Guest Reccer: Ten Master Stories (Doctor Who)
My favorite character in Doctor Who, hands down, is the Master. He's an acquired taste, not as nice or as funny as the Doctor, not as easy an entry character as any of the companions, and if you're writing him correctly, scary as hell. With the Master, you can go for slightly, hauntingly creepy, or outright population-killing genocidal horror. He's rather brutally poetic and fond of abusing his large vocabulary, no matter the era, but with each era, you get different foibles, different quirks. I'm a Classic Who fangirl who came by way of NuWho, so this is a mix of eras and incarnations of the Master.
So here you go: The Top Ten Stories that Make Me Love the Master Despite His Magnificent Bastardry
1) Name Magic by savagestime
What the Master could have been, in a universe without a Doctor to complement him. No Theta to play pranks with, to fall hopelessly and madly in love with, to be betrayed by. No Doctor to hunt through the cosmos, playing a constant game of oneupsmanship, to kill and be killed by. This account is so painfully almost-true - the vision in the Schism, his ice queens Rani and Romana, seeing the name Koschei and being frightened of it, losing his dreams (for without Theta-the-dreamer, Koschei has no use for dreams). And the Master's eventual end - and its architect - is the only way he could have escaped the curse of Koschei the Deathless. Unsurprising he drove all the psychics mad - think about what's in that brain of his for a second and tell me you wouldn't go mad too.
Excerpt:
At age eight, an initiate in robes of C.I.A. black and white, he stares into the Untempered Schism and he sees that which is infinite. He sees disaster; he sees destruction; he sees universal illness. And the power, oh, the power! At age eight he sees forever and the strength held within, and he vows that he will be brilliant, that he will be passionate, that he will change the universe and be the greatest Time Lord to ever live. He is inspired.
Yet, he does not have a name.
His designation in the Matrix is Eta Phi and that’s what his teachers and classmates call him. They’re boring people and he can’t endure their presence for long periods of time. He socializes, makes friends, helps younger students, but he doesn’t care about them. They’re all idiots and they know nothing of genius. The one exception, the Ice Queen Rho Epsilon, only just has the time of day for him, and she’s so cold - she's so, so cold. It hurts to touch her. She is no dreamer, and a dreamer is what he seeks.
He has no name, but he longs to find someone who burns.
2) Lux lucis quod sanus by ClocketPatch
The Master's obsession with corruption and making people obey/follow him is one of the things that interests me the most. I love that the man who shows people the cosmos cannot see, and the man who commands people to obey cannot himself hear. I adore the Mastervoice in this - it's a near-perfect blend of Delgado's precision, Ainley's verbosity, and Simm's mania - which is very fitting, for Koschei. And the little thematic details - the power of name magic, the push-pull contrast of the Master and the Doctor - are so spot-on lovely and chilling. I love the implication of the Nietzche quote - "the abyss gazes back also" - that when you look into the Master's eyes, the Master, and all of his sight-magic power, are looking back into you.
Excerpt:
It's a funny thing, but the more the Master watches, the more he imagines he can see. Every detail of Theta's simple, student robes, every nuance of colour, every thread. If the Master looks harder the details become finer until he can see the bare molecules and atoms and electrons of the robe's construction, and then smaller, to the very dust of the universe. If he looks hard enough he can see through the robes, which are not so substantial at an atomic level. He can see Theta's face, despite it being turned away.
But he doesn't look that hard very often, because sometimes he sees things which he can't quite grasp; terrible, frightening things -
He thinks that he can see what others are thinking, he thinks that, within the firing of their synapses, he is beginning to recognize patterns. And, as he recognises, he also sees what it might take to destabilize those patterns, to change a thought or to corrupt a soul.
The Master thinks that he can see his own future, and it terrifies him.
3) The Monster in the Dark by Nemo the Everbeing
Ohhh, this is the post-"Survival" fic that I've always wanted - the Cheetah Virus isn't so easily defeated, Ace does something deadly and stupid to fight it, Seven bluffs the universe to save her, and the Master is the one person upon whom success rests. This bucks all the cliches you usually get in post-Survival fic. Because Ace's dreamscape isn't hers, and Ainley!Master is so very desperate and edge-of-madness; because even he, with his iron will and endless chess gambits, can't beat biology. I love the enforced partnership between Seven and the Master, the way Seven's imagination saves the day every time, but he'd never stay alive long enough to use it if not for the Master, ever the engineer. I love Ace's love for the Doctor and her grudging respect for the Master, who is more than a little like her. And I especially love Ainley!Master, who is my favorite of all Masters, for his thesaurus-abusing, kittycat-fang having self.
