Top Five Magnificent Bastard Moments: The Ainley Master (Doctor Who)

*Spoilers.*

After the brief tenure of the Peter Pratt/Geoffrey Beevers Master, who’s mainly focused on restoring his ravaged body, we’re back in full swing with the Anthony Ainley incarnation. Of the classic Masters, Roger Delgado is still my favorite, but I enjoy how extra Ainley’s is, and he gets in plenty of strong Magnificent Bastard Moments.

 

Controlling Nyssa (Series 18, Episode 27 – “Logopolis: Episode 3”)

This isn’t the worst thing the Master does in “Logopolis”—given that he, you know, attempts to hold the entire universe hostage—but it’s the most knife-twisting thing he does. At this point, he’s done a DIY regeneration by killing Nyssa’s father and stealing his body, but Nyssa doesn’t know that yet. When he appears, he enjoys pretending to be her murdered father, easily securing her trust and then “gifting” her a bracelet that allows him to control her. Just pure cruelty all the way through.

 

Setting a Trap for the TARDIS (Series 19, Episode 1 – “Castrovalva: Episode 1”)

Okay, so first the Master creates a block transfer decoy of Adric, controlled by him and sustained by Adric’s own mental power. He sends the decoy into the TARDIS, where, in the upheaval of the Doctor’s regeneration, the fake Adric sets the TARDIS on a collision course. Now, the Master could’ve sent the TARDIS into a sun or a black hole, or any number of perfectly serviceable annihilation options. But he’s nothing if not extra as hell, so he has the decoy send the TARDIS to “Event One: Hydrogen Inrush.” In other words? The Big Bang! Why do things by halves when you can do them by 1000%?

 

Controlling the Passengers (Series 19, Episode 23 – “Time-Flight: Episode 1”)

It’s a day that ends in ‘Y’, so the Master is doing the most. He’s trapped on Earth in the Jurassic period, and he needs to break into the Citadel of an ancient alien race to power his TARDIS and escape. So how does he reach the center of the Citadel? Why, he creates a time corridor to the 20^th century, of course, ensnaring an airplane full of people that he then psychically manipulates to act as his slave force. The dude kidnapped a bunch of people from across 140 million years to do his legwork for him. Top-shelf bastard, all the way.

 

Plotting Against King John (Series 20, Episode 22 – “The King’s Demons: Episode 2”)

Part of what makes the Ainley Master such a magnificent bastard is how petty his schemes can be. Here, he uses a shapeshifting robot that he controls with his mind to impersonate King John, with the aim of making the “King” behave so erratically that he provokes a rebellion, ultimately preventing the creation of the Magna Carta. Just out here wrecking history because he can. It makes me think of the Sacha Dhawan Master talking to Thirteen: “How else would I get your attention?”

 

Passing Kamelion Off as the Outsider (Series 21, Episode 14 – “Planet of Fire: Episode 2”)

The Master is using Kamelion for his dirty work again, but it’s only because he accidentally shrunk himself with his own Tissue Compression Eliminator and needs help to regain his full size (I love it.) This time, Kamelion takes the form of the Master himself, and when Sarn’s chief elder mistakes him for the Outsider, the prophesied emissary of their god Logar, he runs with it. This comes in handy when he needs to force the Doctor’s hand and applies some external pressure by demanding that the “unbelievers” be sacrificed to the volcano. Yep, masquerading as someone else’s god—the Master is that kind of A-hole.

Character Highlight: The Ainley Master (Doctor Who)

*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.