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best_enemies2008-06-01 08:42 pm
bagheera-san.livejournal.com) wrote in best_enemies2008-06-01 08:42 pm
Entry tags:
Meta
Now, this is perhaps not quite the right community for this bit of meta, since it doesn't actually have anything to do with Doctor/Master as a pairing - but we do all love the Master, right? And we're good at discussing things.
If you look at the Master's history throughout Who, wow, does that guy go through a lot of transformations. And I don't mean the "usual", regeneration kind. Crispy!Master, possessing a Traken body, shrinking, turning into a cheetah and then an ectoplasmic green snake, dying, ressurrecting, turning human, turning Time Lord again, dying again and let's not forget Shalka!Master's life as a domestic android. Aside from being evil and stalking the Doctor, this is his most consistent theme. Somehow, this gave me the crazy idea that you could actually have a
Posthumanist Reading of the Master
In the beginning [War Chief or Delgado!Master], the Master is a very traditional villain. Evenly matched with the hero, what distinguishes him are his morals, or lack thereof. But as the show progresses, he begins to straddle the line between "villain" and "monster", "human" (if we accept Time Lords as stand-ins for humans) and "post-human".
What's this Posthumanism thing?
Posthumanism could be defined in several ways.
1) The attempt to deconstruct traditional Humanism in order to arrive at a new understanding of what it means to be human.
2) The attempt to find a philosopy to replace Humanism.
3) The study of "Post-humans", that is: cyborgs, genetically engineered humans, AI, robots, human-animal hybrids, clones, "uploaded" humans (think Matrix - the Who or the Wachovski kind), virtual humans (you could say that an LJ persona is a virtual human) or any other form of life that evolved from or was created by humans.
Of course, most of these post-humans don't yet exist. We have cyborgs (think prostheses or pacemakers), virtuals and the UK will soon have hybrids, but otherwise this is still speculation. But we know that most of the rest will eventually be possible, and it makes sense to consider how to deal with them.
But if it's about humans, what has it got to do with Time Lords?
That all depends on whether we can read the Doctor as "human" on a meta level. (In Sci-Fi, there are different kinds of aliens. Klingons were stand-ins for Russians during the Cold War, whereas the Alien from "Alien" is something non-human, a true alien, and also a monster.) Does the Doctor represent humans or aliens?
When DW started, the First Doctor was still the Other, the Alien. He was mysterious, hostile and in a sense unknowable. But this changed, inevitably, since he is the protagonist of a program for humans. We have to empathize with him - and who wouldn't empathize with Two's tragic trial? And Three wasn't only exiled to Earth, he was practically a human character with some nifty skills, knowledge and gadgets. By the time of Eight, he even claims to be half-human. (Some Doctors are more alien than others, and some more human.) But it's not as easy as all that. The Doctor acts human, but how human can he really be? Regeneration does not work well with human psychology. Neither do lifespans of 900 years. There are always moments on the show when he is an outside observer, a critic, a saviour, a teacher of humans.
You could read Time Lord society as merely a caricature of certain human societies. History of bloodshed, stuffy authoritarian power structure, whacky politics, silly hats. Revealing Gallifrey in "War Games", "Two Doctors" and "The Deadly Assassin" was a major step towards humanizing the Doctor. But you could just as easily read Time Lords as a post-human society.
They are (correct me if I'm getting my non-TV canon wrong) genetically engineered, and perhaps loomed. They have almost conquered death. And they can apparently translate themselves into a computer, "upload" into the Matrix, so to speak. A long time ago, they might have been a lot like us. Now they're a little less like us (and almost all dead.)
[Incidentally, Daleks and Cybermen, are also post-human mutants/cyborgs].
But if the Time Lords are post-human, they are moderately so. They cling to their traditional structures. They don't take risks. Theirs is a controlled, engineered evolution. But the Master's isn't.