Excerpt:
The Master leaned in and purred, “What was it that Earth philosopher said? ‘When hunting monsters, be sure you don’t become one; for when you look into the void, it looks back into you.’ Tell me, Theta, which void did you look into? Which monster finally got to you?” He leaned back, sitting against the wall with his legs draped across the bed and crossed at the ankles. He allowed a lazy smile to flit across his face, just wide enough to hint at those omnipresent fangs. “I heard about Skaro,” he said. “Genocide suits you, old friend.”
The Doctor looked angry and helpless. And what could he do? He could argue and be caught in an obvious lie. The temporal grace circuits prevented him from attacking just as much as they prevented the Master, and at any rate, an attack would prove the accusation. He could even ignore the question and accept by omission the Master’s veracity. The Doctor had no options.
Check and mate, and another game went to the Master. Koschei had always beaten Theta at chess. The only person he’d never been able to defeat was himself, but it was boring playing a one-sided game.
4)To the Devastation by AmyWolf
A powerful look at the soldier the Master became during the Time War - resurrected specifically to be the perfect warrior and commander, someone who could look Death in the face and laugh. Except the one thing the Master has always, always feared is Death. I love the Gallifreyan sister-goddesses legend (Death, Pain, and Time), and how the fear of Death drives the Master. The depiction of what the war became, the machines created by the Time Lords - "clean" and "dirty" delta waves, especially, are one of the most horrific ideas I've ever heard. I absolutely believe the Time War operated like that. And I believe the violation of the Cruciform like this would have caused the Master to run as far and as fast from Gallifrey and the Daleks as he could.
Excerpt:
The Cruciform was a wonder of Time Lord technology. Or a horror, depending on your point of view. The four arms linked it to multiple dimensions, from two-dimensional flat space to the five dimensions of the temporal vortex. It could shift between the layers of reality, leaving enemies to fire at something that wasn’t there; that never had been there. It could be subatomically thin one instant, all-encompassing the next. Or the previous. It could shift to appear above them, behind them, or five minutes before they pulled the trigger. It could monitor the dimensions for aeons and galaxies in all directions.
And it was armed.
It was amazing what Time Lords could create when they had something to lose.
5) no sleepers must sleep by mercurial_wit
The not-quite-person, not-quite-persona that is Harold Saxon, through the eyes of Lucy Cole Saxon. And oh, the Lucy POV in this is just pitch-perfect. You get such a sense of why the Master chose her as his companion, her rebellious nature, her itch to buck social rules, to stain something beautiful, and why he actually trusted her with his true identity. I love the implication that he was grooming her for companionship and eventual betrayal from the beginning, and that he named the Valiant after both her and C.S. Lewis. Because she is valiant, Lucy Saxon - as she says in "The Sound of Drums", "I made my choice". She chose her life with Harry. Lucy's quoting of poetry, and the metaphor of the chess game - because what is the Master if not one of the universe's best chess players? - are just some of the most fantastic bits.
Excerpt:
"What you said earlier," she says then, slowly. "About leading the entire universe."
"Yes?"
She finds a warning in the cadence of his voice, and lowers her eyes in brief acknowledgement of it, but then looks up again. "You weren't joking, were you?"
He produces a breathtaking smile and tangles his hand in her hair. "Well done."
6) Icebound by zauberer_sirin
Martha Jones, during the year she walked the world, and how the darkness got to her. Because what do you do when you're alone, your family is enslaved, the Doctor in chains, and your greatest enemy's getting his rocks off by hunting you and then fucking you? You sink further into the darkness, you realize just how broken you are, and just how easy it is to forget how dirty you're getting. This is a cold Master, a calculating Master, who fucks Martha not because he needs the loss of control, but because, as ever, it's about the Doctor. Sullying the Doctor's champion of good, Saint Martha, and sending her back to him broken and filthy and a little too Masterly. This is all the best kinds of dirtywronghot, and one of the very few ways I could ever see the pairing happening.
