The Ood Cast

Just as in any species, there is light and shade in Gallifreyan society.  Here’s a little list of naughty Time Lords (and Ladies).  It’s not exhaustive but all of them even appear in some of the classic series: the Rani, Morbius, the Monk, the War Chief… You could also say Borusa and Rassillon were “bad apples”.  And of course there’s also Salyavin.

But the renegade the Doctor encountered most often was the Master.  Here at the Ood Cast, we think there are 4 distinct stages in the many lives of this shady figure: childhood; suave villainy; ridiculous re-birth as an A-Lister’s brother and finally the positively chilling Tony Blair impression (yes, even the bit where he went properly mental and leapt about eating people).

Sardonic, often beardy, always charming, the Master was the epitome of cool villainy in earlier stages of the Doctor’s lives, delighting in chaos and mostly using others to carry out his evil work for him rather like a well-dressed Simon Cowell.  But he was not always so maladjusted.

______

Childhood

He grew up with the Doctor, but was taken (as Gallifreyans chosen to be Time Lords are) at 8 for training and forced to look into the Untempered Schism.  Some say this sent him mad, which might explain a fair bit.  This event later came back to haunt the Master’s every waking hour in the form of a constant drumming sound in his head.

——-

Suave Villainy

When the Doctor fled from Gallifrey, it is thought the Master was charged with pursuing and capturing him, following him to earth during his period of exile in order to defeat him.  But because the Doctor had made friends in military circles, it was never so simple a battle.  UNIT even managed to imprison him once – until he hypnotised the prison governor…

These inept soldiers (always happy to fire a gun but rarely hitting anything that posed any real danger) were always on hand to help send the Master off with his tail between his legs – even when he’d teamed up with Sea Devils, circus impresarios, Autons, convicts, and ancient demons to name a few.  Not even his possession of WMDs or his renowned shrinking weapon could gain him enough of an edge to beat his compatriot.

He reappeared variously across the next few incarnations – including memorably using a professorial alias to conduct an experiment called TOMTIT (Brilliant – never mind the benefit cheats, it’s the psychotic aliens nicking taxpayers’ university science funding we need to deal with)… and stealing the body of the father of someone who would soon be a companion of his old enemy.  And then there was the whole living with cat people on an exploding planet thing.

————–

Ridiculous Re-birth

He was eventually tried and executed by the Daleks for being just as mean as they are (don’t tread on their skirting boards), and was being transported back to Gallifrey by the Seventh Doctor – as that had been his final wish.  He forced the TARDIS to land on earth, took the body of Julia Roberts’ less-famous brother and almost had the Doctor defeated… until he fell into the Eye of Harmony.

————

Frightening Blair Impressionist

The Time Lords somehow resurrected him (because every civilisation needs a Bruce) to help fight the Time War, only to see him desert them as soon as it got a bit hairy, disguising himself as an elderly professor until the Doctor got him to check the time and his memory came back…  He regenerated into the Prime Minister of Great Britain, took the Doctor prisoner (making him elderly and tiny but refusing him winter fuel allowance) and conquered the earth with some floating footballs and a “Paradox Machine”.  He was then shot by his own wife and refused to regenerate… and died.

A sinister cult worshipped him and eventually brought him back using a Potion of Life – a process jeopardised when his wife turned up with a Potion of Death… but he was then simply kidnapped to work on an Immortality Gate, which he fixed to turn every human into another one of himself.  He then brought the Time Lords back too, although Rassilon undid his GM work.  He disappeared back into the Time War with Rassilon and the other Time Lords when the Doctor broke their link with the earth by destroying the White Point Star diamond.

——–

You know, summing that up just sort of clarifies for me how much more ridiculous the “nu-Who” Master stories have been…

The “Whoniverse” is a complicated place.  Ever aware of this, and the confusions that can arise, your friendly Oodcasters present the beginning of the end of your confusions…  The Oodcast Guide.  Each entry in this weighty online tome will be compiled using the very best of what remains of the Oodcast’s collective memory, and therefore absolutely and thoroughly under-researched.

So, let’s get cracking.  First up, we’ll take you through the most important part of the series…  The Doctor.

