Doctor Who: Utopia, Sound of Drums and Last of the Timelords

[SlackerinDeNile]

Getting the 10th Doctor's attention was easy though, just look like a human or a scary monster and be in his presence.

[SlackerinDeNile]

I mean, that's really more the Joker in general than Letos' Joker in particular.

Heck Letos' Joker actually DID have a goal other than sadism- getting Harley back.

Starting to get off topic here but most Joker incarnations were all about black comedy, the Joker just happened to have a cruel sense of humour. He really hated it if you didn't find it funny as well.

[Nessus]

I really would've liked to have seen Derekl Jakobi in the role for more than the ~10 seconds he got. Great Ghidorah's magnesium balls, that would've been amazing. The fact that they got him for the role and then instantly swept him off stage was such a bizarre "what were they thinking" decision.

Seriously: what were they thinking? How do you get casting like that and deliberately go out of your way to AVOID using it? I wanna make a meta joke about space aliens who don't understand human media being temporarily in charge of the BBC, only it's not really funny, just legitimately that weird.

Simm's Master... is fine as a villain, just not really as The Master in particular, IMO. As others have said, he's too much a Joker wanna be, to the point where at the time it really felt like the BBC was deliberately trying to cash in on the Joker 's post-TDK popularity.

I did like the Missy though. Even though she's written to be just more of the JokerMaster (in much the way every doctor since Tennant seems to have been commanded to be at least 50% Tennant), the actress to me felt like a really good Ainsley/Delgado gender swap, so the Missy for me was a much better bridge between the old and new Master than Simm. For that reason I suppose I wish their order had been reversed. Especially given how Simm's Master met his final end. Having their arcs swapped would've made more sense, and presented a more linear descent into madness and final (for now) death for the new-Who Master. Simm's master was crazier, and his destruction had a more drawn out and thorough quality to it, so it feels weird to see him just bounce right back (unexplained, offscreen) as the Missy. Wheres the Missy could easily be a Master that came out of the Time War relatively slightly unhinged, and with her death the idea of a future Master regeneration murdering his previous self in order to retroactively expedite his own arrival would feel very Master-like to me.

[CharlesPhipps]

John Simm's Master is the best Master save Delgado, IMHO.

He's a nicer contrast to the Doctor.

The Doctor helps people to amuse himself.

The Master hurts people to amuse himself.

[Robovski]

Delgado ruled the role of Master. But it was a different time, when a renegade sometimes criminal sometimes President Time Lord could keep encountering a renegade criminal Time Lord who was in cahoots with Ogrons, Daleks, Daemons...

[FaxModem1]

I like the trilogy, and I think the alternate timeline, as presented, shows what the logical conclusion of the Master is. Without interference, he's conquered the world by destroying most of it, and is moving on to go conquer the rest of the universe, presumably to repeat the same thing all over again. And once he's done that, it's a case of, 'And then what?' All he can do is beat up people, torture people, or other such things, just because he wants a reaction from the Doctor. And that's really all he can do, because once he's conquered a place, there's really nothing done with it, aside from creating a war machine.

It's a bit like seeing Pride Rock after Scar conquers it in the Lion King. He has nothing planned for afterward, and runs everything into the ground after he gets what he wants.

[CharlesPhipps]

Delgado ruled the role of Master. But it was a different time, when a renegade sometimes criminal sometimes President Time Lord could keep encountering a renegade criminal Time Lord who was in cahoots with Ogrons, Daleks, Daemons...

Earth was prime real estate in the 1970s.

I like the trilogy, and I think the alternate timeline, as presented, shows what the logical conclusion of the Master is. Without interference, he's conquered the world by destroying most of it, and is moving on to go conquer the rest of the universe, presumably to repeat the same thing all over again. And once he's done that, it's a case of, 'And then what?' All he can do is beat up people, torture people, or other such things, just because he wants a reaction from the Doctor. And that's really all he can do, because once he's conquered a place, there's really nothing done with it, aside from creating a war machine.

It's a bit like seeing Pride Rock after Scar conquers it in the Lion King. He has nothing planned for afterward, and runs everything into the ground after he gets what he wants.

It's sort of like Darkseid, really. The oppression IS the point. He has no goal or ideology over than to conquer and force people into humiliating subservience. All of his appearances more or less reinforce he's a guy (or gal) who enjoys screwing with people and that's perfectly fine by him.

Mind you, I tend to note that I view the Master's name as not just a promise to himself (to rule over everyone else and never be ruled himself) ala the Doctor but also a sign that he hasn't sufficiently mastered himself like the Doctor has. He's not quite where the Doctor is.

In the university sense as well as personality.

[Jonathan101]

Well, Darkseid is a bit more Lawful and self-aware about his end goals I think.

The Master is more like Scar or certain versions of the Joker, depending on the incarnation, someone who isn't really thinking things through and more about doing evil because he feels like it.

As a Moriarty expy he kind of fails utterly, since both he and the Doctor are much more vagabond than the Professor or Holmes ever were. But that does give them a kind of unique charm I suppose- can't think of many characters who are really all that much like them in that specific way.

[CharlesPhipps]

Well, the Master wants to rule and the Joker doesn't.

But the Master is a sadistic evil tyrant.

Whether he's ruling Cheetah People or Earth.

[Jonathan101]

Joker sometimes want to rule, depending on the story incarnation etc. (well, some versions like being crime bosses, at least). He certainly HAS ruled at times as well, like in Emperor Joker.

The Master is somewhat in-between Darkseid and the Joker- he's more power-hungry than the latter, but less so than the former, and definitely less disciplined and focused than Darkseid as well.

The Master is an intergalactic, time-travelling menace. Conquering a planet to him is what taking over a neighbourhood or territory is to the clown. If he were more like Darkseid, then he'd be more concerned with building a power base, having loyal underlings, and methodically building an empire, as well as philosophically justifying his evil.

Darkseid is a cosmic Big Brother; the Master is a cosmic Caligula (or maybe a more cerebral Mongul, if we're sticking with DC). They both are sadistic evil tyrants yes, but Darkseid is the actual God of Tyranny and as such treats it like a serious vocation, while the Master treats it more like his hobby.

Darkseid is the epitome of Lawful Evil, while the Master is generally Neutral or Chaotic Evil. Scar from TLK is still a better comparison because both use oppression as a means to an end, while Darkseid the oppression is an end unto itself. Scar and the Master want the freedom to make others suffer if they feel like it, Darkseid wants everyone to suffer period and is more deliberate in his methods.

To use a couple of tropes I made, the Master is more about Despotism Justifies the Means, while Darkseid is more Dystopia Justifies the Means. The former just want power by any means necessary no matter how many people suffer but don't really know what to DO with that power once they have it, while the latter wants a very specific form of power and has a very definite end-goal of maximising misery and running the universe into the ground.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... esTheMeans

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... esTheMeans