Excerpt:
`The Doctor said you could use hypnosis. Is this-?´
His smile uncurls like a secret. Ready for a blow.
`Oh, come on. I though you knew me better. It´s more fun if you do this voluntarily.´
He is right, you realize. It makes you sick. He is winning here. He has you pinned down to the floor and, as he puts one knee between your legs, you show your teeth. He smiles; he is winning here. You pull his hair until the smile melts into pain, and back into smile again. He is winning here.
He pins you down to the floor.
You want this.
7) Elegy for a Queen by savagestime
This is a gorgeously intricate story, written in triplicate, and featuring one of my very favorite characters from OldSkool Who, the Rani. The depiction of the three Masters (Koschei, in italics, either Ainley or Jacobi during the Time War, left-justified, and Simm in the right-hand column) are each dead-on, capturing the little quirks and foibles of each incarnation - Koschei's petulance, Ainley/Jacobi's chivalry, Simm's madness - while still highlighting the qualities that never change. Koschei and Ushas, just out of the Academy, are perfectly bickering. You can feel how young they are, because Koschei hasn't learned his casual cruelty and Ushas hasn't quite stifled all her compassion. The Master and the Rani, on Miasimia Goria (and how cruel are the Time Lords, that they've imprisoned the Rani on the planet she used to rule?) - have a surprisingly delicate balance between them. The background of the War shows us a different Master than we usually see - one who treads the fine line between soldier and prisoner - and a very, very different Rani than we've ever seen, vulnerable and chained, sacrificing her pride for her life. The interjection of Simm!Master and Ten spotlight the Master's warped idea of tribute; and if you're familiar with the Rani at all, you know how horrifically fitting a tribute it is.
Excerpt:
You can sense time-space tearing and ripping around you. It disorients you, setting off internal balance and proprioception all at once. You fall to your knees as the ground shakes - or maybe it doesn't shake, maybe it's all in your head, you just can't tell anymore, and then you hear it.
The screams of the hate-machines.
//"I'm not letting you stay here to waste away and die of idiocy. Get up.”//
8) fear of the dark by ariafic
This story takes everything I love best about the Whoverse - Gallifreyan mythology, linguistics, Koschei the Deathless, Theta and Koschei at the Academy, and Donna Noble - and mixes it together in a lush, diabolically whimsical fairytale. Aria's use of mythology is so deft, especially the story of the Toclafane, which, if you've seen the Master trilogy from S3, makes an already sinister story downright terrifying. The concept of life and death as well is a very Whoverse thing, and the linguistic exercises just underscore it beautifully, where the mathematical terms, the "theorem", are just chilling. Because we know so little of the Time War, and because it's painted in such stark terms (genocide was the ONLY way to end the war), the reminder that not only did the Doctor wipe two species completely out of existence, he also wiped out the only religion he ever knew. Playing God, like he does. And that's why Donna's presence in the story is exactly the human touch you need for something so alien, so abstract. She is the mirror the Doctor needs to look at what he's become, what he's willing to do. The end, though? It's so perfectly the Master that it makes me smile and shake at the same time.
Excerpt:
(Once upon a time, a little boy ran away from the Capitol into the mountains because he was afraid of his eighth birthday. In the mountains he found solitude but no solace, and was nearly ready to turn back when he met a fellow traveler on the downward path. The little boy asked after the traveler's name. 'I am the Toclafane,' the traveler said, 'and in good faith, my name for yours.' Because the little boy was not yet eight years old he had only his true name to offer, and the Toclafane knew him. 'You are afraid,' the Toclafane said, and the little boy admitted he was. 'You do not have to be afraid of growing, nor of life and death,' the Toclafane said. 'I can take them from you. Should you like that?' The little boy thought about this, and agreed. So the Toclafane took the little boy's life and death, stripped him of his regenerations and ate his soul.
Behave now; say your catechisms and go when you're told, or the Toclafane might get you too.)
Not all skies are made of diamonds.
9) And What Art by draegonhawke
Crossover with Life on Mars, taking the obvious question "what if Sam Tyler were really the Master?", and following it to its appropriately-horrifying conclusion. Because the Master is not just the Doctor-fancying, completely-bonkers manic little weasel that dances around to the Scissor Sisters; he's really not-right in the head and he's evil. Sam's fractured mental state is the perfect breeding ground for the Master's influence, and it's very apropos that the first thing he does is build another TCE/laser screwdriver weapon. His lashing out at Ray is also telling - the Master does not like people who mock or underestimate him, Chris is too weak for an effective demonstration, and, as is evident in the conclusion, Gene and Annie are far more useful to him alive and coherant enough to torture. Deliciously chilling and so very, very interesting a scenario.
