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ddd_news2012-01-01 12:59 pm
tripled_mods) wrote in ddd_news2012-01-01 12:59 pmAPPLICATIONS | 2012; 01
THIS APPLICATIONS POST IS CLOSED. Please direct your attention to the new one here!
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The Master | Doctor Who 1/??
Player LJ:
Way to contact you:
Email: boxofgrenades@gmail.com
AIM: bardwithnoname
Other: plurk @likeabox
Are you at least 15?: Y
Current Characters: Percy Weasley, Regulus Black, and the Fifth Doctor
Character: The Master (Simm!)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character Notes:
History:
Just like every other Time Lord child, the Master looked into the Time Vortex to get admitted into the academy. Unlike every single other one of them, though, he heard the sound of drums. They never left, either, and the noise combined with nobody believing him about them drove him insane. Now, when he was in the Academy, he was best friends with the Doctor. Actually, genuinely best friends. They had a falling out, for one reason or another, and ever since relations have been strained at best. This could probably be traced back to the Master’s, you know, being evil. Also, one time the Doctor stole his sandwich, which is just not remotely on.
Something else was remotely on, though: The Time War. After the Master burned through all his extra lives and a few spares, the Time Lords revived him to fight in the war. He did for quite some time, but eventually the shit getting real hit too high a level for him to deal with. He responded by running away as far and as fast as he could. That place turned out to be the End of the Universe. With a handy dandy chameleon arch (hidden inside a hobwatch) around to turn him human, he forgot all about who he was, where he came from, and the drumming sound inside his head. Unfortunately for the universe but very fortunately for him, the Doctor came around and, in the process, helpfully reminded him. And by reminded him, we mean his companion pointed out the watch’s existence and the Master cracked it open to receive the prize inside: himself.
He stole the Doctor’s TARDIS and jumped back to London in the 2000s. He promptly made a name for himself. Literally. He went by Harold Saxon, married a woman named Lucy, took up a career in politics, and climbed the ladder all the way up to Prime Minister. Along the way, he invented the Archangel network, which connected all the mobile phones across the world. The only minor inconvenience was a signal that hitched a lift and brainwashed the masses to vote for him, but we all know nobody reads the contracts anyway, so who’s counting? With victory in hand, he promptly killed his cabinet and invited a nice, friendly race called the Toclafane over for dinner.
Well, if by nice, friendly dinner, you mean turned the Doctor’s TARDIS into a Paradox Machine so that the monstrous and mechanical future humans could come back in time and help him launch a new Gallifrey on Earth. Then, yes, exactly that kind of dinner. Oh, and he also decimated the entire population, captured and rapidly aged the Doctor, killed Captain Jack multiple times, abused his wife, destroyed entire swaths of the landscape, and danced to the Scissor Sisters. Clearly, these were all massive, horrible crimes that could not stand. In fact, his evil while ruling the Earth was so great that when the Doctor was inevitably restored and kicked his arse, he also erased the entire year the Master spent in charge. Only people on the flying ship the Valiant could remember.
This included Lucy. She shot the Master in the chest just as the Doctor convinced the others to back down. Out of mostly spite and a bit of refusing to be captured, he refused to regenerate and appeared to die. Well, and also because he created a cult just in case of emergencies such as these. And, wouldn’t you know, a few years and some MacGuffins later, that cult served their purpose and brought him back to life. Almost, anyway. Lucy (surprise!) turned up again and sabotaged it. This gave him the bonus powers of shooting lightning and physically chewing the scenery, but at the cost of his hit points. Around this time, he and the Doctor confronted each other again. This time it involved lightning bolts, mindmelding to prove the drums really do exist, and nostalgia over their childhood. Oh, and getting captured by shady government dudes via helicopter at the end. Can’t forget that.
The shady government dudes turned out to be the Naismiths, who found an Immortality Gate and wanted the Master to help make it work. Somehow this also involved a straight jacket and a bondage chair. Don’t ask. To make a long story short (too late!), the Doctor shows up and the Master sabotages the entire thing. See, the Gate heals people across the planet by using a specific body as a template. And the Master, well, he hijacks the entire thing by using his. This turns the entire population of earth into a race of, well, himself. The Master Race he calls it. The only humans to escape are Wilf (behind a glass case of radiation shielding) and Donna (because she’s half time lord).
