rodlox ([info]rodlox) wrote in [info]who_otp,
@ 2008-05-20 13:06:00
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Current mood:enthralled
Entry tags:discussion, doctor (other), eight, five, four, nine, one, queries, seven, six, susan, ten, three, two

Personalities? (or, what makes a Doctor a Doctor and not a Master?)
This is what happens when I write Susan: I wonder which aspects of her personality would remain the same, and which would be different.

(not sure if anyone else has the same problem)

Ie, when I wrote Paving the way for toclafane, I decided to have that regeneration drop her screaming, but keep the cold-and-focused mind, and added Lucy's slightly gaping expression. In my current WIP The Great And Mighty Susan Foreman, I'm reversing them - dropping the cold focus, and keeping the screaming.

Back when the Sound of Drums-Last of the Time Lords set of episodes first aired, there were a lot of protests and complaints that Simm was not a proper Master (all that running and dancing might be part of why).

Basically, we know that there are constants to Time Lord behavior, at least on an individual level, because we've seen them. ie,
- the Doctor always rights wrongs and puts a stop to invasions.
- the Master is always trying to gain power or leverage.
- Romana is...I don't know, because I've never really seen any of her episodes.

Yet each of those three has variables, things unique to particular incarnations/regenerations, both in terms of attitudes to situations**, mannerisms, dialect, and - you get the idea. Is there anything we can know with certainty about the constants in a Time Lord? After all, the Doctor always tries to save worlds and people, regardless of his incarnation/regeneration; similarly, all of the Master's regenerations* have tried to take over a world, if not the multiverse.

As far as I know, though, there are some Time Lords of whom we have only one incarnation of - making it more difficult to know what are their constants & what are their variables. ie,
- Susan Foreman(?***)
- the Meddling Monk.
- the Rani(?)
- Omega.
- Lord President {"The Three Doctors"}




* = I think Jacobi!Master may be excused his not taking anything over - being shot tends to interfere in such ways.

** = would 1, 4, 7, and either 9 or 10 handle the same situation in the same way? I doubt it.

*** = I read somewhere on the internet that Susan was portrayed by both Carol Ann Ford, and by Audrey Hepburn -- was this speculation as to what one of Susan's later regenerations might look like, or did it actually occur onscreen?


thoughts? ideas? opinions?


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[info]scarfman
2008-05-24 09:07 pm UTC (link)

Audrey Hepburn never played Susan. (I think it more likely that you read someone remarking that Susan looked like Audrey Hepburn.)

As for the Master: I maintain that the Master we saw during the UNIT years, then saw all decayed on Gallifrey and Traken, then saw subsuming the bodies and lifeforce of Tremas and of Bruce the ambulance driver (among, no doubt, others) - all that was one personality, his thirteenth. By whatever means the Master managed on the occasion of the Time War to acquire another regenerative cycle, Professor Yana was only the second incarnation of the Master we'd seen onscreen, and Harold Saxon only the third. Except, really the fourth and fifth, because the Monk and the War Chief also were the Master. Everyone who argues that the Monk and/or the War Chief can't've been the Master because their personalities were too different from his can thank Davies and Simm for tanking their argument.

The other Time Lords you listed have had only one incarnation onscreen apiece, unless you go in for speculation such as that the Monk was an earlier Master (as, e.g., I do, above), or that the Lord President in The Three Doctors was the same Lord President assassinated in The Deadly Assassin, or that the Castellan in the Peter Davison era was Castellan Kelnar of The Invasion of Time.

But there is another Time Lord we're certain we saw more than one incarnation of: The Doctor's former Academy professor Borusa, at first a Cardinal in the Tom Baker era and then Lord President of the High Council in the Peter Davison era, two different incarnations each. In all four of his incarnations we viewers met, Borusa maintained a belief in political expediency and in dispassion that was challenged and often disproven by the Doctor's irreverence and iconoclasm.

But to summarize, the Time Lords we know we've seen more'n one of are the Doctor, the Master, Romana and Borusa.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]rodlox
2008-05-24 11:51 pm UTC (link)
ah. many thanks for pointing that out to me. I'd thought that, since teh decayed one looked different & had a different actor, that they were separate regenerations. (it "helped" that I've seen only four or five - total - of both Delgado and pre-Ainley Masters)

ahhh, so that's who folks mean when they say "Borusa". okay.

thank you.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]scarfman
2008-05-25 12:53 am UTC (link)

I'd thought that, since teh decayed one looked different & had a different actor, that they were separate regenerations.

Available data are not conclusive on the point; they can be interpreted that way. My hypothesis, however, accomodates the observed data that the Master's "Harold Saxon" personality varied widely from the personality/ies observed during the UNIT years through his subsumption into the TARDIS Eye of Harmony.

(I will point out that the decayed version was played by two different actors in Deadly Assassin and Keeper of Traken, so it can't be argued logically that the difference of actor in the role in The Deadly Assassin means that it's a different incarnation than previously.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]rockthetardis
2008-05-25 07:18 am UTC (link)
Here from [info]who_daily.

I think Simm!Master was just so damn happy to not be a human anymore. We're not sure at what age he fobwatched himself, but I assume he was stuck as a human for most of that life. There's also the bit about there being no one to get in his way - except for the Doctor, and he had him completely at his mercy. And he had the entire planet under his control. If I were in his place, I'd be dancing a jig, too.

(Reply to this)

What makes the Doctor a Doctor, and not the Master?
[info]safcooper
2008-05-25 10:17 am UTC (link)
My response was too long for the comment so I wrote it at my journal:

Here it is!

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