worn out at the end of its twelfth regeneration.

[The Cloaked One]

I still think it would be more interesting if the events of the Deadly Assassin happened after Davidson watched the Master burn. That was the Master just restoring his face because the Master always lives.
I liked Delgado and Ainley, but every other master never seemed to fit the bill. The one from the Tom Baker years seemed a bit too vengeance driven, the ones from the movie seemed too goofy with the shades and ripping off of fingernails (Schwarzenegger might've been a better pick. I jest. XD) Yana did not have enough screen time for me to really develop an opinion, but he was fine. The new master is basically Doctor Who's joker. They should have just given him a different name, he was not the master. The 'drums' was also very unnecessary.

[Prydonian]

I LOVE the Master, in all his incarnations, even the TV Movie and New Series. I do great impressions of him (them). A cosmos without the Master scarcely bears thinking about.
Even his latest televised adventures had something of interest in them.
The drums was an interesting late in the day reason for why he acts as he does and aslthough other-perhaps better reasons-have been given, this stands out as the only canon reason now RTD had written it into the series.

Anthony Ainley was MY Master in the 1980s and 1990s. I even had a short correspondance with him. He was a true gentleman in real life, while playing the most dangerous villian in all the universe on Dr. Who.


As for Roger Delgado, I have come to respect him for starting the ball rolling and being the Original Master, opposite Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor. They played it the best of all Doctors and Masters, in my opinion.


Eric Roberts's sole outing in the TV Movie was nowhere as bad as many seem to believe. He was a Master at the end of his life who was consumed by hate and thoughts of revenge for the Doctor and planet Earth. He was...convincing.


A pity we did not see but a glimpse of the Derek Jacobi Master, but John Simm eventually won me over. Call him the Joker to Ten's incarnation but I don't agree. He was crazy and zany and given a new lease on life and he wanted everyone to know he could party.


Peter Pratt/ Geoffrey Beevers was another one-shot incarnation that actually appeared in two different serials opposite TB.And what do you know, it works! At the time the Master was not in the plans to get another regeneration and "The Deadly Asssassin" was truly intended to be the final challenge between these two mortal enemies. Maybe we would think better of the Master overall had he died at the end of this 1976 story but who can say now.


So here's to the Master. Devious chaps, all of them.

[The Cloaked One]

I still feel that a better canon reason for the Master to be the way he is would be if he were more like Xanatos from Gargoyles. He is genius, a little less so than the Doctor, but still quite capable.
Doctor Who is known to take aspects from stories around them such as The Space Pirates pacing itself after A Space Odyssey, and John Simm is strongly influenced by the then recently released Batman The Dark Knight movie. The scene where he killed the politicians for electing him almost seems like a scene out of Burton's Batman (Not the one with the Penguin).
The Old Master, Ainley and Delgado, they were always suave and in control and tended to side with the Doctor when things got out of control. The portrayal of the husked out one during the TB years, all 3 of them, were interesting, but only for a short span of time. The movie one seemed to loose too much of the essence of the original Masters that if he wasn't called the Master I would never have realized that was who he was trying to be. I can't fraud him on bad acting, but he isn't the Master. He doesn't display mastery. XD
John Simm, however, was down right insane, going even to cannibalism and wife beating. Rather than being the Doctor's rival/arch-nemesis, they tried to rewrite his character entirely. The drum beat really came out of nowhere and if he reappeared, it would be gone because it was simply a plot device to 'bring back' the Timelords. Putting him next to Delgado, they seem like complete opposites with almost nothing in common except the name. Again, I'll say his acting was not bad, but he was not the Master at all.

[Prydonian]

One could argue that the Master had been rather umercifully driven to extremes by is experiences in the Time War. The same for the latter Doctors being as emotion-driven as they seem to be, the Simm Master was a product of the time in which he existed onscreen and perhaps offscreen as well. But I will point out that The Dark Knight was released in 2008, a whole year after the Simm Master made his debut, which was in 2007. Rewatching The End of Time two-parter offers tantalising glimpeses into the psyche of the Master and his connection to the Doctor, the likes of which we have never seen. The original Master-Doctor porytrayals were as opposites, and so the same for Simm and the Tennant Doctor. Not so different once one bares down beyond the hype surrounding the Master and his resurrection.