Doctor Who: 5 Possibilities (And Potential Pitfalls) Of The New Master

2. The Powers Within

The Master has always been a Time Lord who relieved heavily on coercion to achieve his goals. For the majority of his tenure the Master has been verbally dexterous, possessing a command of lofty, at times even flowery, language. However, unlike the Doctor, the Master is oft quick to abandon basic ingratiation, persuasion, and bribery, and resort to shouting demands, issuing threats, or exacting blackmail. The Master would not be the Master without powers of wordsmithery, but when all else fails, or when he needs to scale up his persuasion to planet wide, he relies on the ultimate form of coercion: hypnosis. While the Doctor has nearly always €” barring a naughty period in the Tom Baker era €” avoided using most of the special telepathic powers available to Time Lords, the Master has made full use of a wide array of mental powers. He possessed bodies to extend his life-force as discussed earlier, used clones and proxies to carry out portions of his plans, in addition to using various forms of hypnosis and mind control. Although his hypnotic abilities will always be a part of any Masterplan (pardon the pun) it would be better if he focused on his other people skills. Though, that being said, there is no need for a return of the bauble from his last two appearances in Classic Who, it was so much creepier when he just stared at people to put them under hypnotic trance. However, his own powers are not the only source a future version can draw upon to fit a scenario. Whether by design or sheer luck, the Master has often ended up gaining new abilities from his environment (sometimes literally). Whether it is the quick and dirty time travel that was the benefit of becoming Keeper of the planet Traken or feral cheetah powers from a virus on a dying planet or the fencing skills befitting a King's champion, there is always room to expand his ability pool. Much like the caution regarding the introduction of new weapons, discretion must be exercised in giving the Master new powers. Laser beams shooting from his eyes and lightning streaming from his fingertips got to be a bit much. In the case of the End of Time, one can see how it played into the final scene, and it is good now and then to take him a crazy direction, but this next version could benefit from being scaled back, getting back to his roots as the Doctor's equal.