The missus
With the imminent return of Lucy Saxon, aka Mrs. Master, some interesting snippets about the unhappy couple's relationship have been popping up in SFX interviews. Here's actor Alexandra Moen answering a reader's question:What was the thinking behind Lucy's black eye in "The Last Of The Time Lords"?
"I thought it was really appropriate, and, without talking too much about domestic violence, it was quite typical of a bully, wasn't it? To knock their partner's self-esteem and then be very, very sweet to them afterwards, which can be very confusing for the person being bullied. I think for that relationship to work on screen, especially because Lucy was so much in the background and not having a lot of lines, I think that little symbols like that were really important to summarise their relationship as opposed to a big old domestic barney."
And RTD chatting with an interviewer:I know fans sit there going 'What happened to Lucy Saxon?' I've read that online - did she shoot him on purpose, so that he could be resurrected? Which is completely missing the point of a story about an abused wife. No, she killed him! [...]
I think her black eye is the most disturbing thing you smuggled into Doctor Who. The subtlest and most disturbing thing in the history of the show.
"Yes, absolutely, never mind that he talks about burning Japan and all those things. Actually it’s what goes on in that bedroom. The true violence. Because he charms, the Master. Isn't he lovely, isn't he funny? But no, he's a mass murderer. And of course he inflicts violence upon women."
I remember objections to Lucy's black eye at the time, the details of which now escape me. There may have been an element of "Don't spoil the sexual fantasy!", as there was with denial about Spike's attempted sexual assault of Buffy. Murder and torture are quite acceptable, but wife-bashing and girlfriend-raping pop the damn bubble. (There's a great line in an old Tom Corbett Space Cadet where the baddie says, "I'm not a gentleman, you know. Even to women!") More seriously, though, they bring the violence thudding down to a level where we can viscerally understand it, where the destruction of the whole of Japan is just too big to really grasp.
But now, something I've wanted to do for ages:
Meanwhile, in Rome... Claudius and a couple of other troublemakers are summoned to the palace in the middle of the night by the Emperor Caligula - crazy, vicious, and all-powerful. They're pretty sure they've had it. They wait in darkness, terrified, until suddenly:
Ta-da! Out of nowhere leaps Caligula in drag, doing a crazy dance. He's putting on a little show!
Now, Caligula has roped a singer and some dancers into this grotesque spectacle, including a pretty young woman.
As she turns away to camera, her face out of his sight for a moment, her hands still raised from the dance...
... we see that, far from enjoying it, she is terrified.
Or in Lucy's case, that she has a black eye and a thousand-yard stare.
I'm not for a moment saying Last of the Time Lords stole this scene, but I'll bet you a bikkie it was influenced by it, consciously or unconsciously. (The whole thing gets more bizarre when you recall that Derek Jacobi is playing Claudius and John Simm once played Caligula.)
"I thought it was really appropriate, and, without talking too much about domestic violence, it was quite typical of a bully, wasn't it? To knock their partner's self-esteem and then be very, very sweet to them afterwards, which can be very confusing for the person being bullied. I think for that relationship to work on screen, especially because Lucy was so much in the background and not having a lot of lines, I think that little symbols like that were really important to summarise their relationship as opposed to a big old domestic barney."
And RTD chatting with an interviewer:I know fans sit there going 'What happened to Lucy Saxon?' I've read that online - did she shoot him on purpose, so that he could be resurrected? Which is completely missing the point of a story about an abused wife. No, she killed him! [...]
I think her black eye is the most disturbing thing you smuggled into Doctor Who. The subtlest and most disturbing thing in the history of the show.
"Yes, absolutely, never mind that he talks about burning Japan and all those things. Actually it’s what goes on in that bedroom. The true violence. Because he charms, the Master. Isn't he lovely, isn't he funny? But no, he's a mass murderer. And of course he inflicts violence upon women."
I remember objections to Lucy's black eye at the time, the details of which now escape me. There may have been an element of "Don't spoil the sexual fantasy!", as there was with denial about Spike's attempted sexual assault of Buffy. Murder and torture are quite acceptable, but wife-bashing and girlfriend-raping pop the damn bubble. (There's a great line in an old Tom Corbett Space Cadet where the baddie says, "I'm not a gentleman, you know. Even to women!") More seriously, though, they bring the violence thudding down to a level where we can viscerally understand it, where the destruction of the whole of Japan is just too big to really grasp.
But now, something I've wanted to do for ages:
Meanwhile, in Rome... Claudius and a couple of other troublemakers are summoned to the palace in the middle of the night by the Emperor Caligula - crazy, vicious, and all-powerful. They're pretty sure they've had it. They wait in darkness, terrified, until suddenly:
Ta-da! Out of nowhere leaps Caligula in drag, doing a crazy dance. He's putting on a little show!
Now, Caligula has roped a singer and some dancers into this grotesque spectacle, including a pretty young woman.
As she turns away to camera, her face out of his sight for a moment, her hands still raised from the dance...
... we see that, far from enjoying it, she is terrified.
Or in Lucy's case, that she has a black eye and a thousand-yard stare.
I'm not for a moment saying Last of the Time Lords stole this scene, but I'll bet you a bikkie it was influenced by it, consciously or unconsciously. (The whole thing gets more bizarre when you recall that Derek Jacobi is playing Claudius and John Simm once played Caligula.)