It doesn’t last very long, and they all shortly have much bigger problems. The Time Lords are returning. On the last day of the Time War, Rassilon retroactively implanted a signal into the Master’s head when he was young. No prize for guessing what that is. But by using that signal and sending white point star, Rassilon and the Time Lords are able to create a link between Gallifrey and Earth. The Master opens the door and the Time Lords walk right through it. On the plus side, they undo the Master’s plot with the wave of a hand. On the other hand, they’re threatening to unleash a whole host of eldritch abominations and destroy time itself just by returning.
The Master has no real problems with that and goes to join them, but Rassilon rejects him. And by rejects him, we mean actually moves to kill him then and there. Would’ve worked, too, if the Doctor didn’t intervene and hold Rassilon at gunpoint. The Master starts urging the Doctor to fire, which causes a back and forth over who he’s aiming at. In the end, the Doctor picks a third option and destroys the white star diamond, thereby removing the Time Lords’ link with Earth. Rassilon threatens to kill the Doctor, but unluckily for him, the Master was wearing his heroic sacrifice and revenge hoodie today. He tells the Doctor to get out of the way, and then electroshocks Rassilon until the time bubble fades from view and takes him all with it.
He’s being taken from that time bubble.
The Master | Doctor Who 2/2
The Master, for better or worse and usually worse, always makes an impression. If nothing else, he’s certainly got a flare for camp and drama. Every action he takes is magnified to the most over the top demonstration possible. It’s not enough to gloat about his evil plan, oh no, he has to do it to pop music. It’s not enough to murder his entire cabinet, he has to do it in the most entertaining way possible. Hell, there’s a better than even chance that he turns humanity into copies of him *solely* so he can call it The Master Race. He slouches and smugs and gloats with total commitment, which is part of what makes him so completely irritating and annoying to everyone around him. Well, as long as they’re around, anyway, which is seldom very long.
He has a lot of energy, too. Some might call it upbeat, even. But there’s a childish quality to him that’s almost impossible to ignore. He bounces around, there’s no other word for it, and to the untrained eye a lot of his actions come off as completely impulsive flights of crazy. It’s in the way he keeps peeking in through a closed door to watch the Toclafane murder a woman, the way he zips his lips shut when the president asks him to, and all the way down to his habit for teasing and insults. And let’s not forget his habit for watching children’s telly and listening to pop songs, either. Regardless of whatever else is going on, the Master is petulant, selfish, and childish. He acts as if he’s telling a joke and you’re the punchline. But it’s a very, very big mistake to think that just because he’s hell of a lot of fun to watch that he somehow also doesn’t have a penchant for raising hell.
The Master’s got an ego the size of an entire galaxy. He always, always sees people as having no place in said galaxy. He’s very condescending towards anyone he doesn’t care about, which luckily enough happens to be almost everyone. He’s also very, very cruel. He revels in the death and destruction he causes wherever he goes. He decimates (using the word properly to boot) the Earth’s population like it’s the same as swatting flies. Putting it simply, he’s a diabolical mastermind. He’s amoral and very, very cold and chilling despite his sunny surface attitude. The only reason he even has an issue with Rassilon’s plan to escape the Time Bubble is because Rassilon kicks *him* out of it and ruined *his* life. If it doesn’t immediately concern him, he doesn’t care, and because he doesn’t care, it’s very easy for those ignored variables to come back to bite him in the arse.
Contrary to what his surface attitude would suggest, the Master plans. No, really, he does. A lot, as a matter of fact, or almost constantly, if you prefer. His schemes seem to take the form of a surface plan, a vast number of plans under that plan, and a failsafe for when the first few rounds of plans fail. The best example of this is the Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords plot. The surface level plot, which we’ll call Plan A, is to become Prime Minister using the Archangel network and launch a new Time Lord Empire on Earth using the Toclafane. Plan B launches the second the Doctor shows up, and we must assume that his typical Plan B is the plan he’s shooting for in the first place. Plan B involves getting the Doctor on the Valiant, aging him, and making him watch the fun below. Also associated with Plan B is making sure that even if he gets shunted aside (say, by a President), the Toclafane still will only deal with him. When these plans fail due to Martha and belief restoring the Doctor, he launches into Plan C, which is blow up the Earth with rockets. That plan also fails, which leads him to failsafes A and B. Failsafe A is escape out the back door, which fails and leads into Failsafe B, which is dying. That failsafe, by the way, *also* has plans attached, and so the cycle of plans never really ends.
