AVEC SPOILERS FOR THE BFA 'MASTER'

[x_los]

Ah, the BFA audio Master: I will review it more fully inna bit. Suffice it to say I've been dividing my day between studying for the Kareinina final, taking care of Rachel and Mike's rats, dealing with the Home Inspection and listening to the audio.

Inspector Character: Your maid's hot. Do you think you might like Human Wimmins?
John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: Um. No. I totally don't care at all. It's never even occurred to me to care. /Really./

John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: So you and this 'Master' used to be... close?
Seven: That's not important right now.

Seven: So the Master never loved or cared about anyone ever, but I think you could love this Jacqueline person. Do you?!
John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: Um. I mean, not in the way where I in any way care? But she makes me laugh. At her more than with her. But I /guess/ you could construe that as a positive attachment?
Seven: *construes hard*
John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: Hey, Re: my apparently never having loved or cared for anyone. That seems kind of... not true, given that whole thing earlier where when we were children I killed someone just for hurting you. And that whole thing where we ran around loling in the flashback and seemed to be planning to run away together in a Hetero Man-Love Not Eloping At All Totally Cousins or Something...Okay, Having A Great Deal of Sex way. Are you sure you're not being desperately naive or taking serious advantage of the frame narrative structure?
Seven: THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW. Look, a woman! LOVE IT!
John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: ...I think I understand why I have this lingering desire to smack you leaking through.

Comments

Re: This is all crack!theory, mind, and only one of many possible ways it could work, but...

[x-los.livejournal.com]

And wouldn't it be just like our duo to be stupid and think they don't need no stinkin' waiting time?

Btw, I totally agree with that.

Well, I don't think it's a coincidence we never get a Master who is physically younger than his current Doctor

Oh, that IS an interesting power play! Unless you count War Chief as Master, in which he's younger than Two. I dunno, what's your stance on that one?

and the Doctor even tries to negotiate for a safe word ("we can fight across the constellations if that's what you want, just not here on earth") and openly admits he wants him, but of course they're doomed anyway

Which makes me wonder what they're going to do after that when some production team brings the Master back? I mean, where do they emotionally /go/ from there?

Re: This is all crack!theory, mind, and only one of many possible ways it could work, but...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

War Chief: if other people use it well enough in fanfic, I go with it, but not for myself. My main argument is that Two really doesn't give the impression of recognizing him, and behaves far more as One did with the Meddling Monk than as Three does with Delgado!Master. And I don't quite see how they'd from formal and distant to the extremely personal bickering in Terror of the Autons ("probably overcomplicated, vicious and ultimately doomed to failure like your plans usually are" and that beaming smile when the Master has escaped at the end) if this is the same guy and these are two successive encounters. So, in conclusion: I buy it in fanfic (yours, for example), but not when I actually watch The War Games on screen.

Which makes me wonder what they're going to do after that when some production team brings the Master back? I mean, where do they emotionally /go/ from there?

That is indeed a problem. I mean, if they just go back to the usual "Master cooks up evil scheme" plot and the two act as if nothing out of the usual happened the last time, the emotional dissonance would be staggering. In short, they face a similar problem than if the last Master story planned for Delgado actually had been filmed (you know, the one where the Master would have died saving the Doctor's life), because after something like this, you just can't go back to your usual Holmes/Moriarty games.

What I'd do, if I had to write it, and bearing tv restrictions of storytelling in mind: I wouldn't bring back the Master until some other Time Lords are restored as well because that would allow for some more character exploration, i.e. how much of their ability to skip over the usual denials (the "I really want to kill you, I'm just post-poning" /"go away, you evil bastard" routine) came from the fact they were the last ones and how much came from who they were to each other? And I could see them being extremely skittish around each other at first. The Master because well, he's just not used to winning and he finally did, not because of the one year that never was but because he finally well and truly broke the Doctor (who hadn't given up during that year) by dying and if it was all about winning for him, what is left? Unless it wasn't, and he'd have to face that and figure it out. As for the Doctor, essentially proposing to a psycho mass murderer and being willing to spend the rest of your existence with him is just a liiiittle bit insane, plus if you're already the original running type, the fact he then dies on you just to spite you isn't exactly going to confirm this ever was a good idea in any way. So I could see him going into "avoid, avoid, avoid" mode with the Master. Then of course plot would force them together, and unless you want to change the premise of the show or end it, which I can't see the BBC any time soon, they'd probably end up concluding that no, it wasn't just about winning or being the last of their kind, that they love each other, but that they still can't live with each other in any kind of sane way. (I.e. without one of them as a prisoner or forced to go against his nature.) Upon which conclusion they part in Three/Delgado!Master manner (i.e. with the Master making a getaway but the Doctor secretly or not so secretly glad of it and a last exchange of looks), and we've come full circle.

