Why I like the Toclafane
So guys, I think you ought to know it took a real effort of will not to title this "Why I like the Master's Balls."
During the Year that Wasn't, the Master had a number of strategies for maintaining his iron grip on the earth, among them a vast armada of armored spheres with giant blades that like to fly around murdering people. They decimate the planet, literally - killing one tenth of the Earth's population. "Like to" is the operative word - when confronted on why they're killing people, it's partly because the Master asked them to, but mostly because "it's FUN!" It's rare to find a villain or monster that really enjoys what they're doing, and it's always chilling. The Toclafane have an almost childlike glee in what they're doing - "we shall fly and blaze and slice!" Even their voices are childlike and sing-songy, and this creepy child vibe juxtaposes horrifyingly with the fact that they are literally flying balls of death, brutally murdering people for no reason other than the joy of it.
The Toclafane are unique in two important ways. First off, they never turn on the Master. When the supervillain maintains control through an unstoppable killer army, inevitably he's going to bite off more than he can chew and his minions will turn against him. We know this pattern - it was the Delgado Master's fatal flaw after wall. But not so here, because the Master's Death Balls are not mind-controlled or coerced, they aren't being used or manipulated. They follow the Master because they like him, and because they owe him a debt of gratitude. They're happy doing what they're doing, and they're happy to make him happy. They may be the only entities in the entire whoniverse who hang out with the Master because they genuinely like him. There is no sudden but inevitable betrayal. Apart from the fact that they're flying balls of death that brutally murder people, the Toclafane must be the chillest monsters the show has yet produced.
The other way the Toclafane are completely and shockingly unique is that they're a mythical creature who are actually mythical. When the Doctor first hears the name Toclafane, he dismisses it immediately as a Gallifreyan Nursery Tale. This seems awfully genre blind of him - when has a myth or legend on a show like this ever turned out not to be true, usually by the end of the episode? The Great Key of Rassilon, the Giant Gastropods of Joconda, the Pandorica - even the Lurking Terror of Darkness and the Monster Under the Bed! But the Toclafane aren't. There's a beautiful quote from the final (to date) Percy Jackson book (for context, the people speaking are the literal offspring of Jupiter and Poseidon, respectively):
“Atlantis?' Jason asked.
'That's a myth,' Percy said.
'Uh...don't we deal in myths?'
'No, I mean it's a MADE-UP myth. Not like, an actual true myth.'"
ehehehehe - it's an important distinction, even if Percy does have seaweed for brains. The Toclafane are Gallifreyan boogeymen, which is fascinating all by itself. Does this mean we have a second word of actual Gallifreyan language? That's exciting. And the idea of Time Lords (or other Gallifreyans) telling spooky bedtime stories to their children is ... well frankly bizarre, but once again reminds us that you can't actually have an entire culture made up solely of stuffy bureaucrats. And so the Doctor is very very sure that the Toclafane are a "made-up myth" rather than an "actual true myth." And he's right. This never happens. But the Master's Flying Death Balls are not the Toclafane of Gallifreyan legend, he just calls them that to mess with the Doctor (what else?).
What they are is actually far more horrifying, and the Reveal kind of breaks the Doctor. Humans from After the End, allowed to paradoxically live on and murder their ancestors as severed heads in flying death balls. It's actually deeply depressing. It also combines some of the best aspects of Daleks and Cybermen in their original conceptualization. Mutant remnants of a race in mechanized travel capsules, having sacrificed their humanity in favor of survival, except without the obsession with racial purity which caused the Daleks to turn on their creator - they're actually quite grateful to the Master for his work dubiously on their behalf. And like with the original Cybermen, we're confronted with the horror of the idea that people just like us did this to themselves, more or less on purpose. We are the monsters - the boogeymen that Time Lords fear. And the worst thing is, there's no conversion horror - they're alive at last and they're full of Joy. More than anything else, the so-called Toclafane are just deeply deeply depressing. They're the future that's set for us, and nothing in the episode revises or reverses that future. It's actually deeply upsetting when you think about it.
The Toclafane do a good job combining a lot of disparate threads into one horrifying whole. They set the stakes high immediately, keep the population subdued throughout the year of the Master's rule on earth, but are monstrous on an individual and psychological level as well as on a practical one. They're very effective but more than that, they're sick and wrong. Because the Master values style as much as substance, and enjoys the sick joke of it all and hurting the Doctor as much as possible as much or more than he enjoys the conquest and triumph he has achieved. The whole point of the Toclafane is to be severely messed up, and that they certainly are. Like everything else the Master does in this arc, they are an unmitigated success - loyal, brutal, effective, efficient, hurtful and hilarious (if you're the Master, at least).
