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

*Spoilers.*

I have my ups and downs with the John Simm version of the Master, but he does manage to be quite impressively evil during his tenure. Here are my picks for this Master at his bastard best.

 

Stranding the Doctor and His Companions (Series 3, Episode 11 – “Utopia”)

This scene remains one of my favorite cliffhangers in new Who. The newly regenerated Master starts off with quite a bang: he steals the TARDIS, stranding the Doctor, Jack, and Martha at the end of the universe. I love feeling the tension of this scene ramp up, with the Master taunting the Doctor from inside the TARDIS before gleefully peacing out.

 

Killing His Cabinet (Series 3, Episode 12 – “The Sound of Drums”)

The whole “funny”/“not funny” bit in this scene is absurdly overdone, but regardless of his shtick, the Master’s actions here are 100% cold-blooded. Newly elected prime minister thanks to low-level hypnosis performed on the entire country, the Master’s first act as the most powerful man in Britain is to gas his entire cabinet to death. After calling them traitors for jumping ship from their own parties as soon as they realized he was going to win, he nonchalantly dons a gas mask and activates dispersal units built into the conference table. As one of his dying advisors calls him insane, he gives his victim a double thumbs-up and a maniacal grin.

 

Creating the Paradox Machine (Series 3, Episode 12 – “The Sound of Drums”)

After twisting the last humans at the end of the universe into the murderous Toclafane, who obey his every whim, the Master wants to take them back to 21^st century Earth to wreak havoc on their ancestors. In order to bring his perverted scheme to light, he cannibalizes the Doctor’s TARDIS, turning it into a Paradox Machine. The TARDIS, which has aided the Doctor in saving the Earth countless times, is turned into something against its nature and forced to be complicit in its destruction. What a gross thing to do.

 

Unleashing the Toclafane (Series 3, Episode 12 – “The Sound of Drums”)

Arguably, the Master has done eviler things than this, but I feel like this is a strong contender for the most Magnificent Bastard thing they’ve ever done. He rips open the fabric of time over the skies of Earth, opening the floodgates for billions of Toclafane to rush in as he orders them to decimate the human population. The capper, though, is actually the music. The whole time he’s gloating to the Doctor and watching the bloodshed down below, he’s grooving to Rogue Traders’ “Voodoo Child.” I just…he picked out a soundtrack for the end of the world. Can you get more Magnificent Bastard than that?

 

Trapping Bill (Series 10, Episode 9 – “World Enough and Time”)

Talk about a long game! When Bill is gravely injured and separated from the Doctor, they’re on opposite ends of a ship that’s too close to the event horizon of a black hole. As proximity to the black hole slows down time on only one end of the ship, minutes go by for the Doctor while Bill waits years to be reunited with him. And while she’s stuck on the “fast end,” the Master (in disguise) is her only companion. He spends years pretending to be her friend, while she’s fitted with a Cyber chest unit to cope with her injury. In an absolute peak bastard move, the Master waits until the Doctor is on the lift heading down towards Bill before he betrays her, pretending to help her but instead trapping her in the operating theater for full Cyber conversion. By the time the Doctor arrives, Bill has already been turned into a Cyberman, and the Master taunts that he “missed her by ten minutes.” Just evil.

Character Highlight: The Simm Master (Doctor Who)

*Spoilers.*

Swapping News Satire Roundup with the Sunday Who Review today. I officiated a friend’s wedding this week and am still catching up on The Daily Show – I should have that write-up ready by tomorrow.

I’ve gotten through Favorite Characters or Character Highlight posts on every companion and Doctor of both the new and classic series (not counting the ones who are currently still on the show – I’m holding off on them until they make their exits.) Since I’ve also covered the major characters on all the spinoffs, I was looking around for other Whoniverse characters to write about and realized I haven’t given any of the Masters a full write-up. I’ll be jumping around in the chronology a bit, and because there isn’t a clear numbering system for the Master like there is with the Doctor, I’ll be labeling each regeneration according to their actor’s last name. Today, we’re looking at the Master as played by John Simm.