Excerpt:
"There are no drums, Sam," Annie says and pulls his hand gently away. "Listen! They're in your head."
He stares without comprehending. "In my head?"
She nods.
He reaches out, puts a hand on her cheek, slides it to her jaw. "...it's all right," he decides.
Annie's hand covers his, neither pressing it there or pulling it away. "What is?"
He smiles, does his best to be comforting. "It's all right. Soon you'll hear them too."
10) No More by snowgrouse
This is what canon is too scared to admit - that Human!Ten from "Journey's End" is destined for ruin. All the memories of time and space running through his head, near-godlike power, all ripped away and dumped into a parallel universe, in a mortal body that's going to age and die. Nine's pragmatism and violence without a naive Rose to temper him or the ability to regenerate from his death-seeking. There is no possible way that that can end well. Grouse writes amazing Masterfic, but her John Smith is just as cynical and broken as I'd expect him to be. It's so, so fitting that when he's looking for death, whom does he run into but Death's champion? Her Simm!Master is not the gleefully unhinged maniac that we know from canon, but a quieter, more patient Master. One can easily imagine that the drums aren't this bad in this universe, but the reminder Grouse gives us in John's parallel tick-tock of time is just a punch to the gut. This is a different flavor of Doctor/Master, a kinder and more terrible look at the love between them, and the vision she paints of the Master as the Angel of Death is utterly perfect.
Excerpt:
One evening, a stranger joins him on the beach. The wind whips through his short, sandy hair, and he has his hands stuffed in the pockets of a long black overcoat. He stands there and watches Smith, with a serious expression on his face, his eyes dark and narrow. His coat flaps in the wind, the silk lining flashing red in the light of the setting sun.
Smith thinks he burnt that particular page a long time ago.
Most days, they don't speak, just walk or sit in companionable silence. At first, Smith wonders if he's spending time with a ghost, if he's merely created an image of the Master to keep him company. After all, there's a distinct lack of histrionics, maniacal laughter or gloating. The Master never forces a conversation, and on those days when Smith does feel like talking, the Master never interrupts him.
If you happen to like, go and feedback the authors.
So here you go: The Top Ten Stories that Make Me Love the Master Despite His Magnificent Bastardry
1) Name Magic by savagestime
What the Master could have been, in a universe without a Doctor to complement him. No Theta to play pranks with, to fall hopelessly and madly in love with, to be betrayed by. No Doctor to hunt through the cosmos, playing a constant game of oneupsmanship, to kill and be killed by. This account is so painfully almost-true - the vision in the Schism, his ice queens Rani and Romana, seeing the name Koschei and being frightened of it, losing his dreams (for without Theta-the-dreamer, Koschei has no use for dreams). And the Master's eventual end - and its architect - is the only way he could have escaped the curse of Koschei the Deathless. Unsurprising he drove all the psychics mad - think about what's in that brain of his for a second and tell me you wouldn't go mad too.
Excerpt:
At age eight, an initiate in robes of C.I.A. black and white, he stares into the Untempered Schism and he sees that which is infinite. He sees disaster; he sees destruction; he sees universal illness. And the power, oh, the power! At age eight he sees forever and the strength held within, and he vows that he will be brilliant, that he will be passionate, that he will change the universe and be the greatest Time Lord to ever live. He is inspired.
Yet, he does not have a name.
His designation in the Matrix is Eta Phi and that’s what his teachers and classmates call him. They’re boring people and he can’t endure their presence for long periods of time. He socializes, makes friends, helps younger students, but he doesn’t care about them. They’re all idiots and they know nothing of genius. The one exception, the Ice Queen Rho Epsilon, only just has the time of day for him, and she’s so cold - she's so, so cold. It hurts to touch her. She is no dreamer, and a dreamer is what he seeks.
He has no name, but he longs to find someone who burns.
