carmen_lj | The dude that's probably Saxon. (Reply)

...and how much longer do we have to pretend The Whole Of Fandom doesn't already know that rumour?

Anyway, may be a bit obsessed with the trailer for the rest of the season. Particularly with the image towards the end of Saxon tapping the table in, what I assume, is the Cabinet office, which is one of the scariest and most powerful images I've seen in New Who, and I will be most incredibly disappointed if it doesn't turn out to be the Master. Because based wholly on about five seconds worth of clips, I say Reinvention Of Character Is Clearly Fabulous, yes.

I wanted to write proper meta, but am far too lazy, so here are bulletpoints about things I want to say. Which have probably been said a hundred times afore, but, yeah, anyways. Mostly because the "but the Master is a boring character who's evil for evil's sake" schtick drives me crazy with its wrongness. And, of course, I am in no way biased by the fact that I fell in love with the character about a month after I fell in love with the Doctor, and he's probably the reason I adore all those villainous characters that Jason Isaacs plays so very much and so very well, and am all yay for villains generally. But yes, thoughts:

It's only like Holmes and Moriarty if Holmes is a arrogant, pinko-liberal hippy (yah, even Three - he did go for Buddhism, anyways) and Moriarity is a vain, sociopathic control freak.
The Master doesn't generally seek destruction for its own sake. He might enjoy it, but his prime motivation has always been about control, and power as a means to gain that control. He's all for personal autonomy, so long as it's his own, but can't trust anyone else unless he can dominate them: through persuasion, fear, hypnosis, whatever, the means don't matter much to him, save some cause less trouble than others.
He uses violence as a tool, not as a matter of course, and refrains from doing so unless it's expedient and, to his mind, neccessary, especially directly. To such an extent that JNT was an arse and decided that since Delgado's Master had been too much of a gentleman when it came to killing, he'd have Ainley's do a gratuitous killing spree in Logopolis. Oh yay. But, yes, he uses charm first, then hypnosis, then come the threats and violence. Textbook example: The Time Monster. There he only needs to flatter Galleia to gain her co-operation, but the King isn't fooled by his charm, mocks his hypnosis, so the Master throws him in a cell and has him killed.
I fully believe that the first time he arrived on Earth in Terror of the Autons, he had every intention of killing the Doctor. But after he was defeated, and the Doctor remained very much alive, he found he enjoyed the game so much, he really didn't want it to end, hence why, despite many an opportunity, the Doctor never ends up dead. And just one more point to the "The Doctor and Master are more similar than not" box: the Doctor's shouting abuse at civil servants for being too obsessed with the bureacracy, but he's grinning and making jokes at the idea of encountering the Master again. Just after his first encounter has resulted in the deaths of several hundred people.
And besides, he doesn't really want to kill the Doctor so much as humiliate him. Or at least get him to admit he's a bally idiot and the Master was right about the ends justify the means all along.
To nick a quote from DS9: "What you can control cannot hurt you." Thus I tend to believe that the motivation behind the Master's obsessive need for control is that something so terrible happened to him he cannot allow himself to accept a situation in which he does not have complete autonomy to do exactly as he wishes, and must work towards that end, whatever the circumstances.
Curiously, however, when he does feel that he's gained the upper hand, that he has gained that control, his instinct is often to share that power. He makes such an offer to the Doctor in Colony in Space, and there is absolutely no reason not to believe it's not genuine. And he makes a similar one to Adric in Castrovalva. Stretching a bit, but when he takes the Atlantean throne in The Time Monster, and Galleia accuses him of breaking his promise to her, instead of simply denying it, he says that he promised her power, for whatever she wants, and that she'll have it.
I've got perfectly good explanations of all Delgado!Master's actions in my head, decaying!Master's just deperately trying to stay alive, and I can accept almost all of Ainley!Master (he's actually gone nuts at this point, as the Doctor helpfully points out; King's Demons, I assume was just a holiday for him; Mark of the Rani, I (guiltily) adore madly, and it gave us prydonian!fic) but Time Flight is one I do go for the It Never Happened Option. (And I shall mention here my vague horror that it's another one of those godawful stories they're now bringing out on DVD. If it's got Time in the title, it's, as a rule, pretty bad, but they're bringing out all the Time sotries that are really, bad and I find quite dull too, boo.) Roberts...well, I actually quite liked it when the movie came out. I deserve some slack, I was twelve. But, um, yes. Oh dear.
And all this stuff magically fits in with what we know about Saxon so far, yes. THEREFORE IT MUST BE THE MASTER OR THEY HAVE CHEATED ME PERSONALLY.
Essentially, I am terribly weak for suave, sophisticated, rather attractive, very dark grey villainy, and that, combined with the awesome angst that will be caused for my One True Hero, means my expectations are scarily huge and I will cry if let down.
Though if they retcon so I've written incest I will bloody well be writing a short series of Incredibly Wanky Rants on the topic.