changes to the Master's back-story

[JoeZhang]

What do people make of the changes to the Master's back-story? While the changes makes sense within the context of The end of time, overall I prefer the Master to have agency and like the Doctor be who he is because he made choices about his life rather than be the broken guided puppet of the time-lords and the victim of what amounts to child abuse.

I don't think the duality of the characters works in the same way when the Master is part-victim and someone suffering from (artificially induced) mental illness rather than master of his own fate.

 

[Icemizer]

First I thought the actor did a solid job with the material he was given. As for the material itself, couldnt have hated it more. It sapped the master of all his power and strength and just made him a looney. In fact calling him the Master now seems silly since he is not even the Master of himself. Perhaps another regeneration will help this poor silly fool become the true Master once more.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I agree. I'm not terribly happy with this particular development. Prior to "The End of Time," I believed that he only heard the sound of drums starting with Professor Yana after the Time War. And I would continue to think that if The Master hadn't said in Part Two that he had been hearing the sound of drums his entire life. Now, one possible explanation could be he thought he had been hearing it his entire life after the Time War but in fact had only been hearing it since then. It's a bit of stretch but it's the best I can come up with without reverting to the old mainstay "wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey," which in this rare case I'm not satisfied with.

 

[Kelso]

I'm terribly happy with this particular development.

Me too.

The RTD/Simm Master was *by far* the most interesting version of the character. Fleshing out or changing the back story doesn't bother me in the least.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Oh, bugger. That's not what I meant!

Don't get me wrong, I love Jacobi's and Simm's performances as The Master, but I'm not happy with the origin of the sound of drums.

 

[intrinsical]

The Doctor said that he had to stay relative to the Master within the causal time nexus. Timothy Dalton's Timelords intentionally broke this causal nexus rule to retroactively make the Master hear the sound of drums. From the Timelord's perspective, the universe and time is going to end anyway, so such an infraction can be ignored.

Just like Star Trek, the timeline has diverged and this is an alternate universe/timeline. The original Master, his backstory and such are still intact in the original timeline.

I hate time travel, gives me headaches.

 

[Lonemagpie]

The Doctor said that he had to stay relative to the Master within the causal time nexus. Timothy Dalton's Timelords intentionally broke this causal nexus rule to retroactively make the Master hear the sound of drums. From the Timelord's perspective, the universe and time is going to end anyway, so such an infraction can be ignored.

Just like Star Trek, the timeline has diverged and this is an alternate universe/timeline. The original Master, his backstory and such are still intact in the original timeline. .

This is basically it - Delgado and Ainley etc weren't hearing the drums when you watched them, cos the Timey's hadn't caused it yet. But next time you watch them, they will be.

Of course, the signal probably gets stronger as it nears Simm, and so it probably isn't driving Delgado nuts - hell, he probably just notes that he's hearing his own heartbeat...

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

The Master has always been a moustache-twirling matinee serial villain, so as far as I'm concerned, anything that can give him any kind of depth is welcome.

 

[Tom]

Well if memory serves one retrocon is that they grew up together as children, The First Doctor in the 'Five Doctor' does not reconize him, but that can be explained because he was in a human (Tremas) body at the time.

 

[Cutter John]

The Master has always been a moustache-twirling matinee serial villain, so as far as I'm concerned, anything that can give him any kind of depth is welcome.

This pretty much. It actually gives a reason for what he does other than "Mwah-ha-ha! I'm so evil!"
Kinda like real life.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'm terribly happy with this particular development.

Me too.

The RTD/Simm Master was *by far* the most interesting version of the character. Fleshing out or changing the back story doesn't bother me in the least.

Absolutely.

The Master was just a rubbish moustache-twirling villain before Simm and Davies. Now he's an interesting character.

 

[KevasTrader]

I preferred Simms' Master in The End of Time to The Sound of Drums because it was obvious he was completely nuts!! In the Sound of Drums he was irritating!

The Master should have been more sinister - Anthony Head (The Headmaster) would have been a much better choice.

