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best_enemies2010-04-02 07:18 am
vonquixote.livejournal.com) wrote in best_enemies2010-04-02 07:18 am
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My answer to this grew into something bigger and more meta-y about Who and the Master's place in the Doctor's Rogue's Gallery (bent over the admissions desk with... no, wait! This isn't porn! Yet.) Anyway, we have a meta tag, might as well use it:
Series 6 at the earliest.
I'd settle for a finale two-parter, in which the Master escapes from Gallifrey and there's a certain amount of "I realise why you did it now" between them and the Master is foiled but not killed. The Master's escape, like his resurrection, could remain off-screen, just so Eleven isn't burdened by too much of Ten's thematic baggage. 'The Sound of Drums' handled this offscreen backstory thing very well in THAT PHONE CALL, and I think a quiet chat between them in the middle of some Event of High Drama would work rather well.
(aside: I really want to write the fic where Simm!Master ends up as President of New Gallifrey, having quite efficiently taken over, and abuses their technology to stabilise his new body - but I don't want the show to go there, because the Time Lords are resolved - they were locked away because it didn't matter who won, in the end, the universe would still have been worse off. The Time Lords are in Big Rusty's God Corner, where all his recurring villains end up in the end except the poor Cybermen, and their remaining there at last returns them to being something the Doctor should be frightened of and running away from...)
I'd like to see him mellowed out a bit in a grab for that Pertwee 'n' Delgado chemistry, which is another reason I'm not sure I want Simm's Master back - he and Tennant certainly had chemistry but it was very physical (PHWOAR) and angry and the sort of thing that you can't turn back from. It is, basically, more Ten-era baggage, and I think Matt Smith needs to stand or fall on the strength of his own portrayal and stories rather than be carried or dropped by the Legacy of Ten.
If John Simm came back and did that quiet, intense thing he does (PHWOAR), it could work very well - but does it have any sort of consistency with his previous portrayal of the character? Really? Don't I regularly bitch out 'The Mark of the Rani' for having neither character really moved by or engaging with the minor matter that the Master GOT BURNINATED LAST SERIES and having piss-poor emotional continuity? (the answer is yes, yes I do, but I watch it anyway for glorious OT3 tiem!snark. ANYWAY.)
(aside: I have a bit of an issue with Villain Creep in Who, where the bad guys all start to become a bit indistinct after a while, and I think ranting intensity is perhaps better left to the likes of Davros. A recurring villain's presence is justified by their being something different - in the Master's case, a villain who's quite suave and approachable and more complex than the usual KILL/CONVERT THE HOOMINS or CONKER THE UNIVERSE brigade. Yeah, he's not averse to a little killing or conquering, but his villainy is so much more personal, so much more tied up in Proving The Doctor Wrong/Breaking The Doctor/Sexing The Doctor Constantly While The Enslaved Population Sing 'Princes Of The Universe' - which is another way of saying Ruling The Universe With The Doctor.
The big recurring villains only work if they stand for something distinct from each other and aren't run together. Daleks are scary and evil because they kill anything that isn't like them and rant about it with such intensity that they can't be reasoned with. Cybermen are scary and evil because they turn you into them in the cause of helping you and don't care about your arguments, in fact they'll probably turn them around and use them as good reasons to be converted. The Master is scary and evil because... because he's just like the Doctor, really, only with all his moral brakes taken off, and because he's not actually that scary, and it's easy to forget how quick he is to kill someone who's in his way, and because the only thing that seems to stop him is that he actually enjoys the fight more than the victory... and I'm not quite sure why Simm's Master seems different from that, somehow. Maybe it's all the portrayal and I secretly FEAR DIFFERENCE?)
SO, with all that in mind, what I think I want to see is the Master as the returning/recurring villain for Series 6, maybe in more than one story rather than doing just the Big Finale - maybe seed the clues about How He Escaped From Gallifrey in the stories, for those who are interested in them, and a quiet clue about offscreen events when he finally shows up. He needs to be thwarted (in a sexy way) but not killed (be clever, Moff) or placed into a character/motivation/scale dead end (BE CLEVER, MOFF). I feel he needs to be played by a new actor, as much fun as it would be to have John Simm back, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, especially if there's a good, character-driven, non-technobabbly reason why Simm's Master has cooled his boots a bit since his last appearance. Above all, the things that make the Master worth bringing back over the bloody Daleks again need to be there: his rivalry with the Doctor is as much a sex thing and a philosophical difference of opinion as it is an "I R GOOD U R TEH EVOLZ" thing, or 'moral dichotomy' if you prefer the smart version, and at some point they need to end up working... if not together, then not entirely at cross purposes. Something like 'The Sea Devils', where they're both trying to interact with the Earth Reptiles and even do the same things for them, but for totally different reasons. And ideally, they can do science together. Naked science. Yeah.
