Doctor Who: 10 Cleverest Classic Who References In NuWho

9. The Master's Greatest Fear - Last Of The Time Lords

Russell T Davies€™ approach to Who continuity was canny. Instead of dropping forty years€™ worth of accumulated storytelling on the heads of a wary audience, he slowly drip-fed the relevant details over the course of four seasons. In season one we got the Daleks. Season two was the Cybermen. Any Who fan worth their salt knew what season three would hold - The Master. The Master is an easy concept to grasp- he€™s The Doctor€™s equal and opposite. The Sound of Drums two-parter works with minimal exposition, but RTD threw a few references in there anyway, notably when The Doctor reminisces about the Axons and the Sea Devils. He even gives John Simm€™s incarnation of the villain a line of dialogue from Anthony Ainley€™s version. For the fans, this was shivers-down-the-spine stuff, but subtle enough that it wouldn€™t bother less seasoned Who watchers. More audacious than any of that, though, is a visual lift from one of the less remembered Jon Pertwee adventures. When David Tennant is resurrected by the Archangel network, you€™re watching a direct homage to 1971€™s The Mind of Evil. That story features a sequence in which The Master, attacked by a device that invokes the subject€™s greatest fear, is confronted by a looming, god-like apparition of The Doctor. Nearly forty years later, Russell T Davies paid it off, and only the most hardcore Who fans noticed. He has his critics, but the man could take them in a canon fight any day.