The Master's story
What intially motivates the Master's history of post-humanization (or post-Time Lordization) is what usually makes us change: rivalry, and the fear of extinction. He doesn't want to die, and he wants to defeat the Doctor.
His first transformation is from living flesh (Delgado!Master) to dead/dying flesh (Pratt!/Beevers!Master). He seeks to rejuvenate his body with the energy from the Eye of Harmony, but succeeds only partly. We could read this as an attempt at bioengineering. This first stage of post-humanization is depicted as monstrous, painful, degrading and rather more threatening than Delgado!Master. Four has to defeat him.
The second transformation is more complex, because it basically has two stages. First of all, the Master manages to separate his mind from his body. It's unclear whether all Time Lords can do this, or he has learned to do so through some magical psychic trick. Only when his mind is wholly independent of his body can he leave the old wreck and take possession of a new one - Tremas of Traken. Transferring consciousness from a body into a machine or a new body is a common theme in science-fiction and posthumanist theories. It is usually depicted either as positive (a state of transcendce and freedom from the flesh) or as suicide/crippling, because the mind cannot be the same in a different body.
Ainley!Master is less monstrous (on the surface) than crispy!Master. He looks nicer, acts more like his old, natural self, and is often quite cheerful (okay, deranged laughter is perhaps not cheerful. But it's not hard to be more cheerful than crispy!Master.) He even manages to rejuvenate Tremas body, and possibly adapt it to Time Lord standards. Definitely a more sucessful attempt at reaching a stable post-human state! But it's a victory that is crowned by killing Four and destroying a third of the universe, and thus Ainley!Master reveals a wolf in sheep's clothes. He is less Time Lord than ever before - and more crazy and evil, too. If "Keeper of Traken"/"Logopolis" makes a statement about posthumanization, then it's that it is actually dehumanizing and dangerous.
The next steps are just hints at possibilities. "The King's Demons" introduces Kamelion, who can work as a robot replica of a real person, a possibility that is further explored in "Planet of Fire," where Kamelion becomes a second prosthesis for the Master, because he has accidentally shrunk his first hi-jacked body. Once you start replacing your original body, it never ends! this episode seems to warn.
"Five Doctors" explores the possibility of gaining a new regeneration cycle or immortality (and in Rassilon shows us another Time Lord who has probably gone a step further in post-Time Lordization than the rest. See also Omega as an example of an "unwilling" post-human.) New regenerations are something the Master will continue to want until it actually happens. Clearly, Ainley!Master isn't what he wants to be. He prefers being a "true", uncontaminated Time Lord. "Five Doctors" is this Master's least evil moment, perhaps because he's at the brink of being restored to his natural state (through saving the Doctor!)
In "Trial of a Time Lord", we see the Master in the Matrix, as a virtual being. Just like he knows how to separate his mind from his body, he seems to be particularly good at operating within a computer.
And "Mark of the Rani" suggests that he might also turn into a tree! (Yeah, that contributes no valuable insight. Or does it? The Rani seems into genetic engineering/chemical enhancement. Hers is also a story of posthumanization.)
The possession of Tremas also marks the beginning of the Master's increasing contamination. By contamination I mean that his body (or his mind) are "contaminated" by aspects that are not Time Lord. (Just like a human with a pacemaker is contaminated by machine parts, or a sick person is contaminated by bacteria/viruses.)
The first and most startling instance of contamination is "Survival". Infected by the Cheetah virus, the Master is turning into an animal, complete with fangs and bloodlust. He is out of control, needs a Doctor and it will kill him. Could simply be a metaphor for viruses (AIDS?), but at the same time it also works for genetic engineering or hybridization. His other transformations were more or less deliberate, but this time, the process has taken over. How he gets out of this isn't ever explained.
Then we have his execution on Skaro and the transformation into green goo. The Master has never been less humanoid than that. How that works and what is going on, well, we don't know. Possibly he has let himself be contaminated by something. But the goo takes the form of a snake, another animal aspect. And the snake invades another body, this time a human. And again a Doctor dies.
