Topic: Absolutely Desperate.

[Lepton]

This episode was a bit better but not by much.  Two things I don't like in films and movies.

1.  Putting characters through a lot of unnecessary pain.
2.  Evil characters with no other thought than doing evil or even the idea of evil in general.

Making the Doctor watch Earth being destroyed I thought was unnecessary.

The Master is acting nutty and being bad for no particular reason and actually seems like a pretty non self-aware character.  I prefer characters that can reflect on their actions and state reasons.  Seems to me the Master is an evil puppet in this instance. 

Needless to say, I didn't find both of those aspects to the episode very entertaining.

And I am sorry, I could give a rat's ass about Martha Jones and her family.  Whatever the writers did this time around makes me really not give a fig for his companion.

Question:

Has the Master always complaining about this drumming thing?  If not, this seems pretty trumped up here at the season finale to give the Master some sort of shot at redemption for his actions throughout the Doctor Who universe.

[Alphageek]

This episode was a bit better but not by much.  Two things I don't like in films and movies.

1.  Putting characters through a lot of unnecessary pain.
2.  Evil characters with no other thought than doing evil or even the idea of evil in general.

Making the Doctor watch Earth being destroyed I thought was unnecessary.

The Master is acting nutty and being bad for no particular reason and actually seems like a pretty non self-aware character.  I prefer characters that can reflect on their actions and state reasons.  Seems to me the Master is an evil puppet in this instance. 

Needless to say, I didn't find both of those aspects to the episode very entertaining.

And I am sorry, I could give a rat's ass about Martha Jones and her family.  Whatever the writers did this time around makes me really not give a fig for his companion.

Question:

Has the Master always complaining about this drumming thing?  If not, this seems pretty trumped up here at the season finale to give the Master some sort of shot at redemption for his actions throughout the Doctor Who universe.

The Master hasn't mentioned the drumming prior to this.  However, as the Doctor mentioned, the Master went nuts at the age of 8 while staring into the Untempered Schism.  Presumably it started small (like kicking small animals) and the crack in his mind has gotten progressively worse as he lives on.  It was pretty plain when the Master came back as Anthony Ainley that he had passed mildly crazy and had moved firmly and boldly into stark raving mad.  So, I'm guessing that, back in the old days, the drumming wasn't overwhelming enough to take notice of. 

I don't think the Master is being nutty for no particular reason.  A large portion of his motivation in the classic series was the search for ways to extend his life.  He had used up all 12 of his regenerations, and he was desperate to find a method of regaining a normal existence.  In the new series, from the spoilers I've run across, the Master's motivation is clear and firm again.  He has a very definite plan this time around. 

I'm with you on Martha Jones' family.  I'm heartily sick of the companions being tied to their families by the apron strings.  To be fair though, I cheered inside when Martha's dad took the bull by the horns and tipped his daugher off to what was happening.  Rose (oh, God, I hated her so much) kicked it off with the very discouraging soap opera story lines involving her mom and her boyfriend.  Anyone remember the old days in Doctor Who when traveling in the TARDIS meant probably never seeing your home again?  Even the 5th Doctor had endless trouble getting Tegan back to Heathrow in time to board her plane and start work as an air stewardess.   

[Strafer]

On the note of the 4th/5th switchover and Tegan, I had to go back to Logopolis to doublecheck...
lo and behold, when Doc Jack and Martha enter the Tardis on the Valiant, you hear the cloister bell. Battle Stations!

[Lepton]

But didn't we just see the Master regenerate yet again?  If he had used up all his regenerations, how is that possible?  I mean, obviously not that time is linear here, but we just saw the Master at the end of the Universe, hiding his consciousness away at the end of time itself so to speak.  This doesn't seem like the actions of one looking for life extension.

The character was also clear that the drumming had been there all his life and he seemed quite perturbed at that fact to put it mildly. Not that I am a Whovian by any stretch of the imagination, but I can imagine some people having problems with these evolutions in the storyline that seem to have very little to do with canon in the Doctor Who shows.  Essentially, they are rewriting the Master's entire history here by giving him a kind of deus-ex-machina excuse for his behavior, redeeming his character.  Seems very odd to me.

[Alphageek]

Well, as far as the Master having a new cycle of regenerations, that's not so hard to explain.  In The Five Doctors the Time Lords offered the Master a new lifecycle in exchange for rescuing the Doctor from the Death Zone.  In The Sound of Drums, the Master explains that the Time Lords "resurrected" him in order to have him fight in the Time War.  Plainly the Time Lords are capable of extending/nullifying the 12 regeneration rule. 

As far as the drumming having always been in the Master's head, and his never having mentioned it before....well, both he and the Doctor have been through a lot in recent times.  Presumably they had to interact during the Time War and achieved some minimum understanding.  I would guess that it's only recently that the Master felt capable of discussing what he views as a weakness with his greatest enemy.  I'm not sure I see this addition to the Master's backstory as an attempt to redeem him.  He's clearly been a raving maniac since he first showed up on Earth to pester the exiled 3rd Doctor.  Just look at the stunt he pulled when he finally got himself a new body in Tom Baker's last couple of stories--Tegan's aunt murdered, the entire Logopolitan civilization wiped out, and roughly 1/5 of the universe destroyed by runaway entropy.  We knew he was a nutbar.  The Sound of Drums just lets us know exactly why the Master is a nutbar. 


It was totally awesome to hear the Cloister Bell again.  "....reserved for wild catastrophes and sudden calls to man the battlestations.".