__

The First Doctor __

The Doyen of doctors, the original was a crotchety old man who insisted on surrounding himself with young people and wearing a hat the shape of a fur-lined cone (which, combined with his white hair gave him the appearance of a time travelling Mr Whippy…)  He also chose the TARDIS with the broken chameleon circuit, presumably, so we can’t assume his judgement in travelling methods was any less flawless than his fashion sense.

He travelled with teachers, space pilots, resistance fighters, rescued spaceship passengers, secretaries and sailors before collapsing and regenerating for the first time.

Tremendously knowledgeable on scientific matters, but curiously awful at flying his own time machine, was the first to encounter Daleks and Cybermen, as well as taking jollies to Mexico, Ancient Greece, China and revolutionary France, met cowboys, cavemen and the Celestial Toymaker.

Oh yes, and he had a library card (see Vampires of Venice).  Eventually, old age took its toll and he regenerated for the first time, into a time-travelling bad-hair-day.

__

The Second Doctor __

Slightly shambolic and unpredictable, the second doctor had the appearance of a tramp that wandered into Mr Benn’s favourite costume shop: with a shaggy pudding-bowl haircut, the occasional massive fur coat and Rupert Bear’s favourite trousers.

But there was more to him than fashion statements.  He was mercurial and fascinatingly clever, while clumsy and caring towards those in distress.  He also established the formidable team with Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, and was the first to openly (and shamelessly) use a sonic screwdriver on screen.

Surrounded by frightened Victorian teenagers, certain UNIT officers, hot-headed Scottish warriors and stupidly intelligent young women, he took on the cybermen and daleks again with nothing but his intelligence and a recorder, is still the only Doctor to take on the Ice Warriors as enemies, guided his friends through an attempted mind robbery, faced creatures from the deep and Yetis in the London Underground before being forced to become Worzel Gummidge by the Time Lords.

___

The Third Doctor

Geriatric jujitsu exponents everywhere raised a cheer – for this was their doctor…

Beginning as a victim of friendly fire, and then becoming a confused clothing and vehicle thief as well as saviour of mankind in a plastics factory was something of a rollercoaster of a first day.  If it was possible for a Time Lord to have a mid-life crisis, this was it: fast machines, short-skirted female companions and more action than is seemly for someone of advancing years, this doctor was a kind of Budget Bond.  With his own Blofeld too: enter… the Master.

During the course of his careering about, he encountered the daleks again, the Master, daemons in Bronze age barrows, the Master, giant green poisonous maggots, the Master, fascist versions of reality, the Master, two sets of underwater cousins (who’s idea of “self-defence” is creeping aboard sea forts and murdering people), the Master, mind control machines, the Master, lost aliens, the Master, potato-headed warrior Sontarans, the Master, and the giant spiders which would ultimately be his end.  And the Master.

Did remarkably little travelling around his immediate environs for someone with itchy interstellar feet confined to just the one planet.  He did, however, reverse the polarity of more things than any other doctor.

Radiation brought his dashing about to an abrupt halt, and he regenerated soon after into that one-legged sailor in Blackadder II that drank his own wee and wanted to marry Nursey.

__

The Fourth Doctor

Described as looking like a “Space vagrant”, the fourth incarnation was eccentric both in action and dress sense (although not quite as much as the previous doctors, it has to be said).  He pioneered the use of scarves as weaponry (see Hand of Fear), the use of confectionary to calm agitated beings, and the construction of jacket pockets from Mary Poppins’ old carpet bags.

Superbly intelligent, witty and fond of jelly babies, this doctor would stick around longer than any other and inspire thousands of children to beg mothers everywhere to get knitting.

In the TARDIS, which gained a glorious oak-panelled look for a time, he entertained journalists, (oddly clumsy but very likeable) UNIT medical officers, savage warriors, Time Ladies, robotic dogs, one rather annoying stowaway boy genius, an aristocratic brainbox and, just before his end, a loudmouth air hostess.

His battles though, were many and varied – taking on all manner of robots (giant ones, servile mining ones, mummified ones, half-human pirate captain ones and reproduction human ones), ancient alien powers, criminal time lords, Sontarans again, female radioactive creatures conveniently buried for centuries under a quarry, disturbing scary mannequins, amphibious lifeforms hiding in lighthouses, art-dealing monsters and – perhaps most famously – the daleks.

His end came when he met the Master again, and fell from a radar dish.  Thus becoming the chap off of All Creatures Great and Small.

Next time…  Doctors 5 – 8…