February 20: "The Sound of Drums"

The second part¹⁸⁶ of series 3's three-part finale (just like an old 6-parter!) brings us back to contemporary London, with our heroes able to escape after the Doctor fixes Jack's Vortex Manipulator.  The Master is in fact this Harold Saxon person we've been hearing about since "Love & Monsters", and he's just become Prime Minister.  That, of course, puts the Doctor and company in danger, what with the Master declaring them to be "Public enemies number one, two, and three" and all.

The Master introduces his allies, the Toclafane. ("The Sound of
Drums") ©BBC

It's occasionally hard to tell what John Simm is doing as the Master -- sometimes it looks like he's not taking this remotely seriously.  But that's clearly meant to be the point: this is a Master full of energy and life, in a very similar way to David Tennant's Doctor.  The difference is that the Master is completely unhinged.  But that doesn't mean he can't have a good time while he's being insane and evil.  (I really like the scene with the Cabinet and the gas mask, which combines this sense of fun with being evil.)  And we can in fact tell that this silliness is a part of the character (as opposed to Simm taking the piss) because of how serious his phone conversation with the Doctor is.  The conversation about the fate of Gallifrey, and how the Master was resurrected (and note the choice of word there -- presumably that's to deal with what was seen at the end of the TV Movie, but it's written vaguely enough that you can have all sorts of interpretations and theories about the Master's fate) to fight in the Time War, only to run away and hide, is proof that Simm can be serious as the Master.  What this means is that the combination of the two (serious and wacky) make for a dangerous individual, and clearly shows how the Master is meant to be the Doctor's counterpart.  And it definitely is the Master -- Davies slips in some references to the old Master just to make it explicit (his watching of Teletubbies harkens back to watching Clangers in The Sea Devils, and his line "Peoples of the Earth, please attend carefully" is deliberately meant to resemble the beginning of the Master's proclamation to the universe in Logopolis).

In many ways this story is a bit of a treat for long-time fans: in the Doctor's descriptions of the Master, we get some lovely views of Gallifrey as it was, complete with Time Lords wearing those Deadly Assassin high collars and the reappearance of the Seal of Rassilon (that figure-eight design).  But we also get an explanation for the Master's villainy after the fact: he's doing it because of the constant drumming in his head, because looking into the time vortex (via the Untempered Schism on Gallifrey) drove him mad.  (And as an aside, note how the young Master's costume is meant to look like the ones we saw in The War Games.)  We also get some fun dialogue between Martha and the Doctor about the relationship between the Doctor and the Master:

MARTHA: And what is he to you?  Like a colleague, or...
DOCTOR: A friend, at first.
MARTHA: I thought you were going to say he was your secret brother or something.
DOCTOR: You've been watching too much TV.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Sound of Drums)

(There's also a lovely line, after the Doctor describes how a perception filter works: "It's like when you fancy someone and they don't even know you exist.  That's what it's like."  It's slightly annoying because that's Martha's "thing", the unrequited love bit, and the Doctor's just oblivious to it, but then Jack turns it on its head into a genuinely funny moment: "You too, huh?" he says, looking at Martha.)

This episode spends a lot of time setting things up for the final few minutes, as Harold Saxon has announced to the world that first contact with an alien race is going to happen the next morning.  This seems to happen on a UNIT helicarrier called the Valiant (so, not at all like Captain Scarlet's Cloudbase/Marvel Comics's SHIELD helicarrier, then (delete according to preference)), with the proceedings being run (briefly) by the US President Winters.¹⁸⁷  It's an action-packed climax, to be sure -- President Winters assassinated (on live television, it seems), the Doctor reduced to an old man (thanks to the Master's laser screwdriver -- "Who'd have sonic?" he asks derisively), Jack killed ("And the good thing is, he's not dead for long!" the Master exclaims.  "I get to kill him again!"), and Martha on the run with Jack's teleport, as the skies fill with billions of Toclafane, raining death from the skies while Rogue Traders' "Voodoo Child" plays on the Valiant.  How are they going to wrap this all up in "Last of the Time Lords"?  It's hard to say, but if that's anything like these first two installments, we'll be in for a real treat.







¹⁸⁶ There's actually a bit of debate as to whether "Utopia" counts as its own story or as part 1 of 3.  Russell T Davies has said that he thinks of it as a standalone episode that sets up the finale, and "Utopia" has some characteristics that set it apart from "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords": it has a different director (Graeme Harper) than the other two (Colin Teague) -- which isn't unprecedented (see, for instance, The Daleks) -- and it was filmed in a different production block, which is unprecedented.  However, Davies made his comment in a column explaining why you need to make the end of series 3 one 3-part story in order to get "Planet of the Dead" to be story #200, which is how they were promoting that episode (you also have to make The Trial of a Time Lord one story in order for that numbering to work -- in other words, there's no way you can have Dragonfire be story 150 and have "Planet of the Dead" be story 200 at the same time).  Doctor Who Magazine thinks it's one story, mind, and most people have followed suit.  But not all.
¹⁸⁷ Much has been made by people (myself included, at one point) by the fact that Winters introduces himself to the Toclafane as "President-elect of the United States", which would seem to suggest that he's not actually the President yet, and so has been elected but not yet sworn in.  This would have been between November 2008 and January 2009 and thus looks like an effort by Davies to stick with the "current year+1" dating.  Except that causes all sorts of havoc with the rest of the dates we've seen in the series (regarding Saxon's election campaign in particular), which are hard enough to sort out without this extra bit of information.  In order to accommodate the other dates, some people have suggested that perhaps the timing of the election in the United States has moved -- but to an American, this would be like moving the dates of Decimal Day in the UK and thus isn't a great solution.  But what's also interesting is that this is the only time Winters is referred to as "President-elect" -- in every other case (in dialogue and on-screen graphics) it's simply "President Winters".  So it's probably easier to assume that Winters is in fact the full President of the United States, and he simply chose an odd way of stating he was the elected President.