#dhawan does not

[ssaalexblake]

the master is a woman for one regeneration and suddenly becoming a good guy is like, the Worst thing to want for that story to conclude with and that it’s actively wanted by people sometimes floors me 

[wincheskka]

Oh Ncuti, you know us so well!!! so when does he come back?

[dykepaldi]

some doodles of the universes favourite girlfailure

[clowns0cks]

you know when you see a post that is SO good and they say literally what you're thinking about a show/character etc BUT they get one important thing wrong, a thing that for you is fundamental to the understanding of the show/character so you can't reblog it. Like you were so close. SO CLOSE.

[skaifayaheda]

Anyway so I’m low-key obsessed with this because I like to think that that’s indeed The Doctor pushing back agains his hijacking

[myauditionfordrphil]

Imagine having a son and not getting to meet him for years, not having any contact with him for months, not knowing how he remembers you, having no idea whether or not he knows that you have retired, wishing that he knows your journey and remembers you as a good human and knows what great things his dad did just because you fell in love with the wrong person who cheated you and kept you from being with your son during his childhood. And yet, you keep smiling through all of it.

[demigodofhoolemere]

I’ve been watching The Power of the Doctor with subtitles on and they’ve already been pretty poor throughout, with an absurd number of very obvious and bad errors, but I have to pause because now I am absolutely HOWLING with laughter. During the scene where they’re reversing the forced regeneration, and the Master says, “I erased you, Doctor,” for some terrible and hysterical reason, THIS is what the subtitles say:

[oreo102]

Hi, hello, the spymaster has massively pathetic energy. Like that man wants 13 to fuck him so bad and he wants to be yaz’s friend so bad and both of them are like “go the fuck away” and it’s so funny (i mean this in a nice way, i promise)

Like their dynamic is “fuck you” “if only you would!!” And it’s hilarious

[mayasdeluca]

THE WAY HOME 2x03 'When You Were Young' ALICE AND ELLIOT

[quantumshade]

gomez!master is by far the best one of nuwho and I will NOT hear otherwise. she feels so much like delgado!master in that her motivations are not exclusively world domination. even before her redemption arc in s10, she has a complex agenda of her own and sometimes that means her goals align with those of the doctor’s. i love seeing the master team up with companions it’s my absolute favorite thing. her dynamic with clara is absolutely fascinating and i find the “i want my friend back” motivation to be five million times more interesting than the “i want to Destroy You Forever” motivation or whatever it was that dhawan!master had going on

[bunlikely]

I love Dhawan!Master, but I want to take a moment to think about how good a companion O would have been if he hadn't secretly been the Master. Imagine:

Him being observant and analytical, trying to work through problems pragmatically

Him being let down by his bookish physical abilities and having to think his way out of situations

Him getting a little flustered

Him making little disquieting observations like when he said "it's like we're their prey" and then immediately was like "I'm sorry, that's not helpful..."

The Doctor talking scifi technobabble to him and him understanding and having something to add, discussing instead of just being explained to

Him having little fanboy moments when he recognized an alien something from his research (or alternately having "oh shit, we're all going to die" moments and having to be talked around by everyone else's optimism)

Him being a little bit of a flirt, not in an in your face way like Jack but in a subtle way

His chemistry with the Doctor and Yaz

Bisexual love triangle

[quietwingsinthesky]

i had a dream last night that was the projector scene from i saw the tv glow except starring spymaster & 13 and it was extremely distressing. she did not want to hear about him burying himself alive. she did not.

[intuitive-revelations]

One major implication I don't think that episode really took the time to settle on is the implication that the Toymaker has already massively messed up the universe?

Toymaker: I came to this universe with such delight. And I played them all, Doctor. I toyed with supernovas, turned galaxies into spin tops. I gambled with God and made him a jack-in-the-box. Toymaker: I made a jigsaw out of your history... did you like it? Toymaker: The Master was dying and begged for his life with one final game, and when he lost, I sealed him for all eternity within my gold tooth.

And later:

Toymaker: Do you think a grand total of two can cause me to shiver when I've played against the Guardians of Time and Space and shrank them into voodoo dolls?

So to summarise:

It's implied the universe is now even more destroyed by the Toymaker's reality warping. Granted we don't know what the scale of this is, unlike the Flux, but it's possibly proportionally quite big considering how little of the universe is left already? That being said, he could have done this in history before the Flux, since it was a linear event, in which case this is far less of an issue.

That being said, it's likely this was reversed by the Toymaker being banished - so we're probably not going to see galaxy-sized spin-tops in the future. How many people died, and if they come back however, is less clear.