Neither do the drums. The Master hears a perpetual drumbeat in his head, and has ever since he looked into the Time Vortex. Most of the time, this appears as a sort of tic, but when his regeneration goes awry, it becomes physically painful. The drumbeat is a constant call to war, and that means wherever he goes, he’s going to try to destroy things. He can’t seem to trust his own perceptions of things because of them. For example, during Last of the Time Lords, he essentially demands the Doctor tell him he hears them too. In the End of Time, he even resorts to a mindlink to prove they’re really there. He also seems to have a very nihilistic attitude in general, which is probably related to the drumbeat, too. He considers the world ending tomorrow a reassuring statement at one point. As much as the drumbeat drives him to destruction and madness, he also doesn’t know what he’d be like without them.
The Master spells his relationship with control out in his name. Namely, he always has it, and if he doesn’t, he wants it. At bare minimum, the vast majority of his schemes involve rulership or controlling to some degree. This Time Lord picked a politician as his cover for a reason, and it wasn’t just to pick up on scandals ahead of time. He can’t just build a paradox machine and invite the Toclafane over for lunch, no, he’s going to rule the world first and then build an empire on top of that. On a more personal note, the Master also considers losing control to be a fate worse than death. Literally. Now, he can be captured by people, even put into a straight jacket, and he won’t even bat an eyelash. But the threat of his control being truly and completely taken away is something very, very cutting to him.
That goes double if the Doctor’s involved. He always has to be ‘on’ when the Doctor’s around. What ‘on’ means varies depending on the context, but it typically involves some of the following points. For one, any camp traits he’s already showing are going to get turned up to eleven. If he had a cape he’d twirl it in a heartsbeat. For two, he absolutely cannot be seen out of control. If he’s captured, he’s busting out. If he’s acting like he doesn’t care about his position at all, wait ten minutes and bring the Doctor around. For three, he’s usually going to change his mood in some way. How his mood changes depends very much on the context, but there are some examples. If he’s been trolling the politicians all day, he’ll be serious with the Doctor. If he’s just being smug, he’ll started actively looking amused. If he’s emotional, he’s going to try to either clamp down on it or magnify it, whichever suits better at the time.
One of the Master’s primary motivators is spite. Nowhere is this more clear than his dealings with the Doctor. He refused to regenerate out of it once, after all. He also seems to be predominantly concerned with screwing over Earth in particular, which also has a spite motive attached. He can come off as exceedingly jealous of the Doctor and his relationships with humans. More importantly, he acts as the Doctor’s foil. He’s cruel where the Doctor’s kind, calculating where the Doctor makes it up as he goes, seeks to rule where the Doctor seeks to explore. All of that is well and evil, but the truly scary thing is that they actually have a great deal in common. Key highlights include a tendency towards arrogance, childish behavior, and egotism. Make no mistake that if the Master picks up on one of these, he’s going to taunt the Doctor over it. For example, when the Doctor explains what he did during the Time War, the Master takes great glee in pointing out how he must have been like a god.
The Master’s motivated by emotion more than he cares to admit or acknowledge. But hints are there, if you know how to look. The biggest thing is that he’s surprisingly easy to wound if (and this is the largest if in the universe) he cares about that person’s opinion. He can goad the Doctor into trying to kill him all day long, but the second it looks like he actually might, he looks incredibly stricken. This isn’t a characteristic only the Doctor provokes, by the way, as Rassilon calling him ‘diseased’ also puts the hurt on him. He also puts a lot of weight on the approval of these people. For example, when Rassilon and the Time Lord crew show up, he spends some time trying to convince them how genius and awesome his plan was, and when they start disapproving, he actually seems to be at a loss for words. This probably also explains his tendency for capturing the Doctor and making him watch his evil plan unfold. It also stands to reason that if the Doctor has some bad qualities in common with the Master, the Master has some good qualities in common with the Doctor. He’s completely willing to sacrifice himself for the Doctor’s life. This might as well be written in neon lights for how important and huge this is. Both of them run from death, whether personal or the sort left behind when they go.
