Doctor Who: Gallifrey Falls... By The Hand Of The Master? - Warped Factor - Words in the Key of Geek.

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Doctor Who: Gallifrey Falls... By The Hand Of The Master?

Christopher Morley returns home to Gallifrey. Finds the place in a right state!


With Part Two of Spyfall revealing Gallifrey now lies in ruins at the hands of the Master, intrigue aplenty surrounds the home planet of the Time Lords...



The Time Lords were first named as such in The War Games, the Second Doctor establishing much of what we now know of the race in his explanation to Jamie & Zoe of their exact nature.
JAMIE: Well, what was happening? Why was it so difficult to move?
DOCTOR: It was the Time Lords.
ZOE: But they're your own people, aren't they, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Yes, that's right.
JAMIE: Why did you run away from them in the first place?
DOCTOR: What? Well, I was bored.
ZOE: What do you mean, you were bored?
DOCTOR: Well, the Time Lords are an immensely civilised race. We can control our own environment, we can live forever, barring accidents, and we have the secret of space time travel.
JAMIE: Well what's so wrong in all that?
DOCTOR: Well we hardly ever use our great powers. We consent simply to observe and to gather knowledge.
One of their number has done so much more than that, concurrent with the Doctor's own attempts to go beyond sitting twiddling their thumbs, often to Gallifrey's ruin!

Consider The Deadly Assassin, the first story fully set on its soil. Who is it seeking to assassinate the Lord President & take power with the help of his puppet Chancellor Goth, framing the Doctor for the crime in the process?



SPANDRELL: He's a Prydonian renegade, sir, and as you know, when a Prydonian forswears his birthright, there is nothing else he fears to lose.
GOTH: So you think there is a real danger, Castellan?
SPANDRELL: He has already killed one of the guards. I think he's ruthless and determined. A typical CIA agent.
GOTH: But if he is a member of the Celestial Intervention Agency, why should he wish to harm the President?
The answer of course is that he, as in the Fourth Doctor, doesn't. But the man posing the question of why he should is in league with the one who does!
“Of course, he knows he is entering a trap.“
The puppet-Master in turn hides in the shadows, a phantom of this most political of operas & quite literal shadow of his former self seeking power for his own ends.


And once the President is out of the way, proving a dreadful premonition on the part of the greatest ambassador for neck adornment the universe is ever likely to see, the scheming begins in earnest. Goth playing the part of the dutiful politician all too well.
“The Time Lords must not be seen to be leaderless and in disarray. The assassin must be tried and executed before the election.”
All of which is music to the horribly burnt ears of a certain walking corpse! Who's clearly developed a taste for raging insanity since he got home the long way via Earth......
“You do not understand hatred as I understand it. Only hate keeps me alive. Why else should I endure this pain? I must see the Doctor die in shame and dishonour. Yes, and I must destroy the Time Lords. Nothing else matters. Nothing!”
Of course there's now the implication that he's actually managed to do what he set out to all that time ago in quite a statement of intent by his newest incarnation.


Those who would go on to retrospectively plant that one-two-three four drumbeat into his young mind, as also tapped out in Morse code by his best enemy to get his attention in Nazi-occupied Paris, have seemingly been drummed out of existence...



But is it really that simple? After all, following success in his quest for a less hideous physical form, they have a little job for him as plays out during the events of The Five Doctors.....where before he's sided with the Doctor only when it suits him, he now has to work to another agenda!
MASTER: Lord President, Castellan, Chancellor Flavia. This is a very great and, may I say, a most unexpected honour. I may be seated? Now then, what can I do for you?
BORUSA: You are one of the most evil and corrupt beings this Time Lord race has ever produced. Your crimes are without number and your villainy without end. Nevertheless, we are prepared to offer you a full and free pardon.
MASTER: What makes you think I want your forgiveness?
Nevertheless they dangle quite the carrot in front of him!
“Regeneration. A complete new life cycle.”
And all he has to do is go off & rescue the man in whites he's spent the majority of his time trying to dispatch. Easy-peasy. Surely?



The hard bit, of course, is convincing him he actually means well for once - the Doctor not having been around to hear that to the Master a cosmos without him in it doesn't bear thinking about. It seems, too, that the High Council considers him very much qualified for his mission.
“We need someone determined, experienced, ruthless, cunning.”
Big ticks in all those boxes.

A remark by the Castellan a short time later...
“You would be useless to us dead.”
...retrospectively could be seen to imply that at some point after his final Classic Who appearance in Survival his later resurrection serves their own ends as they intend to use him on the front-line of the Time War, a fate he escapes using a Chameleon Arch...



Though the Master is very nearly made a pawn of again following another regeneration as he brings them to Earth by means of a White Point Star, before seemingly sacrificing himself to help the Doctor send Rassilon & other fellow Time Lords back into the hell of the War - well after another go at politics with a spell as Prime Minister.

Time to turn to prophecy.
“It foresees them locked in their final confrontation, The Enmity of Ages, which would suggest...”
But the supposed final battle between the Master & his old friend doesn't exactly go the way they think it will, planned salvation on Earth rapidly going south.
“He's to blame, not me. Oh, the link is inside my head. Kill me, the link gets broken, they go back.”



But of course we never see his death, though his next incarnation will return to taunt her equal & opposite regarding the fate of their shared home.

The next chapter in the Time Lords, the Master & the Doctor's story, is already shaping up to be the highlight of Series Twelve......

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