PopSyndicate.com

“The Master is Prime Minister of Great Britain!” Yes – yes he is. And so the Doctor and his merry band must go into seclusion and try to figure out how to defeat him.

Plot Points – The Doctor, Martha, and Capt. Jack escape from the Futurekind via Jack’s Vortex Manipulator, which the Doctor jury-rigs to teleport them back to the present day. However, once there, they discover that the Master is there as well (not surprising, since the Doctor also jiggered with the TARDIS, allowing the Master only two destinations), and has managed to get himself elected Prime Minister, under the name Harold Saxon. Once in power, the Master introduces extraterrestrial creatures called the Toclafane, which he claims have come to aid mankind.

Doctor Who? – For a “no second chances” kind of guy, the Doctor shows inordinate compassion towards the Master, someone who has been responsible for countless deaths. (Think about it: if you were the only human being in the universe, would you really be all that excited to find out that Adolph Hitler was also alive?) When Martha suggests that she thought the Master might be his “secret brother” (a dig at the rampant internet speculation about the Master’s return, and secrets that might be revealed) he suggests she’s been watching too much TV.

Martha My Dear – Martha seems downright fed up with the Doctor in this episode. When he warns her against phoning her family she petulantly snaps, “I’ll do what I like!” and then, realizing how much danger her parents are in, snarls at him, “This is your fault! It’s all your fault!” Nevertheless, she reacts with doe eyes when the Doctor notes that his perception-filter gizmo is “like when you fancy someone, and they don’t know you exist.” “You too?” says Jack.

The Master – Ah, yes, the Master. He is, of course, the Doctor’s greatest nemesis, Moriarty to the Doctor’s Sherlock Holmes. First introduced in 1971’s “Terror of the Autons,” the debut story of Jon Pertwee’s second season (scripted by uber-writer Robert Homes), the Master was a renegade Time Lord, like the Doctor, but more than a little bit evil. In this first incarnation, the character was played by the elegant Roger Delgado, whose refined delivery and roguish charm proved an excellent foil for Jon Pertwee’s more overtly heroic Doctor. Delgado was a fixture of the Third Doctor’s adventures, but his untimely death in a car crash put an end to the series’ first (and best) recurring villain, as well as putting the kibosh on the “Final Solution”-type story that had been planned as Pertwee’s swan song. The Master returned in the Tom Baker classic “The Deadly Assassin” (again written by Holmes), now a decimated husk wrapped in a shroud. Seen to escape at the end of “Assassin,” it was nevertheless four years before the Master reappeared in “The Keeper of Traken,” finally morphing back into something resembling his original incarnation, and now played by Anthony Ainley. The Master also appeared in the very last original Doctor Who story, “Survival,” and was last seen in rather dire straits. The character then appeared in the ill-fated 1996 Doctor Who TV movie pilot, played by Eric Roberts, where he was seen to be destroyed at the end. Here, the Master says that the Time Lords “resurrected” him to fight in the Time War, but that he ran away in fear, made himself human, and hid at the end of time. Here, for the first time ever, he speaks of a constant drumming sound in his head that has been with him all his life, ever since he stared into the Vortex when he was a child on Gallifrey. He refers to his (human) wife as “my faithful companion.”

Too Cool – For the first time ever, we see the citadel of the Time Lords from the outside – a grand city encased in a transparent dome, beautifully rendered by the Mill, the FX outfit that does all of Doctor Who’s special effects. There’s also a stunning shot at the end of the episode when Martha teleports down to Earth, and walks towards a burning London with millions of Toclafane swarming in the sky. The Master using satellites to hypnotize mankind is nicely in keeping with the character’s traits from the original series.

Weird Science - The Doctor, Martha, and Capt. Jack instantly teleport to the Valiant, and yet the President and Saxon – who are presumably flying to the ship via conventional aircraft – actually beat them there. Although that may be bad editing more than bad science.

Dumb Stuff –. The President refers to himself as the “President Elect” of the United States, a mis-use of terminology (a president-elect has not yet taken office, and would not be performing this kind of diplomatic function). The Master using Lazarus technology to age the Doctor is problematic. Although it has never been categorically stated in the classic series, the implication is that Time Lords age much more slowly than humans do – the first Doctor was said to be around 450 at the time of his regeneration, and yet he had the appearance of a 65-year-old man. So, the Master adding 100 years to the Doctor’s life presumably should only make him a little gray around the temples, with a few extra worry lines, rather than making him a wizened old man. If we’re being generous, maybe we can infer that the Master meant “Time Lord years,” which, like dog years, might be different than regular human years.

Classic Who – Okay, hold tight, because Russell is in full-on geek mode here. The Master watching Teletubbies is a callback to the Jon Pertwee story “The Sea Devils” (9.3, 1972), in which Delgado’s Master was seen watching a children’s puppet show called The Clangers and mistaking them for an alien life form. The Time Lords are seen here for the very first time in the new series, and dressed in their classic “bat-wing” plastic collars and skullcaps (originally seen in the Tom Baker episode “The Deadly Assassin” [14.3, 1976] and used throughout the rest of the classic series; these are, in fact, actual costumes from the original series, on loan to the BBC from the Blackpool Exhibition). Even more geeky is the fact that the child Master is wearing simpler robes patterned after those worn by the Time Lords in their very first appearance in “The War Games” (6.7, 1969). When the Doctor and crew enter the TARDIS and find that the Master has perverted it into the Paradox Machine, the cloister bell can be heard ringing (first heard in Tom Baker’s “Logopolis” [18.7, 1981], and a fixture of the series after that). The Master offers his wife a jelly baby, a kind of gelatinous sweet favored by the Fourth Doctor. And when the Master begins his transmission after killing the President he starts it with “Peoples of the Earth, please attend carefully…” which is almost exactly what the Third Master said in “Logopolis” when attempting to hold the universe for ransom.

Internal Continuity – The Master makes a comment about “Downing Street rebuilt” – it was destroyed at the end of 1.5 “World War III,” when the Doctor fired a missile at it to destroy the Slitheen. Also, the Master says that he sent Jack’s “little band” (i.e., Torchwood) on a wild goose chase to the Himalayas.

Final Answer – Like last season’s “Army of Ghosts,” this is a mostly superb set-up for the big season finale. Unlike last season, however… well, you’ll see next week. “The Sound of Drums” has several memorable scenes, interesting motifs (the recurring image of people running, and of course the drumming, even incorporated into the incidental music at times), and a pretty solid plot. Tennant and Simm play off each other beautifully, even though most of their interaction is over the phone. There are mis-steps: Davies’ much more comedic characterization of the Master was controversial, and is certainly too broad for my tastes (the guy is supposed to be evil incarnate, not the Joker), and blasting Rogue Trader’s “Voodoo Child” like it was MTV is far too populist and annoying for this old fogey. But there’s a real sense of danger and impending doom about “The Sound of Drums,” and even though it ends with yet another impossibly overwhelming alien invasion force swarming over Earth, the stuff leading up to it is actually pretty darn impressive.

4