Also, I wish they'd bring back the Tissue Compression Eliminator. With modern effects those doll-like corpses could be qite effective (though i do like the Action Man-Time Lord in The Deadly Assassin)

 

[23skidoo]

I don't believe "changes" is the correct word to use. Not in Doctor Who. Discounting the novels which even went so far as to reveal the Master's real name (Koschei), since the jury remains out as to whether to consider them canon, nothing on TV ever really gave us much detail regarding the Master's backstory. The Five Doctors mentioned they went to the academy together; some believe the ending of Planet of Fire implied they were brothers. But if anything what RTD has done is added to the Master's backstory by, among other things, giving a potential reason for why he went nuts. And certainly the "Master Race" scheme is on par with the type of insanity displayed by the Delgado and Ainley Masters.

Virtually everything done so far in the reboot has served to enhance and richen rather than "change" the backstories of characters like the Doctor and the Master. There are some niggly naggly things like why the Doctor is supposed to be 906 in End of Time, but he was about 940 according to the 1987 story Time and the Rani. And no one - on screen, at least as novels, audios and comics have all addressed it - has tried to rectify some of the retconning of the 1996 TV movie. But all told I think the RTD era has fulfilled one of its mandates, which was to progress the show as if it had never gone off the air for those 16 years and had continued to develop the characters (especially as TV scriptwriting matured over that time).

Alex

 

[Davros]

There were so many gaps in the Master's back story as it was, that I view these more as filling in those gaps than I do actual changes.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Virtually everything done so far in the reboot has served to enhance and richen rather than "change" the backstories of characters like the Doctor and the Master.

Exactly.

 

[Captain Pike]

I liked the new Master.. up until the point where he regenerated into John Simm.

 

[Skellington]

The Master has always been a moustache-twirling matinee serial villain, so as far as I'm concerned, anything that can give him any kind of depth is welcome.

This pretty much. It actually gives a reason for what he does other than "Mwah-ha-ha! I'm so evil!"
Kinda like real life.

Actually, I always used to wonder how the Master could remain evil over the course of centuries and not "develop" as a person.
The drums thing is a potential explanation; maybe he was quietly being driven bonkers.

 

[Skellington]

The Doctor said that he had to stay relative to the Master within the causal time nexus. Timothy Dalton's Timelords intentionally broke this causal nexus rule to retroactively make the Master hear the sound of drums. From the Timelord's perspective, the universe and time is going to end anyway, so such an infraction can be ignored.

Just like Star Trek, the timeline has diverged and this is an alternate universe/timeline. The original Master, his backstory and such are still intact in the original timeline.

I hate time travel, gives me headaches.

Some thoughts on the above...
To my mind, the causal nexus within the Whoniverse would only be broken if someone made something happen that they already knew wasn't supposed to; eg the Time Lords killing the Master as an eight-year-old child. Affecting things that you don't know about or becoming the cause of things that you do know about would appear to be ok.
Also, DW likes to have its cake and eat it regarding the causal nexus vs alternate timeline thing. In NuWho it would appear that the alternate universes exit independently of the actions of time-travelers. In any case, if the alternate-universe thing applies to The End Of Time then logically the Time Lords implanting the sound of drums would come from an "original" timeline where it hadn't necessarily happened. It would also mean diverging timelines for every trip backwards in time.

 

[Captaindemotion]

I just want the next version of The Master to have a pointy black beard.

 

[Skellington]

The Master was just a rubbish moustache-twirling villain before Simm and Davies.

Hey! That's my favourite childhood TV hero - I mean villain that you're talking about!
You're not wrong, though.

Prior to the Master's return I imagined that they might introduce a younger version of him or a more "mischievous" (rather than nasty) foil for the Doctor. Simm's Master appears to be kind of what that character might have been like; an anti-Doctor rather than the machiavellian schemer of old. The Master was originally to be Moriarty to the Doctor's Holmes, but now it's as if they are two sides of a coin; especially since it would seem that Rassilon could easily have chosen the Doctor to be his guinea pig instead.

Speaking of Rassilon, he does seem to be filling the Master's old role in a way.