The Master (presumably dying after POTD), and the Black and White Guardians (at least - possibly the other 3 guardians too, excluding the Toymaker - though they're the main ones, and it's "order and chaos" specifically which are mentioned in the episode) have all gamed with the Toymaker and lost. The tooth!Master is at least left in our universe, and may possibly be secure with UNIT. The fate of the Guardians is a bit less clear, as is the implications for the balance of the universe.

But perhaps the biggest thing, and the one the episode actually took the time to give us a confused 14 reaction shot to:

The Toymaker has a made a 'jigsaw' out of the Doctor's history (or maybe history in general, although he does say 'your').

So what does that mean?

The hint is that the Doctor has already experienced whatever it is... so what was it that he caused with his interference?

To me there's perhaps three possible options:

The Star Beast - this would be an oddly minor thing to refer to, but arguably makes the most sense in the 'arc' of the specials. Perhaps he's referring to the Doctor encountering Beep the Meep for the first time again? ie. taken one jigsaw piece and exchanged its position in his timeline. For now this might be my headcanon regarding it, but would be really odd to be the intention, especially since we're already disregarding most of the other appearances of the Toymaker in the EU? It's also of course not the first time we've had an adaptation of an EU story in the main show without referencing the original (the no. 1 example being Human Nature - there are others like The Lodger and Dalek, but they're different enough that they can co-exist in a continuity with their source material).

The Timeless Child / Fugitive Doctor - RTD has said he's not going retcon the arc, but this arguably makes the most sense as a 'puzzle' being made out of the Doctor's history? Especially with regards to the Fugitive Doctor anyway, given there's the additional complications of her a) being the "Doctor", b) having a Police Box TARDIS, yet c) seemingly being from around the time of the Anchoring of the Thread.

The Toymaker's being time-wimey, it hasn't happened yet / it's nothing in particular - While it would be a bit confusing to contradict the one detail we got in the episode, this is always a possibility too. After all, there was a lot of sequel hooking all across these specials, so it might be something RTD will come back to, especially if we are going to be seeing more of the past Doctors in future series? Hopefully not by the biregeneration theory he gave about them all being split retroactively, because that is literally insane and doesn't even make the little sense the 14-15 one does....wtf.

So overall, what do I think?

Well I think I can be somewhat forgiving with the damage to the rest of the universe, just because it's implied that it might be reset, and the scale/lethality was never established. Plus like I said, there is some justification to the proportional issue not being too bad when combined with the Flux.

The Black and White Guardians implication is... interesting. We are gradually building up more and more of those 'Great Old One' / pre-universe elements in (New)NewWho, so there's a good chance this could come back in the future. It probably won't have immediate effects on the universe, as the Guardians seemed to be more concerned with specific dangers like the Key to Time. It could perhaps lead to more Eternals popping up across the universe, given the Guardians were the only force they really answered to. RTD I think is also quite aware of some of the Eternal-type lore too, since he played around with it quite a bit in those Series 1 articles talking about the Time War.

The Master's obviously coming back and as silly as this was, it does at least justify him being alive after POTD. It actually opens up the possibility of seeing Dhawan himself again too, which would be great! The nail-polished hand picking it up felt like a bit of a trolling moment, after how underwelming all the theories of who did it were when the End of Time came along. Someone pointed out that Kate actually has the same nail-polish, which would be interesting. Perhaps when we next see the Master, they'll be in UNIT captivity, Delgado style?

Finally, the jigsaw line, which is possibly the most interesting. Originally I was going to lean towards this being nothing / a vague setup for future past-Doctor stuff, since that seems to be the default, but now that I've laid it out... I think this could be a setup for more Fugitive!Doctor appearances. It makes the most sense from a story perspective anyway, given what the Toymaker said and some of the questions surrounding her not being answered, whether or not it's the direction the franchise would actually want to go.

After all, as controversial as the Timeless Child lore was, as far as I'm aware Jo Martin was pretty well recieved, and I'm sure RTD would love to look for opportunities to do more with her somehow. Whether he'd want something so continuity dependent from a showrunning perspective, however, is a bit more questionable.

[lupescx]

it was a dark and stormy night…!

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

assuming pythia's curse is no longer in effect and the blinovitch limitation effect is not that much of an issue (or you know might be kinda hot like sensation play idk), do you think two regenerations of the same timelord could conceive a child together?

[nostalgia-tblr]

Every Doctor Who Production Team: "How the **** did they work out the shocking top-secret plot twist already?!?!"