This wasn’t quite the first Master I saw, since his debut episode, series 3’s “Utopia,” includes the regeneration into him. By that point, I still hadn’t seen any classic Who but had interacted with the fandom enough to have a general idea of who the Master was. Fellow renegade Time Lord, long-standing enemy of the Doctor, evil mastermind, etc. I maintain that the Master regenerating into John Simm (who was fantastic in State of Play, the chief project I recognized him from at the time,) stealing the TARDIS, and leaving the Doctor, Martha, and Jack stranded at the end of the universe is one of the most thrilling cliffhangers the show has ever done.

Unfortunately, for my money, the show squanders a lot of that suspense and “omg what will our heroes do now?”-ness, and even more unfortunately, the Master himself plays a major role in that. Throughout the final episodes of series 3, and again in the Tenth Doctor’s concluding specials “The End of Time,” this Master is marked chiefly by being Too Damn Much. From his evil plans to his comedic beats to his ripping a turkey carcass apart with his bare hands (sigh, yes,) the Master is cranked up to eleven most of the time. I’m not a fan of him accelerating the Doctor’s life cycle to turn him into a wizened little elf, I have absolutely no need for him demonstrating joking/serious faces for his cabinet after he finangles his way into becoming prime minister, and I get no enjoyment seeing him completely lose his shit all across “The End of Time.” It’s a lot, and it’s just way too over-the-top for me.

Which is a shame, because Simm is obviously a good actor, and in the Master’s less overbaked moments, he shows what sort of compelling Master he could really be. When the wacky antics and scenery-chewing villainy are put aside for a bit, I really like the charged dynamic between him and Ten. This was my first full-on opportunity to see, not just the Master, but what the Doctor and the Master are like together, and the brief moments in these episodes where the story gets out of its own way make me understand why the Master is a well the show keeps returning to. The pair are lives-long nemeses, friends-to-enemies who can’t quite quit one another. This feels especially true in the aftermath of the Time War. At this point, the Doctor has spent years thinking he’s the last of the Time Lords, and finding out there’s another one out there makes him grasp for a connection, even if it’s the Master. It’s just the two of them now, and while the Doctor knows the Master has to be stopped, he doesn’t want to do it in such a way that removes the Master from his life.

And for all his evil plotting and villainous grandstanding, the Master doesn’t want to let the Doctor go either, not really. It’s like the Master can’t fully get a handle on who he is without the Doctor there to react to him – it isn’t enough to bring Earth to its knees if the Doctor isn’t there to see it. As much as I hate the whole wizened-elf-Doctor thing, there’s a moment where, just for a second, the Master thinks he might have accidentally killed the Doctor, and you can read the panic in his eyes. That moment of, “Did I take it too far? No! Doctor, it’s no fun if you’re not there.” New Who has maintained this fraught relationship between the Doctor and the Master across several regenerations now, but the seeds of it are here.

And okay, some of the scenery-chewing is fun. It’s the Master, after all, and while the earliest incarnation of him in the classic series is a pretty smooth criminal, the character has been varying degrees of bonkers ever since. The Master cueing up a soundtrack for the end of the world is everything – I just adore watching him groove to “Voodoo Child” as the skies open and the Toclafane rain down on the planet.

For me, this Master’s return near the end of the Twelfth Doctor’s era strikes a much better tonal balance with him, although I take some issue with how he’s portrayed in relation to Missy. In “World Enough and Time” and “The Doctor Falls,” he’s able to be cracked and dramatic while also being genuinely menacing. The long-game restraint he shows in gaining Bill’s trust, luring her to eventually be taken by the Cybermen, isn’t something I couldn’t have pictured him managing during his Tenth Doctor episodes. We also get a bit of that classic Who dynamic of the Master being both dangerously competent and egotistical to his own downfall. He’s a legitimate opponent who can execute dangerous plans well, but he also thinks so highly of himself that he rarely sees the cracks appearing in his plots until it’s a bit too late to stop it.

On the whole, not the best introduction to the Master, and a rather disappointing misuse of John Simm’s talents. This is a Master that doesn’t get enough opportunity to be his best sinister self, but within his appearances on the show, there are enough flashes of better characterization to realize what he could’ve been, given the chance.