Doctor Who Series 12: 10 Huge Questions After Spyfall Part 2

The animosity between the Master and the Doctor has been ramped up considerably. Gone completely is the mutual admiration that we saw between Missy and the Twelfth Doctor. This Master is more emotional, given to mood swings and much less in control. The twitches and ticks give way to violent eruptions of almost primal anger. Driven by instinct and far from being cold and calculating, he could quite easily kill the Doctor and regret it later.

The Doctor claims again to be a pacifist, but her solution to the Master’s plan to destroy humanity is to hand him over to those who might torture and kill him, not once, but twice, firstly to the Nazi’s and secondly to the Kasaavin. It’s not the first time the Doctor has seemed cruel and extreme in her treatment of the Master (see especially Planet of Fire), but unlike Survival, The Last of the Time Lords, The End of Time and the whole Missy arc, the Doctor doesn’t even bother to reason with him, or appeal to their old friendship.

The Master is conflicted. On the one hand he is angered that the Doctor had once again cheated death, but on the other he wants her alive so that she can make the same discovery about the Time Lords as he had. He has even programmed a message inside her TARDIS to be played after her return to Gallifrey, suggesting he never intended to kill her.

This Master is not interested in flattery or flirting with the Doctor. There is nothing friendly about his demeanour, save from a fleeting moment when he talks about not having apologised for Jodrell Bank. The Master might secretly harbour the hope that once the Doctor finds out the ‘truth’ they will join hands again through shared grief and a sense of having been cheated.

The Doctor, who still advocates an almost naïve hope in love and peace, displays no such delusions about her old friend. The relationship looks to be completely beyond repair.