2) Lux lucis quod sanus by ClocketPatch
The Master's obsession with corruption and making people obey/follow him is one of the things that interests me the most. I love that the man who shows people the cosmos cannot see, and the man who commands people to obey cannot himself hear. I adore the Mastervoice in this - it's a near-perfect blend of Delgado's precision, Ainley's verbosity, and Simm's mania - which is very fitting, for Koschei. And the little thematic details - the power of name magic, the push-pull contrast of the Master and the Doctor - are so spot-on lovely and chilling. I love the implication of the Nietzche quote - "the abyss gazes back also" - that when you look into the Master's eyes, the Master, and all of his sight-magic power, are looking back into you.
Excerpt:
It's a funny thing, but the more the Master watches, the more he imagines he can see. Every detail of Theta's simple, student robes, every nuance of colour, every thread. If the Master looks harder the details become finer until he can see the bare molecules and atoms and electrons of the robe's construction, and then smaller, to the very dust of the universe. If he looks hard enough he can see through the robes, which are not so substantial at an atomic level. He can see Theta's face, despite it being turned away.
But he doesn't look that hard very often, because sometimes he sees things which he can't quite grasp; terrible, frightening things -
He thinks that he can see what others are thinking, he thinks that, within the firing of their synapses, he is beginning to recognize patterns. And, as he recognises, he also sees what it might take to destabilize those patterns, to change a thought or to corrupt a soul.
The Master thinks that he can see his own future, and it terrifies him.
3) The Monster in the Dark by Nemo the Everbeing
Ohhh, this is the post-"Survival" fic that I've always wanted - the Cheetah Virus isn't so easily defeated, Ace does something deadly and stupid to fight it, Seven bluffs the universe to save her, and the Master is the one person upon whom success rests. This bucks all the cliches you usually get in post-Survival fic. Because Ace's dreamscape isn't hers, and Ainley!Master is so very desperate and edge-of-madness; because even he, with his iron will and endless chess gambits, can't beat biology. I love the enforced partnership between Seven and the Master, the way Seven's imagination saves the day every time, but he'd never stay alive long enough to use it if not for the Master, ever the engineer. I love Ace's love for the Doctor and her grudging respect for the Master, who is more than a little like her. And I especially love Ainley!Master, who is my favorite of all Masters, for his thesaurus-abusing, kittycat-fang having self.
Excerpt:
The Master leaned in and purred, “What was it that Earth philosopher said? ‘When hunting monsters, be sure you don’t become one; for when you look into the void, it looks back into you.’ Tell me, Theta, which void did you look into? Which monster finally got to you?” He leaned back, sitting against the wall with his legs draped across the bed and crossed at the ankles. He allowed a lazy smile to flit across his face, just wide enough to hint at those omnipresent fangs. “I heard about Skaro,” he said. “Genocide suits you, old friend.”
The Doctor looked angry and helpless. And what could he do? He could argue and be caught in an obvious lie. The temporal grace circuits prevented him from attacking just as much as they prevented the Master, and at any rate, an attack would prove the accusation. He could even ignore the question and accept by omission the Master’s veracity. The Doctor had no options.
Check and mate, and another game went to the Master. Koschei had always beaten Theta at chess. The only person he’d never been able to defeat was himself, but it was boring playing a one-sided game.
4)To the Devastation by AmyWolf
A powerful look at the soldier the Master became during the Time War - resurrected specifically to be the perfect warrior and commander, someone who could look Death in the face and laugh. Except the one thing the Master has always, always feared is Death. I love the Gallifreyan sister-goddesses legend (Death, Pain, and Time), and how the fear of Death drives the Master. The depiction of what the war became, the machines created by the Time Lords - "clean" and "dirty" delta waves, especially, are one of the most horrific ideas I've ever heard. I absolutely believe the Time War operated like that. And I believe the violation of the Cruciform like this would have caused the Master to run as far and as fast from Gallifrey and the Daleks as he could.
Excerpt:
The Cruciform was a wonder of Time Lord technology. Or a horror, depending on your point of view. The four arms linked it to multiple dimensions, from two-dimensional flat space to the five dimensions of the temporal vortex. It could shift between the layers of reality, leaving enemies to fire at something that wasn’t there; that never had been there. It could be subatomically thin one instant, all-encompassing the next. Or the previous. It could shift to appear above them, behind them, or five minutes before they pulled the trigger. It could monitor the dimensions for aeons and galaxies in all directions.
