*A few spoilers for this Master’s era.*
Not my favorite Master but, as I’ve been noting in these write-ups, most of the Masters tend to be hit-or-miss for me. I suppose Anthony Ainley’s incarnation of the rogue Time Lord ranks somewhere in the middle: he’s not nearly the smooth criminal he’d like to be, but on the other hand, he never rips apart a turkey carcass with his hands, so that’s something.
The Ainley Master gets up to a lot of the same kind of stuff the Master usually does: bids for world domination, acquiring pawns through hypnosis, occasional agent of chaos. He’s always got something cooking, and you’d be wise not to trust him as far as you could throw him.
The biggest difference being the Ainley Master and the earlier Delgado version is one of temperament. Where the Delgado Master is sleek and controlled, the Ainley regeneration is the first of the drama queen Masters. Not that Delgado’s didn’t have a flair for the dramatic now and then, but Ainsley’s is a preener, a showboater. He basks in his own cleverness and villain-monologues with the best of them. And even though his basic look is very similar to the Delgado Master’s—dark hair, goatee, black wardrobe—the overall effect is different. His appearance too invites drama, what with the Elizabethan sleeves and the wild look in his eyes.
Like most Masters, this one gets himself into dicey predicaments nearly as often as he’s defeated by the Doctor. Among other things, he accidentally shrinks himself with the Tissue Compression Eliminator once, and there’s that unfortunate incident where he starts turning into a Cheetah Person. That’s something I appreciate about the Master as an overall character. A good villain can obviously be compelling to watch, but a villain who’s always two steps ahead of the hero, until possibly the last second, gets old. Nobody’s that brilliant and Machiavellian, so I like that the Master’s overconfidence and tendency to stab his allies in the back sometimes comes back to bite him.
If I have the count correct, this is the first Master to stray beyond the bounds of the twelve-regeneration limit. With his previous body ravaged and unable to repair itself, the Master steals the body of Tremas, the father of the Doctor’s soon-to-be companion Nyssa. It’s a horrifying prospect, that the nemesis who dogs team TARDIS multiple times during Nyssa’s tenure on the show both murdered her father and now wears his face.
Honestly, it’s an aspect that doesn’t get enough play. When the Master first reveals himself to the Doctor and co. in this form, we get some mileage out of the horror-and-revulsion factor, but after that, he mostly just goes back to being the Doctor’s “best enemy.” I’d have liked to see more of Nyssa dealing with this in their interactions with this Master, not to mention the additional layer of guilt for the Doctor being reminded of someone he failed to save every time he looks at the Master.
I think there’s further wasted potential in the underlying implications of the body-stealing as well. Here’s a Master that’s so desperate not to die that he’s gone against the rules of his people’s very biology, coopting someone else’s existence so he can continue on. It has shades of Voldemort, a villain who’s always up to terrible things but who also, on some level, is just terrified of dying and claws himself away from it while better people face up to their ends as they come. That’s something that I find fascinating about the Master, and I wish the show did more with it.
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