Re: This is all crack!theory, mind, and only one of many possible ways it could work, but...

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Oh, I read hilarious post-break-up Mutual Recognition from hell in that scene, and then baby!Master letting his plan go to hell, thrown off by the mere proximity of his ex (Do you want to rule benevolently with me?! No?! I'll ask again in Colony in Space, don't worry, just, you know, think about it...hold still while I touch you. Fine, try and walk away, I'm just going to follow you. Mmm, Doctor!shoulder...), and then Two calling in the other Time Lords on them both, with a good deal of sympathy/care for the War Cheif.

But you're right, there's something 'almost' about War Chief that doesn't quite sell me on it, and I really wish that extra 'Master' oomph was there. I think in canon it'd be more awkward for him /not/ to be the Master, though, b/c otherwise high school must have been v. Degrassi, what with Koschei and baby!War Cheif running around after sweet Theta lurve.

I know only the sketchiest outlines of what the final Delgado serial was supposed to be doing. I know there was Master death for Doctor, but does anybody have more info than that?

Of course, the whole meaning of Last of the Time Lords shifts for me in the Master had some grand escape plan all along a la the ring, and this how to write your way out of the corner opens up, b/c it's sort of more of the same if he was just playing dead rather than rejecting (finally) having the Doctor at all costs--which is something we've not seen before (it brings to mind Shalka!Master, or Sea Devils!Master--who could obviously have gotten out of that prison and into his TARDIS an age ago, who was sticking around waiting for what, more quality Doctor time? To piss him off with his little scheme? For the Doctor to break and come to him? So in canon past, we have a Master who's not necessarily objecting to being imprisoned, is confident in his ability to get out of it, and willing to confine himself to prison, or even just to Earth for months, for that matter, before LOtTL--but NOW it's untenable? ). We've seen he'd do practically /anything/ for the Doctor, but we've never before really gotten good proof of what he /isn't/ willing to do.

Mm. Full-circle thing makes much story-telling sense, but dissatisfies me emotionally. Not b/c I expected them to decide yes, they did want to do this whole thing together on-screen, but because it sort of... I dunno, does it kind of negate the entire journey if they wind up exactly where they started? It's just so futile, and for two characters so big on the whole 'exalted struggling' thing, for all that struggle to mean nothing dynamic is sort of this admission that nothing about their work has meaning, and nothing about their love is redemptive.

Re: This is all crack!theory, mind, and only one of many possible ways it could work, but...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm convinced the Master had some escape plan and did not want to genuinenly die for good. (Otherwise why not blow himself up along with the Doctor earlier on earth? Actually, the reply to that one is that it would have killed the Doctor, too, but I don't think a universe where the Doctor was around and might after a few centuries get over him if the Master really couldn't come back anymore bore thinking about for the Master.) (As my interpretation of the Mind of Evil ultimate fear is a scenario in which the Doctor just doesn't care anymore and is completely unreachable. Not even in a negative way. Which for the Master would be worse than death.) But he still got his admission and offer to share a life together from the Doctor in LOTLOL, and neither of them is going to forget that any time soon. Especially since it came before the Master was shot, not after, so can't be blamed on circumstance-of-death-heightened emotions.

Now, in fanfic and in an ideal tv world, I agree that this would had to lead to them getting out of their pattern and find some sort of coexistence, but the laws of serial tv are against it. Much like I'd say the DW narrative actually demands that the Doctor dies after 13, but no way is the BBC going to kill off their longest running cash cow on a permanent basis. For better or worse, this isn't a show a single creator owns, can control and decide, it's owned by a corporation, and corporations care about money more than about what emotionally logical storytelling demands.

On the other and less cynical hand: we might be pleasantly surprised. After all, we went from the lows of Roberts!Master (which one could be forgiven for assuming could have made it impossible to take the Master serious as a character ever again) to Jacobi and Simm and the twisted love story subtext no longer being anything sub, so who knows? Maybe a future production team will find a way to use the Master in a future story that does justice to the step taken in the latest one and still plays out on tv.