Your thoughts?
Series 6 at the earliest.
I'd settle for a finale two-parter, in which the Master escapes from Gallifrey and there's a certain amount of "I realise why you did it now" between them and the Master is foiled but not killed. The Master's escape, like his resurrection, could remain off-screen, just so Eleven isn't burdened by too much of Ten's thematic baggage. 'The Sound of Drums' handled this offscreen backstory thing very well in THAT PHONE CALL, and I think a quiet chat between them in the middle of some Event of High Drama would work rather well.
(aside: I really want to write the fic where Simm!Master ends up as President of New Gallifrey, having quite efficiently taken over, and abuses their technology to stabilise his new body - but I don't want the show to go there, because the Time Lords are resolved - they were locked away because it didn't matter who won, in the end, the universe would still have been worse off. The Time Lords are in Big Rusty's God Corner, where all his recurring villains end up in the end except the poor Cybermen, and their remaining there at last returns them to being something the Doctor should be frightened of and running away from...)
I'd like to see him mellowed out a bit in a grab for that Pertwee 'n' Delgado chemistry, which is another reason I'm not sure I want Simm's Master back - he and Tennant certainly had chemistry but it was very physical (PHWOAR) and angry and the sort of thing that you can't turn back from. It is, basically, more Ten-era baggage, and I think Matt Smith needs to stand or fall on the strength of his own portrayal and stories rather than be carried or dropped by the Legacy of Ten.
If John Simm came back and did that quiet, intense thing he does (PHWOAR), it could work very well - but does it have any sort of consistency with his previous portrayal of the character? Really? Don't I regularly bitch out 'The Mark of the Rani' for having neither character really moved by or engaging with the minor matter that the Master GOT BURNINATED LAST SERIES and having piss-poor emotional continuity? (the answer is yes, yes I do, but I watch it anyway for glorious OT3 tiem!snark. ANYWAY.)
(aside: I have a bit of an issue with Villain Creep in Who, where the bad guys all start to become a bit indistinct after a while, and I think ranting intensity is perhaps better left to the likes of Davros. A recurring villain's presence is justified by their being something different - in the Master's case, a villain who's quite suave and approachable and more complex than the usual KILL/CONVERT THE HOOMINS or CONKER THE UNIVERSE brigade. Yeah, he's not averse to a little killing or conquering, but his villainy is so much more personal, so much more tied up in Proving The Doctor Wrong/Breaking The Doctor/Sexing The Doctor Constantly While The Enslaved Population Sing 'Princes Of The Universe' - which is another way of saying Ruling The Universe With The Doctor.
The big recurring villains only work if they stand for something distinct from each other and aren't run together. Daleks are scary and evil because they kill anything that isn't like them and rant about it with such intensity that they can't be reasoned with. Cybermen are scary and evil because they turn you into them in the cause of helping you and don't care about your arguments, in fact they'll probably turn them around and use them as good reasons to be converted. The Master is scary and evil because... because he's just like the Doctor, really, only with all his moral brakes taken off, and because he's not actually that scary, and it's easy to forget how quick he is to kill someone who's in his way, and because the only thing that seems to stop him is that he actually enjoys the fight more than the victory... and I'm not quite sure why Simm's Master seems different from that, somehow. Maybe it's all the portrayal and I secretly FEAR DIFFERENCE?)
SO, with all that in mind, what I think I want to see is the Master as the returning/recurring villain for Series 6, maybe in more than one story rather than doing just the Big Finale - maybe seed the clues about How He Escaped From Gallifrey in the stories, for those who are interested in them, and a quiet clue about offscreen events when he finally shows up. He needs to be thwarted (in a sexy way) but not killed (be clever, Moff) or placed into a character/motivation/scale dead end (BE CLEVER, MOFF). I feel he needs to be played by a new actor, as much fun as it would be to have John Simm back, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, especially if there's a good, character-driven, non-technobabbly reason why Simm's Master has cooled his boots a bit since his last appearance. Above all, the things that make the Master worth bringing back over the bloody Daleks again need to be there: his rivalry with the Doctor is as much a sex thing and a philosophical difference of opinion as it is an "I R GOOD U R TEH EVOLZ" thing, or 'moral dichotomy' if you prefer the smart version, and at some point they need to end up working... if not together, then not entirely at cross purposes. Something like 'The Sea Devils', where they're both trying to interact with the Earth Reptiles and even do the same things for them, but for totally different reasons. And ideally, they can do science together. Naked science. Yeah.
Your thoughts?