And it was armed.
It was amazing what Time Lords could create when they had something to lose.
5) no sleepers must sleep by mercurial_wit
The not-quite-person, not-quite-persona that is Harold Saxon, through the eyes of Lucy Cole Saxon. And oh, the Lucy POV in this is just pitch-perfect. You get such a sense of why the Master chose her as his companion, her rebellious nature, her itch to buck social rules, to stain something beautiful, and why he actually trusted her with his true identity. I love the implication that he was grooming her for companionship and eventual betrayal from the beginning, and that he named the Valiant after both her and C.S. Lewis. Because she is valiant, Lucy Saxon - as she says in "The Sound of Drums", "I made my choice". She chose her life with Harry. Lucy's quoting of poetry, and the metaphor of the chess game - because what is the Master if not one of the universe's best chess players? - are just some of the most fantastic bits.
Excerpt:
"What you said earlier," she says then, slowly. "About leading the entire universe."
"Yes?"
She finds a warning in the cadence of his voice, and lowers her eyes in brief acknowledgement of it, but then looks up again. "You weren't joking, were you?"
He produces a breathtaking smile and tangles his hand in her hair. "Well done."
6) Icebound by zauberer_sirin
Martha Jones, during the year she walked the world, and how the darkness got to her. Because what do you do when you're alone, your family is enslaved, the Doctor in chains, and your greatest enemy's getting his rocks off by hunting you and then fucking you? You sink further into the darkness, you realize just how broken you are, and just how easy it is to forget how dirty you're getting. This is a cold Master, a calculating Master, who fucks Martha not because he needs the loss of control, but because, as ever, it's about the Doctor. Sullying the Doctor's champion of good, Saint Martha, and sending her back to him broken and filthy and a little too Masterly. This is all the best kinds of dirtywronghot, and one of the very few ways I could ever see the pairing happening.
Excerpt:
`The Doctor said you could use hypnosis. Is this-?´
His smile uncurls like a secret. Ready for a blow.
`Oh, come on. I though you knew me better. It´s more fun if you do this voluntarily.´
He is right, you realize. It makes you sick. He is winning here. He has you pinned down to the floor and, as he puts one knee between your legs, you show your teeth. He smiles; he is winning here. You pull his hair until the smile melts into pain, and back into smile again. He is winning here.
He pins you down to the floor.
You want this.
7) Elegy for a Queen by savagestime
This is a gorgeously intricate story, written in triplicate, and featuring one of my very favorite characters from OldSkool Who, the Rani. The depiction of the three Masters (Koschei, in italics, either Ainley or Jacobi during the Time War, left-justified, and Simm in the right-hand column) are each dead-on, capturing the little quirks and foibles of each incarnation - Koschei's petulance, Ainley/Jacobi's chivalry, Simm's madness - while still highlighting the qualities that never change. Koschei and Ushas, just out of the Academy, are perfectly bickering. You can feel how young they are, because Koschei hasn't learned his casual cruelty and Ushas hasn't quite stifled all her compassion. The Master and the Rani, on Miasimia Goria (and how cruel are the Time Lords, that they've imprisoned the Rani on the planet she used to rule?) - have a surprisingly delicate balance between them. The background of the War shows us a different Master than we usually see - one who treads the fine line between soldier and prisoner - and a very, very different Rani than we've ever seen, vulnerable and chained, sacrificing her pride for her life. The interjection of Simm!Master and Ten spotlight the Master's warped idea of tribute; and if you're familiar with the Rani at all, you know how horrifically fitting a tribute it is.
Excerpt:
You can sense time-space tearing and ripping around you. It disorients you, setting off internal balance and proprioception all at once. You fall to your knees as the ground shakes - or maybe it doesn't shake, maybe it's all in your head, you just can't tell anymore, and then you hear it.
The screams of the hate-machines.
