Is you is or is you ain't my baby: Discussion Time for War Games

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The Case For War Chief!Master

1) I see the scene where Two encounters the War Chief as one of STRONG mutual recognition.

2) There's a lot of touching between the two characters. It's very reminiscent of the physicality the Master and Three are going to have: an intimacy unknown in Three's interactions with any other villain (really more akin to how he treats his companions). The War Chief keeps. curling. his. hand. around Two's shoulder, with the easy possessiveness of old accustomed usage. It's pretty eyebrow-raising.

3) The War Chief runs to Two's defense after the Security Chief makes it clear he's in peril, seeming to really enjoy having the Doctor in his debt afterwards. Note also the fondness with which he assures the Doctor that the rebels can't hurt him when the Doctor appears to capture them in the SIDRAT hanger. There's a savoring of these instances that suggests long association.

4) The intellectual fanboying that will characterize Doctor and Master interaction in the Three era and beyond is in full force, as is the typical Delgado!Master 'Let's do a science project together! I need you!' ploy. "Look at my lovely SIDRATs!" "Yes, you're brilliant--but not THIS brilliant" "No, you're right, but together..." etc.

5) The serial contains a CLASSIC Delgado!Master marriage proposal offer to mutually rule/Dominate all Life, and fuck what the other Time Lords say. The in-episode justification for this, if not predicated on a long acquaintance and emotional dynamics we have no access to in-episode, is very slight. He could easily have offed the Doctor and stolen his TARDIS, or been far less concerned about the Doctor's welfare throughout the episode. You don't offer someone you want one thing of a co-rulership in the universe, you offer him the ability to extricate himself and his companions from a perilous situation alive. And the War Chief's willingness to vouch for the Doctor in his own unstable position is extraordinary.

6) On this same note, the War Chief seems to have an obsessive concern with how the Doctor perceives him ("I'm not all bad"), not otherwise justified by the serial itself.

7) We get a brief flicker of what seems like the War Chief almost suspecting that the mysterious intruder is going to be the Doctor when someone mentions time travel. He also gets a line of internal monologue in the proper narration--an event I can't recall ever being duplicated in Classic Who. Even though it's certainly unintentional, if you like to somewhat read the show as a dual-narrative for the two of them (as the drums being the theme song might lend a touch of New-Who interpretive credence to), this is a very interesting moment of a seemingly minor character, and a villain at that, hijacking the narration.

8) A small thing, but, there was hypnosis ALL OVER that project. In Who, hypnosis had yet to be synonymous with the Master showing up, but from a Watsonian perspective, in retrospect, Classic Who viewers are pretty clued in to the fact that when hypnosis is goin' down, the Master is probably somewhere in the vicinity.

9) The War Chief is almost wearing Delgado!Master's jacket, and the crazy facial hair screams Master's Early Experiments in Face Topiary to me. Shallow? Yes. I don't care, there it is. Also shallow: know how the Master is occasionally pretty er, swish? In the swish Olympics, War Chief is the Michael Phelps. I can't help but see that as Vary Meeningfullz. More seriously, he moves from smooth, serene calm to brief flashes of rage in a way that seems very compatible with being the Master to me.

10) There seems to be a kind of mutual concern between the War Chief and the Doctor for each other over calling in the other Time Lords ("Well YOU can still leave."). The Doctor doesn't seem to even slightly mind that the War Chief might well escape punishment for his involvement in the affair.

11) While never specifically addressed as the Master, this is actually fully in keeping with the Three-era treatment of the Master: the Doctor /never/ called him Master to his face if he could help it, seeming to withhold that as a point of pride. The Master does love him some aliases, and War Chief seems to be a position within the hierarchy he's attached himself to, rather than a personal name/title.

12) The conceit of 'Evil Time Lord allies himself with alien menace to humans, pretending to forward their interests while actually more interested in the service of his own,' is one that will become deeply familiar during the Three era.

13) To have one evil old friend/ex who's now kind obsessed with universal domination/oneself, Doctor, may be regarded as misfortune: to have two looks like carelessness. Occam's Razor suggests that the War Chief and the Master are the same individual, not that the Doctor had a serial dating-evil issue in college. And how weirdly alike the War Chief and the Master are, if they're not really one person--that must have made for bizarre youthful friends-group dynamics. Even weirder if they never met and still cropped up on Gallifrey, with so many striking similarities between them.



The Case Against War Chief!Master

1] Officially, in the minds of the creators and suchlike, he wasn't then the Master. Later opinion may have varied on the topic, but while clearly instrumental towards the development of the Master, he wasn't him because the Master hadn't been conceived of as a character yet.

2] Some people read what I think of as mutual recognition in a personal sense as only mutual recognition of another Time Lord via psychicstuffs.

3] He really isn't ever called the Master, so there's nothing positively salient there to identify him.

4] He has a kind of humorlessness that seems very unlike the suave wit of Delgado!Master or the chucking 'things are fucking hilarious' of Ainley!Master. I typically put it down to being depressed or something, but wile he has the Master's silky, insinuating tone, aside from two moments (when he's pushing through the loose panel in the wall that the Doctor's escaped through with a sort of dry 'everyone is stupid but me' expression, and when he's trying to squish Two in a collapsing SIDRAT), he has little of the Master's grace and levity. It's possibly the strongest disjuncture between the two, for me.

5] The War Chief, in the end, is shot and left for dead. While his employers may not know enough about Gallifreyan biology to know that that's not going to cut it, surely the Time Lords who waylay Two do? if Two fully explained the situation to them, and the War Chief wasn't killed-forever by whatever weapons the War Lords were using, why isn't the War Chief fetched for the Time Lord Smackdown at the end? The explanation is that they production team was still developing regeneration, and didn't yet have a clear idea of it, but from a contemporary light it makes little sense.

6] As if the Master would be caught dead sporting that bling. What IS that necklace? Why is he keeping Knowledge in something he clearly purchased at a Claire's Accessories in the Mall and/or the nearest H&M?



Discussion Questions

1] The most obvious question to be drawn from all this: is he or isn't he? Why or why not? What FABULOUS reasoning on either side have I ignored?

2] I think we can all agree that having scrimmage matches amongst batches of humans to create an army is... a lame plan. Not v. effective, except in a 'screw you Doctor, you like humans' sense. Does the War Chief!Maybe Master have some better use in mind for this alien power structure and the technologies they're all developing, or is he actually invested in this elaborate round of Pokemon-but-with-Humans? Or am I wrong and this plan is awesome?

3] What think we of the War Lords? I find them interesting, in a sort of 'but WHY do they TALK like that' way (reminiscent of the Sea Devils in the degree to which I'd cheerfully punch them in the mouth to shut them up sometimes).

4] Discuss the absolutely TERRIFYING Time Lords in this. Really, this is the only time I've been truly frightened by the folk in funny collars. From their treatment of the War Lord to their cruel legal system, not to mention the fate of Two and his companions, this is one of the show's better exercises in both world-building and story telling, for me. To the extent that the later, lamer Time Lords who've forgotten who the Master is in Deadly Assassin and Trial of a Time Lord and who, in Assassin at least, apparently have a useless press service and v. little in the way of effective internal security, are something of a confusing let down (Excepting Deadly Assassin! Borusa, who's vicious and great).

Call to Arms (the War Chief would want it phrased like that): To my knowledge, only two people have written any War Chief!Master fic. I'm one of them. I can't read me, guys, it's just silly. May I point out that nature and the internet both abhor a vacuum? WRITE SOME WAR CHIEF!MASTER, GUYS! Extra points for Season 6B offerings.