The Doctor and Simm!Master come across a future version of the Doctor, who doesn’t tell them who they are. Who realizes first that they’re talking to future!Doctor, the Doctor or the Master?

//Oh, the Master, EASILY. The Doctor has never been self-aware in any face, which has effected consequences ranging from being blunt, impatient, and rude toward a Companion who’s scared or upset, to the creation of a number of monsters throughout the universe, including the Master themself.

The Master is aware of this, and is contrariwise a hypervigilant, fanatically meticulous person. Whether in love or loathing, the Master has studied the Doctor like a most beloved academic subject, and simultaneously, like a soul mate. Simm Master has a penchant for rubbing salt directly into the deepest wounds, as well, and that’s not just because he’s spiteful and nasty (which he is), but also because he knows the Doctor THAT well. It’s a double whammy because the Master studies EVERYTHING thoroughly (except maybe the potential heroism of humans, whom the Master constantly underestimates), and also because the Doctor is the Master’s favorite subject in all the universe.

He would know ages before the Doctor. Ages.

When we’re young we’re taught the distinction between a hero and a villain. Good and evil. A savior and a lost cause. But what if the only real difference is just who’s telling the story.

“I can assure you, there’s truth in your supposition. I have been in love with the same two-hearted soul who is equal parts comet and black hole, for thousands of years. I have watched the same Andromeda-spiraling brain forbid weapons while being the worst weapon of all. She killed a planet, with invalids and children and pets and birthdays and anniversaries and favorite tastes and colors and nervous tics and bowel patterns and least favorite songs and a thousand million other uncoiling springs of LIFE. I have seen her rail against death because she foisted the duty of executioner off upon me. But she is also the person who would rescue just as many men, women, and children on a colony ship doomed to perish, and risk her own life in the process, to give them the chance at the strange ecstasy of living, just a bit longer. Playing with her food, yet never ignoring a distress signal, absolute and merciless, and yet rapturously inspiring. She is the most violent and the kindest being I know. How are such paradoxes possible, within one being, without the fabric of space and time collapsing?

“Simple. The storyteller is either one of the ones she strung up to slowly starve; or it’s one of the ones she took by the hand and saved.”

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.

Source: sci-fi-gifs

//also i love that photoset so much but it also makes me sad because it throws into relief what the master genuinely believes about himself, that the doctor is everything good and wanted and he is everything evil and unwelcome and i just. i wish that in canon the doctor would show the master that this doesn’t need to be such a forced dichotomy. they can bleed into each other’s turfs.

//Oof, haha. AHhh. “Revenge.” Oooof.

The Doctor has to feel like, in intervening to save the lives of humans, in meddling, she compounded the suffering of two other innocent populations, by enmeshing their fate with Tim Shaw’s.

That has to hurt more than anything so far this season.

I mean it’s entirely UNTRUE that she “made him a god” because he’s the one who chose to continue to conduct himself as a mass murderer. But still.

//And you know, I’ve thought about it too, and as much as I want the Doctor to “snap” for the sake of high drama, I also don’t think it would be appropriate in this season.

Now I could be totally wrong since I’m only ten minutes into this episode and the New Year’s Special with the Daleks is still coming, but.

I just feel as if it would be out of place, and tremendously discouraging, pessimistic, and gloomy, for the symbol of Hope Incarnate to lose her composure and become violent and vengeful. That’ll come in time, as a reminder that even the best of us can fail, and need the love of others to get back on our feet. But to expect the Doctor to snap already is to underestimate her strength.

//Watching it. A bit under the weather today so I may not be doing the usual, lol, exuberant liveblogging, but I will say I can’t believe I predicted Graham’s moral dilemma and the Doctor’s exact dialogue in response, on a draft on my Thirteen blog a couple days ago.

I do wish her moral stance were not so absolute. It’s always what disorients me about the Doctor. The Doctor is always, in their own conduct, a gray amoral scientist, preoccupied with the how’s of the universe, often negligent to the why’s, often at the expense of other people’s comfort. Yet when they examine other people’s conduct, suddenly they become rigid and almost (or sometimes totally) sanctimonious. It’s an amazingly self-contradictory dualism.

But basically, much as I agree with her stance toward what Graham tells her at the outset of the episode, I wish she would understand the context of his wrong-headedness. Tim Shaw appears right after he’s just fought against the Solitract, which presented him with a tantalizing fantasy of everything he lost with Grace’s death. This is so raw and fresh for him, and she has already asked so much of him recently. She needs to be more patient, even as she removes him from the picture (which I think she should do immediately, rather than scold him: he’s not in his right mind).

rhythmofwar Good. He needs love
Things would be so different if he actually felt loved
Actually, things would already be so different if he thought someone believed him about the drums
If he wasn’t just constantly told he’s insane
That the noise and the PAIN is just his imagination, no matter what he does to get rid of it

sclfmastery
tell me about it.
i’m chronically ill and the reason why i love simm master so much is because when the doctor heard the drums and believed him he was euphoric.
because nobody fucking understands how miserable simply existing is, how it alienates you from fucking everyone all the time and you’re "just imagining it" unless you keep your suffering to yourself.
the moment i saw how much it meant to him for someone to understand was the moment i decided i’d basically die for him
because i get iti really really get it
that’s why he means the world to me and i’d fight for him no matter what

//Oh this is so sad. That is so cruel. That is so awful. The creatures it creates as a trap don’t even have the agency to decide if they’re “real” or not. If they’re “right” or not. Okay the Solitract is evil even if its denizens aren’t and even if it’s loneliness that made it evil.

sclfmastery:

sclfmastery:

sclfmastery:

// Okay so the Solitract (sp?) is an entity that rejects the harmonizing/unification/ordered function of the universe, that refuses the building blocks of existence such as matter and time and mathematics to fall into place and work as a unit. That sounds fundamentally malevolent.

//But it’s also fundamentally lonely and left out oh no I’m having An Emotion.

//That means everything in the Solitract universe (I presume, one of infinite possible multiverses, but the ONLY ONE THAT CANNOT EVER FUNCTION PROPERLY) evokes that fundamental incapacity to fit in, yet has all the mirrored identical yearnings of the original universe and its denizens.

Oh whoa but that seems cruel. It’s not its fault it can’t function the way the original discrete universe “wants” to function.

Wow can this be expanded to a discourse about the treatment of the neurodivergent, mentally ill, and disabled? Oh whoa. Society “functions” so long as they shun us?

Or is it more of a thing that it’s evil so it has to be purged?

I HAVE MANY QUESTIONS.

And imagine a Solitract Master. Would they be worse or better? What about a Solitract DOCTOR? Neither is likely to appear as both are alive in the original universe.

//Okay consensus seems to be that it’s evil as it’s trapping people from the original universe.

BUT IS IT EVIL BECAUSE IT ALWAYS WAS OR BECAUSE IT WAS EXILED AND SHUNNED AND IS ANGRY?

IN A WAY IS THE ORIGINAL UNIVERSE MASTER THE SOLITRACT DOCTOR???????

whoa.