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Pratt/Beevers is definitely not the same incarnation as Delgado. Its been very much the case for a while now, and been depicted in the Seventh Doctor audio story, The Two Masters.
In the flashback portions of The Two Masters, MacQueen's Master (the legit first incarnation of his next regeneration cycle) meets up with Beevers' Master before he was fried up, and he looked pretty much like Geoffrey Beevers himself does only, you know, uncrisped. MacQueen is the one who actually causes his body to burn to the crisp as it was, doing so because he'd made a deal with the Cult of the Heretic and this was meant to cement that deal.
Basically, its pretty much like Christopher said. Delgado is not the Crispy Master. And the idea that he was to begin with may have had merit if one counted The Deadly Assassin alone, but honestly, I was always baffled by the idea that he had to be Delgado. As said, nothing performance-wise is informed by this knowledge, as neither the actor nor the character are portrayed in such a way as to construe this.
I’m familiar with The Two Masters, thanks. But this story ends with the Delgado Master undergoing a substantial trauma that’s definitely not a regeneration. It’s ambiguous in that it may just be a memory wipe, although it’s got a lot of physical harbingers and he’s in definite pain afterwards.
Pratt/Beevers is definitely not the same incarnation as Delgado. Its been very much the case for a while now, and been depicted in the Seventh Doctor audio story, The Two Masters.
So let's see... Looking over the wiki entry, how many of the Master's lives have been depicted, and by which actors? It seems to be something like this:
ORIGINAL REGENERATION CYCLE
William Hughes (child)
James Dreyfus (possibly adult version of Hughes incarnation)
...
Roger Delgado
...?
Geoffrey Beevers (and Peter Pratt)
ALTERNATE BODIES
Anthony Ainley
Gordon Tipple (?)
Eric Roberts
SECOND REGENERATION CYCLE
Alex Macqueen
...?
Derek Jacobi
John Simm
Michelle Gomez
Sacha Dhawan
That said, James Dreyfus' is possibly a later Master, as well. He was only rumored to be the First, but that's only because he appeared in a First Doctor story too.
Next year will see a big event audio story called Masterful released by BF, which has most of those Master in, except for Delgado. Hughes might be recast by Milo Parker, who will almost certainly be the First Master as a young man.
Of course, there is deliberate amibiguity for Edward Brayshaw's War Chief (though not on my part, ).
On the stolen bodies section, there is also Yee Jee Tso, who in the audio story Mastermind, plays the mafia boss whose body the Master takes over in order to survive post-TV Movie, and then his son at a later age (also played by the same actor). And, again ambiguously, but more concretely, Philip Madoc given that he plays a War King in the Faction Paradox spin-off series (produced by BBV first, then Magic Bullet Productions) who is meant to clearly an incarnation of the Master, and there's no real reason he'd be a pre-Delgado one, so he's assumed to be a body Beevers' takes over (personally, I theorize he just took over Philip Madoc's character's body from the Big Finish tale, Master).
Day of the Master also quite definitively showcases the Beevers Master regenerating, too.
Jacobi's Master is basically in the story so he can facilitate the said regeneration after a deal he'd made with the CIA in exchange for assistance in the Time War. Beevers is surrounded by the Jacobi Master and Missy, and Eric Roberts' Master as well. They're literally witnessing the event, becoming MacQueen.
After MacQueen, its fairly straightfoward. Though is a kid Master in the comics, who I don't really count, and there is another incarnation of the Master in Missy's spin-off series, aptly named Missy, in the episode The Lumiat, in which the said Lumiat appears to be a fully good incarnation of the Master/Missy, potentially bridging Missy and Dhawan's Master.
I’m familiar with The Two Masters, thanks. But this story ends with the Delgado Master undergoing a substantial trauma that’s definitely not a regeneration. It’s ambiguous in that it may just be a memory wipe, although it’s got a lot of physical harbingers and he’s in definite pain afterwards.
I just doubt the company would intentionally promote this as Delgado's turning into Pratt/Beevers, especially when the said Two Masters quite definitively says they're not the same. Without having listened to the short trip personally, it is possible that it is a memory wipe that is on its own a traumatic experience - recently, I listened to The War Master - Rage of the Time Lords and at the end of which, the Eighth Doctor undergoes a memory wipe of the events and from the sound of it, it was also a traumatic experience. Just saying.
After MacQueen, its fairly straightfoward. Though is a kid Master in the comics, who I don't really count, and there is another incarnation of the Master in Missy's spin-off series, aptly named Missy, in the episode The Lumiat, in which the said Lumiat appears to be a fully good incarnation of the Master/Missy, potentially bridging Missy and Dhawan's Master.
There's really no reason to discount Titan's Time War Kid Master. For one thing, the Masters' lives are much more ambiguous than the Doctor's. For another, there was a Time War going on, so it's not at all impossible that there are multiple "war" Masters running around and multiple resurrections of the Master by the Time Lords.
I don't like the assumption that Jacobi's War Master is the exact same life as Jacobi's Professor Yana, as that makes War/Yana one of the luckiest and longest living incarnations (as he spans McGann through the Time War all the way to Tennant). I like the weirder idea that the Master has two Jacobi bodies. Yet, it's also possible that Jacobi's War Master might well have used the chameleon arch to flee the Time War before McGann regenerates into John Hurt, in which case the Time Lords resurrected one of the earlier Master incarnations to create the War Doctor's traveling companion, Kid Master. (Eleventh Doctor Year Two sort of implies that Kid Master is the Delgado Master in a youthful body.)
In the end, the Master's life is a muddled mess, and that's just fine.
Titan's Defender of the Daleks Part 2 was fine, but unsatisfying.
