The end of a series which has seen the latest actor to grace the part of the Master. Time for me to answer the question literally no-one has been asking. Where does Michelle Gomez fit into my personal rankings of Masters? Yes – I can’t see the end of the series without another one of my personal lists.

These are my own rankings, but what about yours? Please feel free to share your opinions on the great man/woman.

7. #5 Eric Roberts (8th Doctor Movie)

Eric’s performance has been said to be “Cartoon terrible”. This isn’t my opinion, it’s actually Eric himself. You really do have to admire the man for self awareness. Honestly – I’ve seen him in a few things and don’t think he’s a bad actor, but the Director said he wanted it “big”, he’d heard the old show could be a bit camp and pitched it at pure panto, as imagined by someone who had only heard of panto vaguely. Sometimes I watch and laugh along with it. Most times I just think “Oh, dear”.

How the ?u%& did he do that?

Apparently he could survive Dalek extermination. His remains were delivered to the Doctor by the Daleks (unusually accommodating of them), only to emerge in snake form and take over people. No – me neither. Terrance Dicks gamely tried to write a loose semblance of a narrative over these events in the novel The Eight Doctors. Bit of a lost cause that one Terrance.

6. #7 John Simm (Utopia, Last of the Time Lords, End of Time)

Love Simm as an actor. Genuinely engaging in virtually everything I’ve seen him in. I don’t think his Master worked, and I think it was a fundamental error in writing. Again – why ask a good character actor to amp it up and play an infant on a sugar-rush?

Don’t get me wrong, there are some good scenes, and moments of calm lunacy which I do get (the scene as he taps out his drumbeat, staring into space after murdering the cabinet is fantastic). It really is just the scenes directly opposed to the Doctor. When you imagine the ghost of Anthony Ainley saying “Tone it down a notch, love”, you know there is something wrong. I heard that far two many times. I’m afraid the ghost of Heath Ledger’s Joker loom’s large in this one.

How the ?u%& did he do that?

OK – You will yourself to Death to circumnavigate regeneration. Your body is cremated (“Don’t cremate me”) and here you come, back from the dead. Summoned in a Black Magic ceremony by a ring and the blood of your ex. By a group of butch prison wardens who looked like they’ve been imported from Prisoner Cell Block H. No – me neither.

And people complain about a moon-egg!!

5. #4 Anthony Ainley (Fourth to Seventh Doctors)

Where do you start with Ainley? I’ll start with a quote from @JimTheFish where he questioned “why the hell would the Master want to regenerate as the same character!!”. Just because it made me laugh. Because with the variability of the Doctors appearance, the Masters first visibly human “rejuvenation” (because it wasn’t technically regeneration) with Black hair, groomed goatee must show a lack of imagination?

Ainley put in some variable performance as the Master in a variable period of the shows history. He’s the writers and Directors bitch, let’s be honest. Other Masters had the benefit of playing against one Doctor to a strict code enforced by a single script editor/Lead writer. He didn’t.

“You want camp – I can do camp. You want character work? OK – let’s talk.”

Watch him in Mark of the Rani (which I find appalling) and he’s written as a melodrama loving buffoon. Watch him in The Five Doctors, Logopolis, Castrovalva and Survival and I think you can see the better aspects of his work.

How the ?u%& did he do that?

Where the hell do you start? Ainley was the Master (chortle) of the sudden return from certain death. Trapped in a collapsing temporal incursion? No problem. Beamed without a TARDIS to an alien world to be the plaything of an alien race? See you next week. Incinerated in the fire from a volcano? Just a flesh wound. The man would baffle Houdini his miraculous escape routines.

4. #2 Peter Pratt (Deadly assassin) #3 Geoffrey Beevers (Keeper of Traken)

A lot of our knowledge of regeneration and its limits came from this period as the Master regenerates beyond thirteen and the results are horrific. Twisted and distorted, only hatred and bitterness give him the will to continue, and seek to extend his life by whatever means.

I think Pratt and Beevers both do a good job, hampered somewhat by the prosthetics of the time. I’ve often wondered if JK Rowling (who was a bit of a Doctor Who fan when young) saw Deadly Assassin and it ingrained subconsciously on her. Compare the Master of this period and the position of Voldermort in the early Harry Potter books and there are some similarities, with them jointly sharing dialogue about living a half life, having gone further than any other, etc.

The one thing that they suffer from is a lack of obvious charm and being so serious. But against the fourth Doctor, perhaps that was the point?

How the ?u%& did he do that?

Well – get into that state is the obvious question. And survive in it. Other than that he had a miraculous escape from a chasm in Deadly Assassin, but was clearly shown later leaving Gallifrey.

3. #6 Derek Jacobi (Utopia)

Gosh – what a coup. Jacobi has dabbled in the world of the Whoniverse in audio, but it was a delight to have that reveal on TV, and see the cosy charm of Yana gave way to the hollow, bitter, megalomaniac who’d quite happily kill the lovely alien who’d been helping him. Because he didn’t like the way she talked. It’s all too brief, but I’d love, somehow, to see him again. He’s pretty masterful. Clearly the Doctor can never know that Yana is the Master, but that wouldn’t stop me swallowing a bucketful of technobabble to see Jacobi, as the Master, face of against John Hurt’s War Doctor. Clash of the Titans. We’ll never see it.

How the ?u%& did he do that?

Pretty clear, all in all. Remains from the movie resurrected by the Time Lords (as is their gift), ran, and hid himself in a way the Doctor had already revealed! Huzzah!!

2. #8 Michelle Gomez (Series 8)

As insane as the Simm Master, but somehow much more terrifying. I think a lot of this comes down to a simple equation. I think Simm was an actor pretending to be insane. I’m pretty sure that Michelle Gomez, is, at some fundamental level, insane. She’s brilliant at the scenes she’s given, turning from playful to nasty on the turn of a coin. Effortlessly odd, a preening ego playing games. A stalker of a Time Lord. Someone who desperately wants to prove a point.

I think, of all the scenes I’ve seen the Master in, her countdown to death for Osgood will live the longest in memory. It’s a work of manic genius on her part, and narrative playfulness on the writers that would have Alfred Hitchcock applauding. You know its coming. You know it can’t happen. You know it’s coming though. Bugger. She’s dead. No care, no remorse. Her “last temptation of The Doctor” plan is audacious and, for me, far more in tune of the Doctor/Master “I need to prove that I’m right” dynamic we’ve seen previously.

How the ?u%& did she do that?

After reading the preceding entries, do we really feel that Missy was casually caught out by a Cyberman blaster? I think not. Hope she didn’t have to regenerate. Gomez was superb and I want additional airtime. I hope they have confidence to add layers to the character.

1. #1 Roger Delgado (Pertwee Years)

The original, and I still think the best. I think each Master has to be ranked alongside their Doctor for full effect. Delgado was what Pertwee actually needed. He was marvellous against Delgado – a true double act. I think there were hints at that double act in this encounter between Capaldi – Gomez.

The 50th Anniversary year of 2013 also saw the 40th Anniversary of his untimely death. I wrote a tribute at the time, which I hope you may enjoy reading.

I think he would have been delighted as Gomez as a replacement though. She’s very different, but I’ve always thought that the Master should understand the Doctor at a basic level. I think Gomez (and her script) conveyed that feeling that she understood her old friend only too well. And she was trying to welcome him to her own team. To prove that childhood point.

How the ?u%& did he do that?

It’s pretty all much good. You could question how he escaped a time loop designed to trap Axos while he was still in it, but the Doctor has been shown to break through timeloops himself by will. A Groundhog Day idea on Doctor Who would really be short lived 😀