quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: I'm plenty certain that by the end of the episode, we'll have gotten over Jacobi's fantastic portrayal of the Master and fallen in love with Simm's edition.
Mark
Don't forget that wasn't REALLY the MASTER - it was like enjoying David Tennant solely for his portrayal of John Smith. The Professor was very likealbe and had a 'Doctor' quality about him - even with the clothes.
I wonder what the drums mean? The drums of war?
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Well, Jacobi was the Master for all of four minutes before he regenerated. Those four minuteswere gold, but then so was his portrayal of Prof. Yana for the whole time before that.
Dunno about the drums, though people are already comparing it to the beat that the Saxon/Master was laying down whilst wearing a gas mask in the preview we saw a few weeks back.
And it took someone pointing it out to me, but they put in two clever nods to previous incarnations of the Master: while Yana is reeling in the years, he hears various people talking and repeating things he'd just said. Towards the end, he hears both a line by Roger Delgado (about giving power to him), and Anthony Ainley's distinctive evil chuckle. Respect!
posted
I noticed the "power" line sounded like it had a different audio quality, and I wondered if it was something they ripped from an old episode. Google didn't help, though, so I figured I'd imagined it.
"Patience. We've only seen the Master very briefly and then in a state extreme excitement, which basically ammounted to 'bugger you, I'm nicking your ride!' I'm sure there'll be plenty of time for character depth in the next two shows."
Um... We've actually seen quite a lot of the Master between 1971 and 1996. There may be time for the development of the Simm Master's particular personality, but the sort of background being discussed here would have been present in all the old Masters, as well. The fact is, he's never been portrayed as having any sort of "defining moment" that turned him into a villain. Sometimes, dudes are just evil.
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quote:Um... We've actually seen quite a lot of the Master between 1971 and 1996. There may be time for the development of the Simm Master's particular personality, but the sort of background being discussed here would have been present in all the old Masters, as well. The fact is, he's never been portrayed as having any sort of "defining moment" that turned him into a villain. Sometimes, dudes are just evil.
I was refering to THIS master, specifically because Jonny was lamenting the lack of character depth in the four minute scene we got at the end of the episode. Given the track record of this show, I'm sure as a major villan they'll give him some depth and a little background. I mean come on, these are the same people who portrayed a Dalek in a sympathetic light...twice!
posted
True enough. I'm also looking forward to a Master unencumbered by the increasing desire to extend his lifespan, something we REALLY haven't seen since Delgado's Master.
posted
I quite liked Simm's take on the character - after being stuck in a decaying body, a possessed alien body, a translucent snake, a possessed human body, the heart of the TARDIS, a pocketwatch (watching his human body get older and older - I got the impression the Time Lord mind remains quite aware of itself and its surroundings, even when it is within the watch) he finally gets his Time Lord body back only to have a blue alien shoot a hole in it and fatally wound him! Makes sense that when he regenerates and gets a nice, young body to plot and scheme in he would be a bit giddy.
As for the campness, it might not be entirely the fault of the actor. From the Wikipedia article on the Master:
"Ainley's portrayal was closer to Delgado's, but his Master's tendency to burst out into peals of malicious laughter was criticised by some fans as being too over-the-top. However, this was more a function of the scripts and direction that Ainley received than of his own interpretation of the character. Visitors to the recording of the story Planet of Fire recall Ainley giving a serious, understated performance in an initial take only to be overruled and asked to go more "over the top" for the final one."
Of course that doesn't excuse Eric Roberts who took it to panto villain levels (Widow Twanky meets Chancellor Flavia) but it might point to where the whole camp angle started to come into the character.
A few questions though - does the Master still have his TARDIS? If not, how did he get to the end of the universe? And what provided the chameleon watch and the means to transform his biology? And what was on that disk he pulled out of the computer? And will he land on Earth in 1973? ;-)
-------------------- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
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quote:Originally posted by FawnDoo: A few questions though - does the Master still have his TARDIS?
My inclination is to say, not any longer. Clearly he needed it to get to the very end of time, but presumably it's been lost since given how the Doctor's Tardis seemed to get Yana acting strange...I doubt that if his own Tardis still existed that he'd be much bothered by it. That he was found on the border of the Silver Devastation could leave a few clues as to what is going on. It's previously been said in the series that the Silver Devastation is, for want of a better term, the homeworld of the Face of Boe, so presumably this being rumoured to have been as old as time itself had something to do with all that's going on...especially since he knew the truth. One can't help but wonder if the Chameleon Arch can change people into being Boekind as well as humans.
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quote:Originally posted by FawnDoo: A few questions though - does the Master still have his TARDIS?
Will the Doctor find the Masters TARDIS? Or will he use that or Jack's funky watch thing to escape the toothy gits at the door? Tune in next week, bat-fans, same bat-time, same bat-channel. na-na na-na na-na na-na, na-na na-na na-na na-na...
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
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posted
It could be that the Master's TARDIS is still hanging around, and is on that planet somewhere. Given that its chameleon circuit is supposedly still working, it would be disguised as something that Yana always brought with him but never thought too much about it.
-------------------- I haul cardboard and cardboard accessories
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posted
Yana was much perturbed by the Doctor's TARDIS because he knew it so well - who else in the universe travels through time and space in a blue box, who you want to kill mostly for the heck of it?
Also, the Master has been known to operate multiple TARDISes over the years. Presumably he'd been using the same one from his first appearance through "The Keeper of Traken", by which time he had acquired another one with a cool seat and everything. His original TARDIS was seen in the background of the control room, and was used to escape at the end of the story. He'd seemingly lost THAT one between his appearances in "The Ultimate Foe" and "Survival", as he was trying to steal the Doctor's ship at the end of the latter story (and had none in the TV movie - perhaps the Daleks got it?). Still, there's no reason why he can't have had or obtained another one in the intervening centuries and bodies.
quote:Originally posted by Zipacna: That he was found on the border of the Silver Devastation could leave a few clues as to what is going on.
We don't know that he was - remember that was Yana's account of his origins, probably false memories implanted into his human mind by his TARDIS (much like the Doctor's TARDIS created the entire John Smith backstory - right down to names of his mother and father). Yana's discovery on the border of the silver devastation is probably about as factual as John Smith's memories of his family.
-------------------- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
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posted
I think it's very doubtful that it's a coincidence that Yana's recollections have him coming from the Silver Devastation, just like tFoB and that said FoB somehow knew about him several trillion years in advance AND his last four words just happened to abreviate (in English) to his assumed name.
posted
I haven't watched much of this series, but I did catch this one and was moderately impressed. Jacobi's acting was excellent, and the story was really good, even if it did rely on a couple of rather old cliches. It still suffered from my big criticism of the new Who though, in that I really think these stories need several episodes to do them justice. I know this is a 3-parter in total, but this episode felt like you could easily get 2 hours of TV out of it and really build up some suspense. Everything moves too quickly. The part of this that really bugs me is that the script writers seem to expect you to have some empathy for characters that you have known for about 5 minutes when they are in danger, or even killed, such as bug-woman from this episode. Sorry, I need more time than that to properly start caring about someone.
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