When the Master plunges into the Eye of Harmony, it could be the end of his posthuman journey. It began with trying to steal the energy from the Eye of Harmony and it ends with being consumed by it. His own tools have killed him. Perhaps it is hell, perhaps it is purification. But the message DW sends is clear: such an endeavour must fail.
Except... the Time Lords ressurect him. Or alternately, Shalka!Doctor ressurects him in an android body. This body doesn't require a sacrifice, because it's not stolen. Shalka!Master is limited (he cannot leave the TARDIS) but he is a posthuman figure which has achieved its aims (cheating death) and lives in harmony with the human (=the Doctor.)
Jacobi!Master, otoh, is back to square one. But death, this time in the form of war, always catches up with him. And once again his solution is to transform/contaminate himself by separating his mind from his body and turning that body into a human. Perhaps what the Master represents is the (false?) belief that we can cheat death and change our bodies while still staying the same person (i.e. mind).
The story ends, interestingly, with Simm!Master choosing death. It's more than a way to beat the Doctor, it's a step out of a vicious circle. Or maybe choosing death seems to him the ultimate way to control his life? And death is of course also "post". (Except nobody buys that he's really dead.)
Conclusions
1) For DW, post-humanization is and always has been, BAD. The three most prominent villains (Daleks, Cybermen and the Master) are all "posthumans" who have mutilated themselves in order to survive/be better. Even other Time Lords are not quite... right. Towards the end of their regenerations, they tend to go crazy (Valeyard, Borusa.)
2) On the other hand, DW also has given us glimpses at positive instances of "more-than-human" life. Jack, for all his wrongness. Cat People. Shalka!Master. Romana and every other Time Lord who has been portrayed as exclusively good.
Yet the overall message still seems to be "Stay what you are. Be human. It's the best you can be, really." Even at the end of the universe, there are still humans. And they're the good guys. But it's not quite that easy. The one time the Doctor, the hero, is actually transformed into a human (in "Human Nature") he must choose to become "more-than-human" again. Survival drives them all.
If you look at the Master's history throughout Who, wow, does that guy go through a lot of transformations. And I don't mean the "usual", regeneration kind. Crispy!Master, possessing a Traken body, shrinking, turning into a cheetah and then an ectoplasmic green snake, dying, ressurrecting, turning human, turning Time Lord again, dying again and let's not forget Shalka!Master's life as a domestic android. Aside from being evil and stalking the Doctor, this is his most consistent theme. Somehow, this gave me the crazy idea that you could actually have a
Posthumanist Reading of the Master
In the beginning [War Chief or Delgado!Master], the Master is a very traditional villain. Evenly matched with the hero, what distinguishes him are his morals, or lack thereof. But as the show progresses, he begins to straddle the line between "villain" and "monster", "human" (if we accept Time Lords as stand-ins for humans) and "post-human".
What's this Posthumanism thing?
Posthumanism could be defined in several ways.
1) The attempt to deconstruct traditional Humanism in order to arrive at a new understanding of what it means to be human.
2) The attempt to find a philosopy to replace Humanism.
3) The study of "Post-humans", that is: cyborgs, genetically engineered humans, AI, robots, human-animal hybrids, clones, "uploaded" humans (think Matrix - the Who or the Wachovski kind), virtual humans (you could say that an LJ persona is a virtual human) or any other form of life that evolved from or was created by humans.
Of course, most of these post-humans don't yet exist. We have cyborgs (think prostheses or pacemakers), virtuals and the UK will soon have hybrids, but otherwise this is still speculation. But we know that most of the rest will eventually be possible, and it makes sense to consider how to deal with them.
But if it's about humans, what has it got to do with Time Lords?
