Masterology Part 6 – Lunatic Fringe

Gustaff Behr continues the series examining each incarnation of the Master.

• Catch-up on part one of this article here.
• Catch-up on part two of this article here.
• Catch-up on part three of this article here.
• Catch-up on part four of this article here.
• Catch-up on part five of this article here.

This is the part where I’m supposed to do the whole ‘intro’ paragraph thing. The Master. Rival Time Lord. Arch enemy of the Doctor. But you know all that already. Instead, let’s get to the fun stuff. “Masterology” is the study of the Master, focusing in-depth on each of the various incarnations, chronology, aims and a psychological personality deconstruction of the multiple bodies, specifically concerning psychoanalytical, behavioural and social-cognitive perspectives. Sounds fun eh? Continuing on from the last article, this part focuses on the Master’s subsequent machinations of Earth and his descend into madness.

Lunatic Fringe – John Simm

John Simm’s portrayal of the Master was that of a completely insane mass-murderer who killed because it was fun. I’d go so far as to liken him to the Spider-Man supervillain Cletus Cassidy/Carnage, a serial killer with a uniquely sick sense of sadistic humor. During this incarnation, the Master managed to reach levels of evil that few of the Doctor’s previous opponents could hope to match. At one point, he quite literally decimated the population of Earth for no other reason than to emphasize his new rule. This is evidence of a severe narcissistic personality disorder.

Adding to the above, this Master had perhaps the largest ego of any incarnation, which he demonstrated in both his brief conquests of Earth. During the first, he had a monument of himself erected and in the second he transformed an entire species into himself, emphasizing his vanity. If this Master possessed a weakness, it would be his massive narcissism.

Like his MacQueen incarnation, this Master was dangerously genre savvy, refusing to give the Doctor any clue whatsoever about his plans until it was too late to stop him. His methods for dealing with the Doctor showed a very efficient and simple mindset: Send the police after the Doctor, arrest Martha’s family, and lure Torchwood away from the action. These are all highly effective countermeasures but also ridiculously simple to implement.

Much like his Ainley and Roberts incarnations, this Master was notoriously camp; offering people jelly babies and dancing ostentatiously to the Scissor Sisters. Like his immediate predecessor, this Master was also very misogynistic, evidenced by the signs of inflicted physical abuse on his wife in The Last of the Time Lords.

Most notably, this Master was one of the pettiest incarnations yet. He casually made sexist, racist and homophobic remarks towards others just for the sake of it and put the Doctor through a year’s worth of psychological torture just because. His pettiest act in this incarnation was his blatant refusal to regenerate. An act motivated solely to spite the Doctor.

Whilst this incarnation was ‘pointlessly cruel’, after he was resurrected by his wife and his body began to decay yet again, his desire to pointless kill people disappeared, now motivated (and in his mind justified) by a feral, almost vampiric hunger that constantly plagued him and was never satisfied. The drumming inside his head also seemed to worsen, driving this incarnation even further over the edge.

However, for some unknown reason, this Master still refused to regenerate and repair his body despite having loads of regenerations left. This is perhaps a call back to his narcissism and vanity which would have prevented him from giving up his current form. This might also be a side-effect of his mental state at the time after coming back or convincing himself that the new raw powers his body possessed was a good trade-off compared to the pain he was in. This parallels the Tenth Doctor who also had great reservations about regenerating.

After sacrificing himself to stop Rassilon from bringing Gallifrey out of the Time Lock, the Master was imprisoned in the Time War along with the other Time Lords for an undisclosed period; during which he regenerated for unknown reasons into a female body. Sometime later, she escaped (seemingly alone) the Time War and made her back to earth.

Join us for the final instalment next month.