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Post by fitzoliverj on Jul 24, 2020 16:36:14 GMT
(Mods, feel free to move to another forum as appropriate) The Master first appeared in DW in the first story of Jon Pertwee's second series, "Terror of the Autons". He is a hypnotic supervillain with a time machine that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. He is from a people who have a greatly-extended lifespan.
The last story of the preceding series was "Inferno", guest-starring Olaf Pooley. Four years before that, Olaf Pooley starred as a character also named the Master, in "The Master", a tv adaptation of the T.H. White novel of the same name (pub. 1957). This Master is a one-hundred-and-fifty-seven-year-old hypnotic supervillain who lives in the hollowed-out inside of the island of Rockall. Anyway, the book (a children's story said to have satirical undertones) is 99p on Amazon, and I intend to read it and find out whether White's the Master really resembles the Time Lord we know and love. One other thing I know about the book, is that the Master {Spoiler}
falls off Rockall and presumably drowns. Now, if BF had (hypothetically) a spare incarnation lying around they needed rid of, this seems as elegant a way as any. Only 15 or so years till White's books are out of copyright! |
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Post by constonks on Jul 24, 2020 16:51:47 GMT
TH White's Master should go up against Arnould Galopin's Doctor Omega!
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Post by fitzoliverj on Jul 24, 2020 17:04:24 GMT
I hadn't thought of that. Except there's no identifiable link between Omega and Who the way Olaf Pooley links the Master with the Pertwee era.
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Post by constonks on Jul 24, 2020 17:30:45 GMT
I hadn't thought of that. Except there's no identifiable link between Omega and Who the way Olaf Pooley links the Master with the Pertwee era. True, Omega was a weird coincidence - there's next to no chance that the creators of Who had read Galopin, but sounds like Dicks very much could have seen the Pooley adaptation! Weird how no-one else has spotted this connection (or if they had, I'd never heard of it)... |
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Post by CookieMaster on Jul 26, 2020 8:20:23 GMT
I read that book a very, very long time ago. I seem to remember he had machines called Vibrators and he wanted to take over the world with them. A saucy name, especially for a man who wields a weapon shaped like a dildo  |
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Post by fitzoliverj on Aug 23, 2020 17:36:56 GMT
Well, I finished the book. Took me a while since I was alternating with some other books. Firstly, there is nothing in it that remotely resembles DW's The Master except what I wrote in my brief summary. He's called the Master, he's a technological supervillain, he's long-lived, and he has mental powers, and that's pretty much it. If there is a connection between the two characters, it's very superficial and limited. Secondly, quite a lot of casual racism in the book. Even for the 1950s I should think it excessive. There's one bit where I kind of got the feeling it might be satirical, but it's difficult to say, and there's certainly no reason to think the same of the other occasions. Thirdly, this book is essentially a parody of the kind of Blytonesque childrens's story where some plucky youngsters defeat the baddies and save the day. White is fully aware that that's a ludicrous idea, and though there are long discussions as to whether the boy can plausibly kill the Master in cold blood, he can't. They're children, and they are powerless. Fourthly, of those of White's books that I've read - the orignial "Sword in the Stone", "The Once and Future King", "The Book of Merlyn" and "Darkness at Pemberley", the writing here is easily the poorest. Possibly that's because he's - at least ostensibly - writing for a juvenile audience in a way that none of the other books are. Fifthly - is there anything good about it? Well, it's interesting to compare it to "The Book of Merlyn". Ants are once again described as a totalitarian dictatorship, and the moral justification for the Master's evil plan (precisely how much better the world would be if he was allowed to do what he wants to do) is actually the precise philosophy that Merlyn/White espouse in "The Book of Merlyn". As far as that goes, it's worth at least a footnote in an edition of "The Once and Future King". The book also has a remarkably strong sense of *time* - it is set very strongly in a postwar British millieu, with specific references to politicians and economic situations and the prospect of nuclear destruction. It's unusual for a book to be so evocative of the time (or, rather, very slightly before the time) it is set in. Sixthy, and perhaps most importantly, could this the Master be our the Master? Well, {Spoiler}The Master is killed thusly: the boy does indeed try to shoot him, as all other hope is lost, but ultimately he too is overwhelmed by hypnotic power. Unfortunately, the Master steps backwards and treads on the heroes' pet dog, who bites him. The Master falls over and breaks his hip. After one last drink and one last classical record, the Master hurls himself over the cliff, at peace with his end. [it's not made clear, but presumably his advanced age makes recovery from a broken hip impossible, so he prefers a peaceful and contented death on his own terms] Could a TARDIS have been waiting for him below? We know that the first Doctor waited till an advanced age, by Time Lord standards, to regenerate for the first time; making this the end of the original Master could be an interesting parallel. |
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Post by Kestrel on Aug 25, 2020 13:56:47 GMT
I always thought the Master originated with the difference between a Master's Degree and a Doctorate.
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