That all depends on whether we can read the Doctor as "human" on a meta level. (In Sci-Fi, there are different kinds of aliens. Klingons were stand-ins for Russians during the Cold War, whereas the Alien from "Alien" is something non-human, a true alien, and also a monster.) Does the Doctor represent humans or aliens?
When DW started, the First Doctor was still the Other, the Alien. He was mysterious, hostile and in a sense unknowable. But this changed, inevitably, since he is the protagonist of a program for humans. We have to empathize with him - and who wouldn't empathize with Two's tragic trial? And Three wasn't only exiled to Earth, he was practically a human character with some nifty skills, knowledge and gadgets. By the time of Eight, he even claims to be half-human. (Some Doctors are more alien than others, and some more human.) But it's not as easy as all that. The Doctor acts human, but how human can he really be? Regeneration does not work well with human psychology. Neither do lifespans of 900 years. There are always moments on the show when he is an outside observer, a critic, a saviour, a teacher of humans.
You could read Time Lord society as merely a caricature of certain human societies. History of bloodshed, stuffy authoritarian power structure, whacky politics, silly hats. Revealing Gallifrey in "War Games", "Two Doctors" and "The Deadly Assassin" was a major step towards humanizing the Doctor. But you could just as easily read Time Lords as a post-human society.
They are (correct me if I'm getting my non-TV canon wrong) genetically engineered, and perhaps loomed. They have almost conquered death. And they can apparently translate themselves into a computer, "upload" into the Matrix, so to speak. A long time ago, they might have been a lot like us. Now they're a little less like us (and almost all dead.)
[Incidentally, Daleks and Cybermen, are also post-human mutants/cyborgs].
But if the Time Lords are post-human, they are moderately so. They cling to their traditional structures. They don't take risks. Theirs is a controlled, engineered evolution. But the Master's isn't.
The Master's story
What intially motivates the Master's history of post-humanization (or post-Time Lordization) is what usually makes us change: rivalry, and the fear of extinction. He doesn't want to die, and he wants to defeat the Doctor.
His first transformation is from living flesh (Delgado!Master) to dead/dying flesh (Pratt!/Beevers!Master). He seeks to rejuvenate his body with the energy from the Eye of Harmony, but succeeds only partly. We could read this as an attempt at bioengineering. This first stage of post-humanization is depicted as monstrous, painful, degrading and rather more threatening than Delgado!Master. Four has to defeat him.
The second transformation is more complex, because it basically has two stages. First of all, the Master manages to separate his mind from his body. It's unclear whether all Time Lords can do this, or he has learned to do so through some magical psychic trick. Only when his mind is wholly independent of his body can he leave the old wreck and take possession of a new one - Tremas of Traken. Transferring consciousness from a body into a machine or a new body is a common theme in science-fiction and posthumanist theories. It is usually depicted either as positive (a state of transcendce and freedom from the flesh) or as suicide/crippling, because the mind cannot be the same in a different body.
Ainley!Master is less monstrous (on the surface) than crispy!Master. He looks nicer, acts more like his old, natural self, and is often quite cheerful (okay, deranged laughter is perhaps not cheerful. But it's not hard to be more cheerful than crispy!Master.) He even manages to rejuvenate Tremas body, and possibly adapt it to Time Lord standards. Definitely a more sucessful attempt at reaching a stable post-human state! But it's a victory that is crowned by killing Four and destroying a third of the universe, and thus Ainley!Master reveals a wolf in sheep's clothes. He is less Time Lord than ever before - and more crazy and evil, too. If "Keeper of Traken"/"Logopolis" makes a statement about posthumanization, then it's that it is actually dehumanizing and dangerous.
The next steps are just hints at possibilities. "The King's Demons" introduces Kamelion, who can work as a robot replica of a real person, a possibility that is further explored in "Planet of Fire," where Kamelion becomes a second prosthesis for the Master, because he has accidentally shrunk his first hi-jacked body. Once you start replacing your original body, it never ends! this episode seems to warn.
