sci-fi-gifs:

“You still haven’t answered the question…” 
Doctor Who – The Last of the Time Lords (2007)

#see #I could go FULL meta here #but I just want to point out two things#Kosch (mostly in my HCs but I mean look at him)#is very particular about his freedom #being free is all he has#and it’s always been like that#and I mean it’s hardly a secret so i figure the Doctor knows#now just look at the bottom two gifs #Ten knows what he’s doing#what he’s sentencing him to #the TARDIS is barely more than a cage#a big one but still a cage #with no control for him to go anywhere#and the bottom right gif #oh god #at first the Master is just so… incredulous#like “he wouldn’t. He KNOWS.”#and then there’s the betrayal in his eyes because #yes #he would #he IS#and you can see the very moment the realisation is settling in#that the Doctor is about to rob him of the one thing #the ONE THING#he knows is more precious to him than anything else #more than fame#more than power #more than wealth #more than his life (via rhythmofwar)

I’ll go a step further and say it’s not just indiscriminate freedom, it’s agency. It’s having control over his own selfhood, his own thoughts, his own actions.  Because as much as he might claim the moniker “Master,” ironically, that’s the last thing he’s ever been granted, by his House or the Time Council, or Rassilon, or even the Doctor, when they were children and the Master, innocent of any crime, was burdened with the title of death’s keeper.  And what are the “Drums” but evidence that his whole personhood has been tampered with for Rassilon’s convenience?  

The Master has NEVER been granted autonomy, and that’s what makes him protect it so viciously through every single one of his faces, and the Doctor does NOT understand that; the Doctor pleads with Missy to “hear the music of the universe,” and that “bearing witness to it” is “ownership enough,” and that’s all well and good, it’s poetic and beautiful really, but someone who hasn’t been the puppet of a tyrant for his whole life doesn’t understand what a precious commodity agency, and individuality, and independence, are. 

I don’t think the Doctor is TRYING to betray him here, even though the Master thinks he is; in fact I don’t think the Doctor DOES know how much that agency means to the Master.  To the Doctor, relinquishing control completely to the universe and the fluid flow of all its marvelous experiences is the natural thing to desire. The Doctor didn’t “go mad” when he looked at the Untempered Schism, like the Master, who sees something through to its end, did; the Doctor RAN.

So what the Doctor believes, here, is an act of mercy, is in fact a betrayal to the Master, who sees his control over his own fate, his autonomy, violated.  But what’s tragic about this is that the Doctor sees his cruelty as a kindness.