Surprisingly, for all that he is a proper villain, the Master doesn’t actually lie very often, if at all. He uses half-truths, omissions, and straight up concealment to hide his motives. He also has a knack for twisting words around in ways he likes. Key example: What this country needs right now is a doctor. If anything, he comes off as too blunt as opposed to too false. By the time his victims have worked out he’s really not kidding about killing them, the room’s already filling up with gas. He also has a knack for derailing a conversation so that it goes where he’d like it to go and away from trickier topics. He puts on a great show of joking, but above all else, the Master needs to be taken seriously, because he’s almost always serious. Just in a very hammy sort of way.
The Doctor describes the Master as both stone cold brilliant and rock stupid. He’s not wrong. The Master can be so busy planting his forest of destruction that he forgets to pay attention to those trees. He’s full of a lot of contradictions that somehow stack up together in a way that almost makes sense. He’s one of the most dangerous, deadly people you’ll never meet for long at the same time as he’s one of the most genius, clever thinkers you’ll ever be stuck listening to. He’s as calculating he’s emotion driven. He’s as tragic as he’s hilarious. But above all else, the Master is somebody who simply cannot be ignored.
Other:
The Master has been known to use networks like this to mass hypnotize people. It’s kind of his thing. His commands tend to be very, very simple, or else people would reject them out of hand. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume he can hypnotize people over the community, and quite a lot of them at once, if it came down to it. There’ll be a permissions post about this!
Yes, I am aware I’m playing the Master and The Doctor at the same time. However, since Five’s from Classic!Who and the Master’s from the New version, there’s enough differences and handwaves to keep them from threading solely with each other. At the very least, we can assume that before the time war, the Master does not have drums in his head.
Additional Links: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Master_(Harold_Saxon)
First Person (entry type):
Tell me, is it fun just living your tiny, meaningless lives with your heads stuck under the sand, not even noticing the stars? Good news, though! You’re not going to be doing that for much longer!
Now! If I could have your attention, please? Oh, wait, that sounded too much like a request, didn’t it? Let’s rephrase that, shall we?
Listen. Right now! I know, I know, who does he think he is, I’m just going to keep scrolling through youtube. But this isn’t a ha-ha-ha moment, we aren’t going to laugh about this over drinks later -- Get the message? I’m not kidding, really, I’m not.
Listen. Can’t you hear them? [taptaptaptap. taptaptaptap.] Getting louder? Getting closer? They’re coming. And when they do, oh, it won’t matter what you heard.
Third Person:
When he becomes ruler of the universe (or the parts of it left when he’s done, anyway), the first thing he’s doing is banning radios. Oh, don’t get him wrong, fiddling with them is easy as hypnotizing a baby. Give him a week and well, you won’t be doing much of anything for so very much longer than that. And he doesn’t have a problem with them in very specific circumstances. If it’s a broadcast along the lines of from him to the destitute (oh that’s such a good word, isn’t it?) populace below, hey, that’s just fantastic. Oh, and let’s not forget distress signals! Those are also very helpful in maintaining his sort of image. Any sort of warning, really, that just sends people running to him like some proverb about moths and flames and like he really cares how it goes.
Point is, radios are good in a very narrow set of circumstances that very much benefit him. Outside of that, well, outside of that and the issues start popping up. Because the problem is that as he’s transforming this radio into a broadcast station worth listening to (you couldn’t change the channel even if you tried), he never quite knows who’s listening in. Telly’s much more useful in that regard, he has to admit. Start the video feed and nobody has any doubts as to who’s running the show. But the point is that radio runs on invisibility. Everything’s silent up until he starts speaking. The sort of silence pins are supposed to drop in. Something tense and on the edge about it, as if the world could end after the commercial break and wouldn’t that be lovely?
But what if, and this is the sort of thing that keeps you up at night clutching some hideous stuffed animal. But what if he’s not listening? What if the signal gets clicked off before the chorus even gets started? What if he broadcasts into the abyss, and the abyss shrugs its shoulders, rolls over, and goes back to bed? The tense silence stretched and stretched until it spans galaxies, empty signals bouncing off dead stars and speaking nothing in return. Until nothing remains but the space between heartsbeats that always comes too quickly and too strongly and too inescapably.
Video next time, that’s for sure. He’s not taking any chances.
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