My basic problem with the story is that I never felt like the Hond were a threat. Sure, the Daleks are scared shitless of them -- or whatever passes for solid waste from a Dalek mutant -- but nothing about the presentation of the Hond really felt threatening. Which, I guess, was the point -- the Doctor was suspicious and found a very Doctor-ish non-violent solution, followed (obviously) by a lot of Dalek explosions.
The guest cameo with five pages left to go was deus ex machina-ey. I didn't mind it, but it also made me ask, "Well, how would the Doctor have gotten out of that jam on his own?" Which is not a good question to ask of a story.
Overall, it's fine. It doesn't feel necessary, and its real meat is the Doctor's relationship with the Dalek Strategist rather than anything about the Dark Times.
There's really no reason to discount Titan's Time War Kid Master. For one thing, the Masters' lives are much more ambiguous than the Doctor's. For another, there was a Time War going on, so it's not at all impossible that there are multiple "war" Masters running around and multiple resurrections of the Master by the Time Lords.
I don't like the assumption that Jacobi's War Master is the exact same life as Jacobi's Professor Yana, as that makes War/Yana one of the luckiest and longest living incarnations (as he spans McGann through the Time War all the way to Tennant). I like the weirder idea that the Master has two Jacobi bodies. Yet, it's also possible that Jacobi's War Master might well have used the chameleon arch to flee the Time War before McGann regenerates into John Hurt, in which case the Time Lords resurrected one of the earlier Master incarnations to create the War Doctor's traveling companion, Kid Master. (Eleventh Doctor Year Two sort of implies that Kid Master is the Delgado Master in a youthful body.)
In the end, the Master's life is a muddled mess, and that's just fine.
Its not that I discount the Kid Master, I just don't count him as a regeneration. My pet theory is, the Jacobi Master tried to elude the Time Lords before the Yana thing, actually building/improving his chameleon arch to de-age himself as a small kid, and only interacting with the War Doctor until a temporal explosion forcibly ages him to his previous state. Of course, its also possible that he's a Master clone as you suggest, but we've no actual indication of that, do we?
And why shouldn't/couldn't Jacobi be a long-lived incarnation? Beevers was the longest-lived, spanning four Doctors in total, and as a decaying body at that. And I wouldn't call it luck, either - like the Doctor, he's a genius who's maliciousness served him well enough to survive the Time War, although by the skin of his teeth.
Speaking of multiple Masters, my other pet theory is that he had the James Dreyfus body twice - the first one dying at the end of The Destination Wars and the other one being a regenerated War Chief, after The War Games and the book Exodus.
Not that random, really. They've also got Ten teaming up with Thirteen now in the upcoming video game The Edge of Reality (itself a remake/expansion of the earlier VR-only The Edge of Time). There's a definite drive-on to tie Thirteen with the most popular of the NuWho Doctors. It's like they want to give the impression of Tennant giving his old 'Broadchurch' cohort a hug and telling everybody "C'mon, give this girl a chance, she's okay."
The first Eighth Doctor audio, He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not, is out today. I listened to it during my workout this morning. As has been the case with other TLV first installments, its connection to the overall story is light: Brian is in it, and there are hints that something is Seriously Wrong With Time, but it’s basically a standalone story where the Doctor visits a planet that’s reminiscent of the American Old West and has to foil Brian’s plans. On the plus side, the American accents are better than usual for Big Finish, though all that means is that it sounds like Americans doing an unconvincing Southwestern twang rather than Britons doing one. It’s not a terribly complicated script, and it doesn’t take full advantage of the opportunities for pastiche; one cliched bit of guest character backstory is laid out in a single awkward expository scene instead of being threaded through. But it’s a lean story, well-paced and well-directed, and Paul McGann’s performance doesn’t have that autopilot feel you get from a lot of his BF work. Like a lot of TLV so far, this is more “if you like this Doctor you’ll like this” than an unqualified recommendation, but I had fun.
Yeah. I’ve just finished listening to it and if I didn’t read the novel (which should have been the audio story) I wouldn’t know it’s connections to Victorious. I was curious about that 2000 days since the last death as I thought that was a reference to the Tenth Doctor removing death from the universe, but I don’t think it had anything to do with that.
At least the next part has the Daleks in it. That should at least make the story more interesting
Another busy week for TLV: the new DWM with part two of the comic strip is out today. And it’s pretty much the same as part one, only shorter. The Ninth Doctor’s dialogue is trying to capture his speech patterns, but it’s subtly off in ways that make it less effective than if he’d been written generically. Still no particular links to TLV, though you can see how it’s eventually going to join up with the ending of the first novel. The setting is interesting in its own right, though with only a single part left I doubt they’ll be able to do more than scratch the surface. This has been my first ever DWM comic strip, and while it has a certain goofy charm, I doubt I’d go out of my way to read more. But I have a year’s digital subscription to the magazine because it cost only slightly more than a three-issue sub to cover TLV would have, so I suppose I’ll find out.
Frankly, I've long felt the DWM comic strip is overrated in fan consciousness, held up as pretty much a "gold standard" in the tie-ins, but that's nostalgia-tinged goggles. Like anything, Sturgeon's Law applies -- there's an occasional gem, a lot of average, and the downright mediocre. When I realized I was only buying DWM for the comic strip, I stopped buying DWM.
Today, Dave Rudden's short story, "Canaries," a tie-in to his Christmas-themed Doctor Who anthology, The Wintertime Paradox, was released online.
A woman keeps a museum of impossible things, artifacts from timelines that never-were. There's a persistent group of callers who each call themselves "the Doctor" who desperately wish to examine her artifacts, and she receives a strange delivery -- two masks that belonged to a race that worshipped paradox itself. The tone of the story is charming -- until, of course, dreadful things happen.
Links to Time Lord Victorious are minimal, and suggest things more than develop them.
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