Masterology Part 7 – Mary Poppin’

Gustaff Behr concludes 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.
• Catch-up on part six 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? Now we conclude with…

Mary Poppin’

Michelle Gomez portrays the Master (or Mistress or Missy or whatever you call her) as a genuinely friendly and polite individual who shows off her own brand of Master campness by dressing like a gothic Mary Poppins and having tea parties with intended victims, all the while dancing and swinging a dainty looking little umbrella.

In an ironic twist, the Master regenerated into a woman this time, but unlike his immediate two predecessors who were very misogynistic, this Master seemed to enjoy her new body. This incarnation showed the most severe shifts in overall Master personality and behavior, making her almost uncharacteristically different than any of her predecessors. This adds a noticeable unpredictability in her actions both in-universe and out.

One such characteristic was the Master’s mental transition towards a more yandere persona, a Japanese term that refers to a character who is madly in love with someone… often literally and violently so. A yandere character is usually dangerously possessive and seeks to do harm to anyone else close to the object of their obsession, and are unable to see how terrified they make their target. This is evidenced by the murder of Osgood, which Missy instigated because the Doctor invited Osgood to come with him.

This Master was as murderous as Simm’s early portrayal, but between regenerations, seems to have had her mind broken, resulting in her obsession for the Doctor becoming stronger than ever. Whilst every Master in the past has shown a desire to be near the Doctor, either to be with him or to kill him, the Gomez Master takes this obsession to stalker-like levels, spending the majority of Series 8 simply tracking the Doctor’s movements and observing his adventures without his knowledge. Ala stalker!

Like her predecessor, this Master was also extremely petty, perhaps even more so. She uses every human death in history to create an army of Cybermen just to prove to the Doctor that they’re not so different.

A noticeable weakness in this incarnation is the tendency to leave unnecessary holes in her schemes. Including a ‘choice’ for the victim to make about whether to be cyber-converted or live in the Nethersphere is something that all of her previous incarnations would’ve deemed meaningless. It is pointless and in this case, proves instrumental in her defeat. The whole plan itself is also very time-consuming if you think about it, even with the help of a time machine, rendering it almost impractical from a realistic standpoint.

Another noticeable flaw is not including some sort of back-up plan like her various other incarnations employed, instead opting for one single solitary scheme with virtually no contingencies in place to help steers events back towards her favor. This is perhaps a callback to Delgado’s Master. In this incarnation, the Master shows extreme genre blindness, perhaps due to her brokenness, basing her entire plan on a moral decision that she has seen the Doctor make numerous times in the past in numerous incarnations and hoping for a different reply which is by definition the requirements needed to be classified as ‘insane’. Particularly, this moral decision is made constantly by normal people every day as well. Example: The police are on a moral level guilty of murder, but their act of taking one life saves a lot of them.

The act of doing something morally ambiguous for even a moment in order to potentially improve the lives of countless others is a viewpoint that this Master seems unable to grasp. This suggests a further pettiness in that any act which the Master deems evil, regardless of how positive the outcome may be, are unchangeably bad.

This Master also shows an uncharacteristic change from all of her other selves by not trying to physically harm or kill the Doctor once. The plane scene is contrary to belief, never intended as an attempt on the Doctor’s life because the Master’s eventual plan rests on having the Doctor being alive to make a decision that would secure her victory so this attempt was merely an obstacle that the Master knew the Doctor could and would survive.

This reluctance to kill is even more apparent than it was during her Delgado incarnation. The Master also harbors no intention of taking over the cosmos, a goal every one of her previous incarnations aspired to at least on some level. And lastly, she no longer needs to extend her life as she still has plenty of regenerations left. Her actions fall outside the Master Triangle (Conquest, New Life, Death of the Doctor).

And yet the most defining trait of the Gomez Master is not this shift in objectives but perhaps her new penchant to troll others. Yup! She is a massive troll! Whilst her previous incarnation killed for pleasure, this Master receives little to no pleasure by killing, replacing it instead with a tendency to screw with people’s heads. She pretended to be a droid and even improvised a mnemonic acronym to go with her name just for the sake of it. She also gave the Doctor fake coordinates for where Gallifrey is supposed to be located. If it has legs, this incarnation will troll them at some point.

And now we come to the end of this multi-incarnation personality deconstruction. What’s in store next for the Master and the Doctor? What would you guys like to see happen next?