//"I'm not letting you stay here to waste away and die of idiocy. Get up.”//
8) fear of the dark by ariafic
This story takes everything I love best about the Whoverse - Gallifreyan mythology, linguistics, Koschei the Deathless, Theta and Koschei at the Academy, and Donna Noble - and mixes it together in a lush, diabolically whimsical fairytale. Aria's use of mythology is so deft, especially the story of the Toclafane, which, if you've seen the Master trilogy from S3, makes an already sinister story downright terrifying. The concept of life and death as well is a very Whoverse thing, and the linguistic exercises just underscore it beautifully, where the mathematical terms, the "theorem", are just chilling. Because we know so little of the Time War, and because it's painted in such stark terms (genocide was the ONLY way to end the war), the reminder that not only did the Doctor wipe two species completely out of existence, he also wiped out the only religion he ever knew. Playing God, like he does. And that's why Donna's presence in the story is exactly the human touch you need for something so alien, so abstract. She is the mirror the Doctor needs to look at what he's become, what he's willing to do. The end, though? It's so perfectly the Master that it makes me smile and shake at the same time.
Excerpt:
(Once upon a time, a little boy ran away from the Capitol into the mountains because he was afraid of his eighth birthday. In the mountains he found solitude but no solace, and was nearly ready to turn back when he met a fellow traveler on the downward path. The little boy asked after the traveler's name. 'I am the Toclafane,' the traveler said, 'and in good faith, my name for yours.' Because the little boy was not yet eight years old he had only his true name to offer, and the Toclafane knew him. 'You are afraid,' the Toclafane said, and the little boy admitted he was. 'You do not have to be afraid of growing, nor of life and death,' the Toclafane said. 'I can take them from you. Should you like that?' The little boy thought about this, and agreed. So the Toclafane took the little boy's life and death, stripped him of his regenerations and ate his soul.
Behave now; say your catechisms and go when you're told, or the Toclafane might get you too.)
Not all skies are made of diamonds.
9) And What Art by draegonhawke
Crossover with Life on Mars, taking the obvious question "what if Sam Tyler were really the Master?", and following it to its appropriately-horrifying conclusion. Because the Master is not just the Doctor-fancying, completely-bonkers manic little weasel that dances around to the Scissor Sisters; he's really not-right in the head and he's evil. Sam's fractured mental state is the perfect breeding ground for the Master's influence, and it's very apropos that the first thing he does is build another TCE/laser screwdriver weapon. His lashing out at Ray is also telling - the Master does not like people who mock or underestimate him, Chris is too weak for an effective demonstration, and, as is evident in the conclusion, Gene and Annie are far more useful to him alive and coherant enough to torture. Deliciously chilling and so very, very interesting a scenario.
Excerpt:
"There are no drums, Sam," Annie says and pulls his hand gently away. "Listen! They're in your head."
He stares without comprehending. "In my head?"
She nods.
He reaches out, puts a hand on her cheek, slides it to her jaw. "...it's all right," he decides.
Annie's hand covers his, neither pressing it there or pulling it away. "What is?"
He smiles, does his best to be comforting. "It's all right. Soon you'll hear them too."
10) No More by snowgrouse
This is what canon is too scared to admit - that Human!Ten from "Journey's End" is destined for ruin. All the memories of time and space running through his head, near-godlike power, all ripped away and dumped into a parallel universe, in a mortal body that's going to age and die. Nine's pragmatism and violence without a naive Rose to temper him or the ability to regenerate from his death-seeking. There is no possible way that that can end well. Grouse writes amazing Masterfic, but her John Smith is just as cynical and broken as I'd expect him to be. It's so, so fitting that when he's looking for death, whom does he run into but Death's champion? Her Simm!Master is not the gleefully unhinged maniac that we know from canon, but a quieter, more patient Master. One can easily imagine that the drums aren't this bad in this universe, but the reminder Grouse gives us in John's parallel tick-tock of time is just a punch to the gut. This is a different flavor of Doctor/Master, a kinder and more terrible look at the love between them, and the vision she paints of the Master as the Angel of Death is utterly perfect.
Excerpt:
One evening, a stranger joins him on the beach. The wind whips through his short, sandy hair, and he has his hands stuffed in the pockets of a long black overcoat. He stands there and watches Smith, with a serious expression on his face, his eyes dark and narrow. His coat flaps in the wind, the silk lining flashing red in the light of the setting sun.
Smith thinks he burnt that particular page a long time ago.
Most days, they don't speak, just walk or sit in companionable silence. At first, Smith wonders if he's spending time with a ghost, if he's merely created an image of the Master to keep him company. After all, there's a distinct lack of histrionics, maniacal laughter or gloating. The Master never forces a conversation, and on those days when Smith does feel like talking, the Master never interrupts him.
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