The Master

[Dave]

I wouldn't mind the Doctor and the Master being brothers. It would actually explain some perculiar story-lines; why they follow each other around, why each never killed-off the other.

Originally Posted by Harleyquin

but I actually like the idea of no timelord civilisation, I REALLY hope we dont find half a planet of people carrying silly little fob watches at some point

Please No! That might actually get me to write a letter of protest, but I could just see it happening under RTD for real:-
They go back in Time , 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy-esq', to a 'stone-time' Age on Gallifrey, where someone invents the first clock and the Doctor teaches them to say 'relativity'.

[PTeppic]

I always wondered how they could be sure that ALL the Time Lords were dead, scattered as they might be throughout the vast reaches of time. Who gets to go and check every nook and cranny over trillions of year, across the whole expanse of the cosmos.

Let's face it, everyone thought the Daleks were all dead, as a result of the same War and look what happened to them. And since the Time War is an RTD-ism, we can possibly expect that even when he created the concept he'd already thought of loop-holes for those involved to make a come-back. What it does is MOSTLY put the Doctor alone, which might add weight to him being on Earth and wanting a companion?

[thaddeus6th]

Actually the Doctor and Master were at the academy together so there's no reason they couldn't've been friends at one point.

Personally I think destroying 'all' Timelords and 'all' daleks was a bloody silly idea. Daleks are the best villain (despite overusing them somewhat of late) and the Timelords allow the Doctor to be developed as a character, or controlled if necessary. It means that for any daleks/Timelords to be used requires ever more loopholes in the premise of them all being corpses.

[Tillane]

Originally Posted by thaddeus6th

Actually the Doctor and Master were at the academy together so there's no reason they couldn't've been friends at one point.

Pretty sure this was actually confirmed by the Doctor in The Sound Of Drums. When he's explaining to Martha and Jack who The Master actually is, I'm sure he says that they were "friends, at first". Could just be my memory playing tricks, though.

[thaddeus6th]

Oh yeah. I was recalling when the First Doctor and the Master met in the Five Doctors, and the Master told Tegan they were at the academy together.

[Teresa Edgerton]

I was a fan of the old series in the Tom Baker and Peter Davison eras, then was able to see (I think) most of the Jon Pertwee episodes, a chunk of Colin Baker, and small bits of the others. I had reservations about the revived series and only recently conceived a desire to watch it, after I had heard sufficient good things about it. All of which leads up to ...

My husband and I have been catching up with Christopher E and David T ever since Christmas, thanks to two boxed sets belonging to my daughter, and the rest rented from Netflix. We just finished up with The Last of the Time Lords last night, and I expect severe symptoms of withdrawal. (It was hard enough going from three episodes every night to three episodes a night every third day, when the boxed sets ran out and we had to rent the discs one at a time.)

Quite aside from the bit with the ring and the hand at the end, I don't think they would bring the Master back after all this time just to get rid of him for good after one three-part story. This seems very, very unlikely. I think he's about as dead as the Daleks were after The Parting of the Ways -- which is to say, not very dead at all. The new team of writers seems to be incapable of permanently killing off any of the Doctor's long-time iconic adversaries -- and as a matter of fact, I'd rather they didn't. (Though the continual bait-and-switch could get old pretty fast.)

Also, the Doctor said that the one thing the Master could never do was kill himself, which in that particular instance turned out to be the truth -- only to be (apparently) reversed very soon after that, when the Master refused to regenerate. The Doctor, of course, was very quick to believe that his old enemy would die for sheer spite on learning how desperate he was to keep him alive. But I think he was right the first time. I could just believe that the Master would allow himself to die, as the ultimate and perfect revenge, IF he was capable of truly understanding the Doctor's anguish on losing him. But, frankly, I don't see the Master having that degree of empathy. He knew that the Doctor would mourn his passing, but I doubt he had the emotional equipment to begin to conceive the true extent of that grief. And I don't see the Master choosing self-extinction on any lesser grounds.

Especially not out of fear of being forced to live as the Doctor's prisoner in the TARDIS. The Master's enormous ego would surely convince him that he would find a way out of that little fix before very long.

I think he refused to regenerate because he knew he had some other way of cheating death, already set up. (What that way might be, I won't hazard a guess, but wouldn't be surprised if the clues weren't already planted in earlier episodes. Or about to be planted in episodes yet to come, before the Master makes his next appearance.) If he doesn't turn up this next season, I'm betting he will the season after that.

As for that remark about all the things the Master and the Doctor did together in the past, I suspect that was an ironic reference to old battles they waged against each other.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Oh, I thought of something else: It's already been established that the Master can take over other people's bodies, because he did just that at the end of The Keeper of Traken, when he merged himself with Nyssa's father.

I don't remember whether it was explained how he did it, though.

But is it possible that he had already made arrangements that would allow him to take over his wife's body, in a sufficiently tight spot? She would be the logical choice, because he always kept her close by. (And that would explain the red fingernails.)

[dekket]

I thought that the two references to the Axons was a nod to the first Dr Who episode featuring the Master, which was Claws of Axon.