"Five Doctors" explores the possibility of gaining a new regeneration cycle or immortality (and in Rassilon shows us another Time Lord who has probably gone a step further in post-Time Lordization than the rest. See also Omega as an example of an "unwilling" post-human.) New regenerations are something the Master will continue to want until it actually happens. Clearly, Ainley!Master isn't what he wants to be. He prefers being a "true", uncontaminated Time Lord. "Five Doctors" is this Master's least evil moment, perhaps because he's at the brink of being restored to his natural state (through saving the Doctor!)
In "Trial of a Time Lord", we see the Master in the Matrix, as a virtual being. Just like he knows how to separate his mind from his body, he seems to be particularly good at operating within a computer.
And "Mark of the Rani" suggests that he might also turn into a tree! (Yeah, that contributes no valuable insight. Or does it? The Rani seems into genetic engineering/chemical enhancement. Hers is also a story of posthumanization.)
The possession of Tremas also marks the beginning of the Master's increasing contamination. By contamination I mean that his body (or his mind) are "contaminated" by aspects that are not Time Lord. (Just like a human with a pacemaker is contaminated by machine parts, or a sick person is contaminated by bacteria/viruses.)
The first and most startling instance of contamination is "Survival". Infected by the Cheetah virus, the Master is turning into an animal, complete with fangs and bloodlust. He is out of control, needs a Doctor and it will kill him. Could simply be a metaphor for viruses (AIDS?), but at the same time it also works for genetic engineering or hybridization. His other transformations were more or less deliberate, but this time, the process has taken over. How he gets out of this isn't ever explained.
Then we have his execution on Skaro and the transformation into green goo. The Master has never been less humanoid than that. How that works and what is going on, well, we don't know. Possibly he has let himself be contaminated by something. But the goo takes the form of a snake, another animal aspect. And the snake invades another body, this time a human. And again a Doctor dies.
When the Master plunges into the Eye of Harmony, it could be the end of his posthuman journey. It began with trying to steal the energy from the Eye of Harmony and it ends with being consumed by it. His own tools have killed him. Perhaps it is hell, perhaps it is purification. But the message DW sends is clear: such an endeavour must fail.
Except... the Time Lords ressurect him. Or alternately, Shalka!Doctor ressurects him in an android body. This body doesn't require a sacrifice, because it's not stolen. Shalka!Master is limited (he cannot leave the TARDIS) but he is a posthuman figure which has achieved its aims (cheating death) and lives in harmony with the human (=the Doctor.)
Jacobi!Master, otoh, is back to square one. But death, this time in the form of war, always catches up with him. And once again his solution is to transform/contaminate himself by separating his mind from his body and turning that body into a human. Perhaps what the Master represents is the (false?) belief that we can cheat death and change our bodies while still staying the same person (i.e. mind).
The story ends, interestingly, with Simm!Master choosing death. It's more than a way to beat the Doctor, it's a step out of a vicious circle. Or maybe choosing death seems to him the ultimate way to control his life? And death is of course also "post". (Except nobody buys that he's really dead.)
Conclusions
1) For DW, post-humanization is and always has been, BAD. The three most prominent villains (Daleks, Cybermen and the Master) are all "posthumans" who have mutilated themselves in order to survive/be better. Even other Time Lords are not quite... right. Towards the end of their regenerations, they tend to go crazy (Valeyard, Borusa.)
2) On the other hand, DW also has given us glimpses at positive instances of "more-than-human" life. Jack, for all his wrongness. Cat People. Shalka!Master. Romana and every other Time Lord who has been portrayed as exclusively good.
Yet the overall message still seems to be "Stay what you are. Be human. It's the best you can be, really." Even at the end of the universe, there are still humans. And they're the good guys. But it's not quite that easy. The one time the Doctor, the hero, is actually transformed into a human (in "Human Nature") he must choose to become "more-than-human" again. Survival drives them all.