This country has been sick. This country needs healing. This country needs medicine. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that what this country really needs right now is a Doctor.
The Master
Synopsis
Harry Saxon – aka the Master – becomes prime minister, but his dark ambitions reach beyond the stars.
Review
The Sound of Drums starts to tie together the threads of Series 3 ahead of the finale. We have another Time Lord other than the Doctor in the show for the first time since The TV Movie, and the Master is certainly out to destroy everything the Doctor holds dear.
They used to call it the Shining World of the Seven Systems. And on the continent of Wild Endeavour, in the mountains of Solace and Solitude, there stood the Citadel of the Time Lords. The oldest and most mighty race in the universe. Looking down on the galaxies below, sworn never to interfere, only to watch. Children of Gallifrey were taken from their families at the age of eight, to enter the Academy. Some say that’s where it all began, when he was a child. That’s when the Master saw eternity. As a novice, he was taken for initiation. He stood in front of the Untempered Schism. It’s a gap in the fabric of reality through which could be seen the whole of the vortex. We stand there, eight years old, staring at the raw power of Time and Space, just a child. Some would be inspired. Some would run away. And some would go mad. Oh, I dunno.
What about you?The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones
Oh, the ones that ran away! I never stopped.
The reintroduction of the Master is a successful example of bringing back a foe from the original run of the show. It’s hard not to compare it to the recent return of Omega in The Reality War, which gets it so wrong. There is a gradual buildup to the reveal of the Master, which has been seeded through the series and even bled into the spin-off show Torchwood. Russell T Davies adds to the lore behind the character by providing part of the reason behind his insanity without taking away from the history of the character. John Simm’s zany incarnation of the Master can grate at times, but it is, on the whole, a good performance. He manages to reign in most of the time, and shows real vulnerability during his phone call with the Doctor, when he tells his old adversary that he ran away from the Time War. Having cemented himself a younger and more attractive incarnation, he promptly exploits that to become Prime Minister. Davies uses the events of the last few years, and a position of showing the population the truth of the alien invasions that we have seen. He’s also worked for the Ministry of Defence, and was responsible for the design of UNIT’s Cloudbase-esque Valiant. Perhaps the Master’s proclivity for children’s television means he’s watched Captain Scarlet! Watching this story in 2026, the Master’s rhetoric does seem very similar to a lot of modern politicians who promise to be different from the establishment and tell the electorate their version of the truth.
The Master has moved beyond hypnotising individuals, and set his sights decidedly higher, effectively hoodwinking the entire nation into voting for him through the Archangel network. Both Martha and Jack were going to vote for him, showing quite how effective the network has been in implementing the Master’s goals, despite not having any policies. The network has not been completely effective
There are parallels between the Master’s 18-months trapped between the end of the universe and Earth, and the Third Doctor’s exile following his trial in The War Games. The Master picks up a well-connected companion in Lucy Saxon, a parallel with the Third Doctor’s longest serving companion, Jo Grant. Whilst the Doctor spends his exile trying to mend the TARDIS, the Master sets about cannibalising her into a paradox machine. It’s definitely a deliberate homage to Jon Pertwee’s fashion choices when the Master dons a red lined coat when meeting President Winters.
If there’s a point about the Doctor that Russell T Davies was good at hammering home in his first era, it was that the Doctor can really be his own worst enemy. Here, his actions in removing Harriet Jones from power in The Christmas Invasion lead to a power vacuum that the Master takes full advantage of. That’s even more hypocritical when you consider that the reason the Doctor and Harriet fell out was because she dared to put safeguards in place for the times that the Doctor isn’t around to save the day. The Doctor admits that Harold Saxon, the Master’s alias, has been working whilst he and Martha have been travelling the universe. The Doctor also doesn’t consider the consequences of locking the TARDIS co-ordinates to their last location, and that this may cause him issues in the future. The Doctor certainly hasn’t considered that Martha’s family may be collateral damage, or that her flat may be blown up. The latter is one of this story’s best shot sequences, and is well directed by Colin Teague. The former is an important part of this episode’s atmosphere.
Thoroughout this story, there is a sense of the Doctor, Martha and Jack are being watched. Doctor Who has tried this a few times since, but nowhere as successfully as here. Martha’s mother, Francine, has inadvertently created a trap for her daughter due to her concerns about the Doctor, a narrative that Saxon’s team has fed into, which ends up with almost all of her family being incarcerated. Russell T Davies does really pleasingly tie together a lot of threads together here, explaining how Tish got a cozy job at Number 10 after the chaos that ensued in her employment with Professor Lazarus. The Master has been keeping tight tabs on the Jones family. Nowhere is this better exemplified by the intercepted phone call between Martha and her brother, Leo. By the end of the Doctor’s conversation with the Master, the central trio are on the run, having been announced as being most wanted on the news. Even the Doctor’s attempts to keep him and his companions safe from the Master is unsuccessful, with the Master being able to see straight through it.
