Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 459: The Deadly Assassin, Episode Three

Dear diary,

In much the same way that the Doctor’s return to Gallifrey should feel like a really big deal, the return of the Master for the first time since Frontier in Space should feel absolutely huge. We’ve not seen him for about four years (which in terms of this marathon means that I’ve not seen him for almost three months), and he’s back to exact revenge against the Doctor. But it’s not treated as any kind of special event. The reveal of the Action Man miniaturised Time Lord in the Panopticon should be this stunning reveal as to who the real enemy is… but then it’s just treated as somewhat blasé - the Doctor simply confirms that it’s a sign of the Master’s presence, and then carries on with the story. As seems to be customary for this story, we get a chunk of information about who the Master is to bring us up to speed, but it’s lacking in any real fanfare.

I think the biggest issue is the fact that, by this point, Roger Delgado has been dead for some time. Looking back from 2014, when we’ve had several different incarnations of the Master, it’s difficult to think of a time when Delgado simply was the character, but watching through the series an episode a day like this means that I’ve not been through a Master story with a different incarnation since sometime back in 2012, and even then it was probably just an episode on in the background. To anyone who’s watching this series for the first time, and doing it in order (on first transmission, for example), all of this feels really, really, strange. We know that the Master is back… but where is he? Is he supposed to be the decaying figure in the cape? What’s happened to the suave gentleman we knew opposite Jon Pertwee? The one who looked so at home in a high-backed leather chair?

I’d really go for a story in which the Doctor and the Master fight each other in some kind of dream-scape (and we’ll come to that in a minute), especially if it comes as the reveal of the character. Someone’s been tampering with all this equipment. They’ve tried to have the Doctor framed for murdering the president. They stalk the Doctor through this land of nightmares for ages and ages, and when the face mask comes off… it’s the Master! After all this time! Obviously, they couldn’t have had Delgado back by this point, and in some ways I’m glad they haven’t just recast the role with an impersonator. But it doesn’t feel like they’ve brought the Master back because they have a story to tell featuring him - he’s simply here because someone in the production office has said ‘Hey! You know who hasn’t been in the show for a while…?’

Then we’ve got the land of nightmares inside the Matrix. I have to admit, even though I vaguely knew what was happening here (the end of Trial of a Time Lord is effectively a remake of this storyline), there were points where I was completely lost. I couldn’t figure out why the inside of the Matrix looked like this barren landscape, or why there were trains, and planes, and crocodiles in there. I think the implication is that Goth has spent so much time in the Matrix that he’s been able to create this ‘virtual reality world’ inside it, and some tampering with the machine means that the Doctor has gone straight there once he tries to enter the Matrix (as the master knew he would - earlier in the story he makes a comment about how predictable his foe is).

But then it begs the question… why has Goth populated his world with the aforementioned trains, and planes, and crocodiles? Not to mention clowns, and surgeons, and spiders. The implication earlier in the story is that Time Lords aren’t overly familiar with Earth, but does Goth have a special interest? Or are these things being drawn from the Doctor’s mind as fears? If so, then why don’t we see any Daleks, or Cybermen, or Koquillion? That’s my main problem with the episode: I love the idea of the Doctor and the Master trapped in a world of nightmares made real, fighting to the death… but that’s not what we get. This is the Doctor fighting the Master’s stooge in a landscape that’s not hugely interesting, with disparate elements thrown in to fill the episode out. It’s your standard ‘Episode Three’, but instead of running up and down the corridors from the previous two episodes, they’ve gone out to location.