Doctor Who: 12 Greatest Master Moments Of All Time
4. Dying In Your Arms, Happy Now?
Just as he did with the Doctor, Russell T Davies interpreted the Master as a Time Lord defined by tragedy. The Doctor’s pain is rooted in the Time War but for the Master it goes back much further. It started way back, when as a boy he looked into the Untempered Schism and began to hear in his head the mocking and painful beat of the drums.
Desperate to cheat death, both Ainley and Roberts’ Masters were driven by a quest for new regenerations. The most shocking aspect of John Simm’s death is not that he dies in the Doctor’s arms – it was almost a guarantee that this would be how it would end for him. No, what really shocks is that he wants to go. It’s not even part of a secret plan.
The Doctor pleads for his life, offering to keep him locked up inside his TARDIS, a fate that the Master thinks will be worse than death (maybe he knew what the Doctor did to the family of blood), but even before the Doctor’s intervention he was positively willing Francine to pull the trigger, such was his torment from the incessant sound of drums. Stubbornly, the Master refuses to regenerate, a fact that he sees as the ultimate victory.