Whilst The Sound of Drums is a great episode, it is not helped by the fact that Davies feels like he’s increasingly writing himself into a corner as the story goes on, and doesn’t know how to get himself out. By the end of the story, he has the Doctor and Jack captured, the former aged by 100 years, the Earth in disarray as the Toclafane descend and decimate the population, the TARDIS corrupted and Martha back on Earth alone. The Master’s victory seems absolute. That was something that fascinated me as a teenager. Immediately following watching this story, I called my friend to discuss possible ways out for the Doctor. Beyond regeneration, there was no way out that we could see. Little did we know that Davies had no idea either.
Something I also take a bit of an issue with is the attitude towards President Winters. Once he learns of Saxon making first contact, he intervenes, initially masquerading as acting under the guise of the UN and UNIT. He is quickly revealed to actually want to take the credit himself, requesting that the broadcast goes out with his crest on it rather than the UN’s. This tallies with a lot of Presidents – I could imagine the incumbent doing this for sure. Winters is definitely a flawed character, but the portrayal feels very coded by the context in which this story was written. This came out during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which Britain had followed the USA into. There was a great deal of resentment towards George W Bush at the time, and there’s certainly a smidge of the younger Bush president here. He is more than happy to take the title of Master from the Toclafane. There are two parts that do bother me though. When introducing himself to the Toclafane, Winters states that he is President-elect, whilst everything else in the story refers to him as being the sworn in President. He certainly flies in Air Force One, which only the President would be able to do. The other relates to his death at the hands of the Toclafane. We see that there are multiple Secret Service agents on the bridge of the Valiant. None of them think to shoot or otherwise tackle the man they know is responsible for the death of the President.
This story brings home to roost some of the misconceptions that the Doctor has wanted his companions to have about the Time Lords. The return of his old friend-turned-enemy forces him to confront the truth about this. This is the Tenth Doctor at his most baffled and worried. Only he knows of the depths the Master will stoop to. Tennant imbues the Doctor with a sense of melancholy and his chemistry with Simm really crackles.
The Doctor’s companions go through the wringer here, but Martha definitely bears the brunt of it. Her family, save her brother, are captured by the Master and her flat is blown up by a cartoony bomb. As far as companions go, she certainly gets a raw deal, and this seems to be where her satisfaction of travelling with the Doctor diminishes. This might be the strongest outing so far for Martha, putting the Doctor in his place, and keeping her head in a crisis. Jack gets sidelined here, with his biggest possible contribution being the vortex manipulator which gets them back to the twenty-first century, or his access to journalist Vivien Rook’s evidence against Harold Saxon through the Torchwood network. That’s a bit of a shame, as Barrowman does well with what he is given.
Verdict: The Sound of Drums sets things up for an almighty finale. 8/10
Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), John Simm (The Master), Adjoa Andoh (Francine Jones), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Tish Jones), Trevor Laird (Clive Jones), Reggie Yates (Leo Jones), Alexandra Moen (Lucy Saxon), Colin Stinton (President), Nichola McAuliffe (Vivien Rook), Nicholas Gecks (Albert Dumfries), Sharon Osbourne (Herself), McFly (Themselves), Ann Widdecombe (Herself), Olivia Hill (BBC Newsreader), Lachele Carl (US Newsreader), Daniel Ming (Chinese Newsreader), Elize du Tout (Sinister Woman) and Zoe Thorne, Gerard Logan & Johnnie Lynne-Pirkis (Sphere Voices).
Writer: Russell T Davies
Director: Colin Teague
Producer: Phil Collinson
Music: Murray Gold
Original UK Air Date: 23 June 2007
Behind the Scenes
- This is the first three part story since Survival, which incidentally included the Master, as played by Anthony Ainsley.
- Noel Clarke’s voice appears in the radio broadcasts at the end of the episode.
- Freema Agyeman performed some of the car action sequences herself.
Cast Notes
- Nichola McAuliffe had previously appeared in the Big Finish spin-off ranges Graceless and Doctor Who Unbound.
- Olivia Hill also played a BBC Newsreader in The Bells of Saint John.
Best Moment
The telephone call between the Doctor and the Master.
Best Quote
Doctor.
Master.
I like it when you use my name.
You chose it. Psychiatrist’s field day.
As you chose yours. “The man who makes people better”. How sanctimonious is that?
The Master and the Tenth Doctor
Previous Tenth Doctor review: Utopia
For more Tenth Doctor reviews, click here.
The Impossible Blog 