Ainley!master - Tumblr Posts
I'm conducting very important, scientific research
Exactly how far back can you remember classic dw? On your website it sounds like the 1980s/five era?
Clearly remember? Tom Baker's final series, particularly Logopolis, so yeah, 1980/1981 and then his regeneration into Peter Davison. I'm pretty clear on everything from Castrovalva onwards, though I had to go back as an adult to catch the stuff that went over a seven-year-old's head. (Was it a coincidence that I first started making permanent Doctor Who memories when Anthony Ainley's Master arrived? Prob'ly not!) I consider Five "my" Doctor.
The earliest I remember anything meaningful at all? Probably Lalla Ward as Romana but not Mary Tamm as Romana sorta thing? 1979? I'd have been about five I think. I have flashes of visual memory from earlier than that, but no original-airing context for them.
Yet I somehow grew up knowing who Leela was in some detail, like she was an old friend, which is a bit of a puzzler.
ainley master truly is just so... wild. stuff that happens in his run includes:
stealing the body of nyssa of traken's father, orphaning her whilst puppeteering her father's corpse in front of her Every Single Time they meet
he also then controls her body via Evil Bracelet so that she's forced to choke adric (it obviously fails)
and then :) he destroys :) her planet :)
and then he kills the doctor. this sounds horrible for four but i think it's most traumatic for the companions, particularly adric (who saw the doctor as a father figure) and, later, five. less so for four, who had already given up on life when romana left him
also it looks like they kiss right before the master kills him. dude trust me
the next serial the master goes all in and straight up tortures adric
the master gets punched in the face by the brigadier
"so what? i'm perpugilliam brown, and i can shout just as loud as you can!"
the fifth doctor straight up kills the master also. just leaves him to burn to death. of course it doesn't work but like, bearing in mind this is the doctor who was created by the master killing him? fair enough honestly
the rani kicks him in the balls
the sixth doctor calls him "prince of darkness"
"he'd get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line"
just. this
the master turns into a cheetah in his last tv appearance
yes really
also this is canonically all ace mcshane knows about him. he tormented the fifth doctor's companions in unique and horrible ways but to ace he's just that weird homoerotic rival of the doctor who turned into a furry
these are so much fun to make