Seven/Ainley!Master

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

SEVEN

MASTER SERIAL: Survival

Poor bereft Seven has but one Master serial. It’s the last episode of Classic Who, however, which supports a Dual Narrative theory of the program as, in some ways (like the Master’s stupid drums being the beat of the theme-tune—derived from there, but retroactively becoming the source of that (literal) leitmotif), also the Master’s story, and the still-evolving story of their relationship, romantic or otherwise. Point being: Survival is important, as well as being a loveable big steaming pile of ridiculous.

The Master finds himself in a spot of a jam: trapped on a primitive planet sans TARDIS, or indeed any technology, and infected with the fiercest STI of all: THE CHEETAH VIRUS!!*

He lays a characteristically complicated plot. He uses his only resource, Kittlings, a species capable of hunting inter-planetarily, to target people in Ace’s neighborhood, including specifically focusing on people about her age, some of whom are in fact her friends. Ace is the Doctor’s current companion, and the specificity of the Master’s targeting proves not only that he knows who the Doctor is traveling with, but some basic biographical information about her. Way to keep tabs, Master.
Ace eventually visits home with the Doctor at her side, because we’ve entered the era of Who where companions backgrounds and families remain an important part of their lives, even while they’re with the Doctor. The Doctor is inevitably drawn to investigating the disappearances, and is pulled to the Cheetah Planet, where the Master lies in wait. The Master has been diminished by infection. His mind is fogged by the disease and increasingly primitive. Still, this is a very solid plan: he is confident that the Doctor will figure out a way to save him, to get him out. He spends eerie minutes slowly circling the Doctor, explaining the situation via close proximity and cheesy remarks about animal urges. The Doctor plays along, telling Ace TMI about how they’re opposites that attract, blah blah. Ace didn’t need to know, Father Figure.

Anyway, the Master’s plan works, and he escapes, the pursuing Doctor following along shortly after. But unfortunately for the Master the disease has progressed too far, and even away from the influence of the Cheetah Planet, he remains affected. His fixation with the Doctor has become an urge to hunt him, and the Master runs to the Doctor’s TARDIS after a very silly motorcycle battle, only to find the Doctor waiting there. He brings the Doctor back with him to the planet they’ve just escaped from, so they can fight an unusually physical battle as the dying world rips apart underneath them. There’s a charged, sloppy, rolling-around on top of each other fuck-or-kill sort of scene, but then the Doctor, still largely virus-free, is able to slip away and return to Earth.

Back home in Perivale, Ace asks if the Master’s going to die on the Cheetah Planet. The Doctor, with rare in-show awareness, tells her no, probably not. He and Ace walk away, the Doctor saying with some excellent parting words ("There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to do."). This implies both ending and infinite continuation—the Doctor will continue on as he always has, and the Master is an important part of that.

Seven and the Master also interact in the TVM, which is covered at greater length in the Eight section. Inexplicably, this movie begins when the Daleks try and execute the Master for "his evil crimes"—like that’s a thing the Daleks do. His final request is for the Doctor to carry his ashes back to Gallifrey—like ‘observing Gallifreyan burial customs and wishing one’s body to be repatriated’ is a thing these two renegades/exiles/iconoclasts do. Brought on board into the Doctor’s creepy candle-lit shrine for his dead ex-bf in the ‘gay old man who shops exclusively at Tuesday Morning’ish TARDIS interior ever around, the Master somehow becomes a snake made of goo, sabotages the Doctor’s TARDIS in flight, and causes it to land in San Franscisco, where the Doctor promptly walks out into a gang fight in Chinatown, San Francisco circa 2000. Like that is a thing that happens.

Then he gets killed by well-meaning doctors. It’s so ironic it’s like O. Henry and Alanis Morissette had a baby and named it This Exact Situation**, especially for Seven, Man of Many Schemes.***

Essentially, as you can see, despite some good lines and some plucky acting on the Doctors’ parts, the movie goes where no Who has gone before—into a magical land of WTFery, from whence there are few reasonably-priced return flights.

OVERALL DYNAMIC:

Seven is in some ways the Doctor most like the Master. Unlike most Doctors, who are relatively impulsive, small and personal in the scope of their interventions, and more prone to living in the moment than forward planning, Seven plots and plots big, devising at a distance huge, game-changing schemes that only come to fruition incrementally.

He’s a chess player, and he’s willing to make moral decisions he shunned as a younger man. Four was unwilling to eliminate the nascent Daleks even when his life was at stake, but Seven is completely prepared to destroy Skaro and then move on to the Cybermen. This conception of his role in the universe has much in common with the Master’s philosophy, and while Seven eliminates threats to the universe left and right, he doesn’t lift a finger to ‘take out’ the Master, who, despite his arguable ineffectiveness, is consistently treated as one of the series’ most formidable villains.

Seven doesn’t seem to judge the Master quite as harshly as some of the other Doctors—or, at least, he’s not as preoccupied by judging him as some of his predecessors. Their admiration-shading-into-infatuation is particularly pronounced, open and mutual in Survival. There haven’t been, to my knowledge, many fics exploring these commonalities and this potential for moving past old grievances and sharing goals—but there’s potential for development in a lot of directions, here.


*Actually it is transmitted aerially. But that is not as funny.
**Thanks, Archer.
*** Homer/Greek Bardic Tradition, re: Odysseus.