During the Year that Wasn't, the Master had a number of strategies for maintaining his iron grip on the earth, among them a vast armada of armored spheres with giant blades that like to fly around murdering people. They decimate the planet, literally - killing one tenth of the Earth's population. "Like to" is the operative word - when confronted on why they're killing people, it's partly because the Master asked them to, but mostly because "it's FUN!" It's rare to find a villain or monster that really enjoys what they're doing, and it's always chilling. The Toclafane have an almost childlike glee in what they're doing - "we shall fly and blaze and slice!" Even their voices are childlike and sing-songy, and this creepy child vibe juxtaposes horrifyingly with the fact that they are literally flying balls of death, brutally murdering people for no reason other than the joy of it.
The Toclafane are unique in two important ways. First off, they never turn on the Master. When the supervillain maintains control through an unstoppable killer army, inevitably he's going to bite off more than he can chew and his minions will turn against him. We know this pattern - it was the Delgado Master's fatal flaw after wall. But not so here, because the Master's Death Balls are not mind-controlled or coerced, they aren't being used or manipulated. They follow the Master because they like him, and because they owe him a debt of gratitude. They're happy doing what they're doing, and they're happy to make him happy. They may be the only entities in the entire whoniverse who hang out with the Master because they genuinely like him. There is no sudden but inevitable betrayal. Apart from the fact that they're flying balls of death that brutally murder people, the Toclafane must be the chillest monsters the show has yet produced.
The other way the Toclafane are completely and shockingly unique is that they're a mythical creature who are actually mythical. When the Doctor first hears the name Toclafane, he dismisses it immediately as a Gallifreyan Nursery Tale. This seems awfully genre blind of him - when has a myth or legend on a show like this ever turned out not to be true, usually by the end of the episode? The Great Key of Rassilon, the Giant Gastropods of Joconda, the Pandorica - even the Lurking Terror of Darkness and the Monster Under the Bed! But the Toclafane aren't. There's a beautiful quote from the final (to date) Percy Jackson book (for context, the people speaking are the literal offspring of Jupiter and Poseidon, respectively):
“Atlantis?' Jason asked.
'That's a myth,' Percy said.
'Uh...don't we deal in myths?'
'No, I mean it's a MADE-UP myth. Not like, an actual true myth.'"
ehehehehe - it's an important distinction, even if Percy does have seaweed for brains. The Toclafane are Gallifreyan boogeymen, which is fascinating all by itself. Does this mean we have a second word of actual Gallifreyan language? That's exciting. And the idea of Time Lords (or other Gallifreyans) telling spooky bedtime stories to their children is ... well frankly bizarre, but once again reminds us that you can't actually have an entire culture made up solely of stuffy bureaucrats. And so the Doctor is very very sure that the Toclafane are a "made-up myth" rather than an "actual true myth." And he's right. This never happens. But the Master's Flying Death Balls are not the Toclafane of Gallifreyan legend, he just calls them that to mess with the Doctor (what else?).
What they are is actually far more horrifying, and the Reveal kind of breaks the Doctor. Humans from After the End, allowed to paradoxically live on and murder their ancestors as severed heads in flying death balls. It's actually deeply depressing. It also combines some of the best aspects of Daleks and Cybermen in their original conceptualization. Mutant remnants of a race in mechanized travel capsules, having sacrificed their humanity in favor of survival, except without the obsession with racial purity which caused the Daleks to turn on their creator - they're actually quite grateful to the Master for his work dubiously on their behalf. And like with the original Cybermen, we're confronted with the horror of the idea that people just like us did this to themselves, more or less on purpose. We are the monsters - the boogeymen that Time Lords fear. And the worst thing is, there's no conversion horror - they're alive at last and they're full of Joy. More than anything else, the so-called Toclafane are just deeply deeply depressing. They're the future that's set for us, and nothing in the episode revises or reverses that future. It's actually deeply upsetting when you think about it.
The Toclafane do a good job combining a lot of disparate threads into one horrifying whole. They set the stakes high immediately, keep the population subdued throughout the year of the Master's rule on earth, but are monstrous on an individual and psychological level as well as on a practical one. They're very effective but more than that, they're sick and wrong. Because the Master values style as much as substance, and enjoys the sick joke of it all and hurting the Doctor as much as possible as much or more than he enjoys the conquest and triumph he has achieved. The whole point of the Toclafane is to be severely messed up, and that they certainly are. Like everything else the Master does in this arc, they are an unmitigated success - loyal, brutal, effective, efficient, hurtful and hilarious (if you're the Master, at least).