Russell T Davies continues the three-part story that reintroduces The Master with a followup from "Utopia," titled "The Sound of Drums."
It's rare that Davies' writing follows the guidelines set by the Doctor Who pioneers of yesteryear, but after watching this episode, Davies for the most part seemed to stay focused on story development. The previous installment left us with a traditional cliffhanger, with The Master regenerating and dematerializing in The Doctor's TARDIS, leaving The Doctor, Martha and Harkness to the Futurekind. Davies opens the second part of The Master trilogy with The Doctor, Martha and Harkness appearing in present-day Earth via Harkness' wrist teleporter.
The pacing of the episode was average for Doctor Who - not too slow, not super fast either. The plot seemed to thicken evenly on both sides of the fence - The Doctor's and The Master's - throughout the duration of the episode.
John Simm was terrific at portraying a ecstatic, diabolical Master. The Cabinet scene was particularly well done, from the moment he enters the room and tosses the portfolios, to the time when a Cabinet member's dying w
ords are, "You're a madman!!!" At which point The Master, wearing a gas mask, gives the political "thumbs up." Another scene that was well done with The Master was at the airport when The Master greets the President of the United States.
For the most part, the incidental music in this episode was used sparingly, usually being absent for the serious dialogue scenes. That's always worth a point or two on the Whoscale. When Murray Gold did use music, the scores were usually subtle such as those in "Blink," "The Empty Child," and "Boom Town;" which although is orchestrated, doesn't sound like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Lord of the Rings. This episode suffered the most damage during the final ten minutes, when Davies reveals that he is still hell-bent on his villains being obsessed with world domination. The Master shouts,"Here come the drums!" and a song titled "Voodoo Child" starts blasting for a few moments.
As with all of Davies' season finales, he goes with world domination and strength in numbers for the base of his plot. Six billion Toclafane decend on Earth at the end of this episode, instructed by The Master to kill 1/10 of the population.
Davies also does something abnormal for his writing and goes to great lengths in this episode to link the new series with the original series. Indicated in this episode by flashbacks of Gallifrey, Time Lords, and a conversation between The Doctor and The Master about their lives long ago on their home planet. Something else that echoed the original series was the aging of The Doctor into an old man, which was reminiscent of "The Leisure Hive" with the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker.
While Davies' stories are usually peppered with plotholes, we learn a great deal in this episode that suddenly make many events throughout the season make sense that otherwise wouldn't have. For example, I mentioned in my review of "The Lazarus Experiment" how Martha's family was always involved. We learn in this episode that The Master had in fact been on Earth for eighteen months prior to Martha even leaving with The Doctor at the end of "Smith And Jones," thus at that time he had already experienced the events of "Utopia" and went about taking steps to lure The Doctor and company into a trap. This is tricky to understand, because it was so well conceived, but in short, it's a ginormous paradox spanning the events of the season. Certainly a paradox worthy of rivaling those written by Mr. Moffat. The Master even refers to the events of "The Lazarus Experiment" moments before reversing the effects of Professor Lazarus' experiment and applying it to The Doctor, resulting in his sudden aging. Davies obviously already had this well thought out, because during a tank scene in "The Runaway Bride" (months before the airing of Series 3, mind you) a voice on the tank's radio mentions Mr. Saxon's name - the alias The Master operated under since his arrival on Earth prior to the events of that episode.
For the most part, a fantastic episode. Davies often let me down with two parters because he often had to incorporate two separate plotlines running parallel to each other in order to sustain a story for the length of two episodes. The "sub-plot" was often a personal, emotional, love story for The Doctor and his companion. However, in the case of this trilogy, so far Davies had been able to provide two installments of Doctor Who that both stuck tightly to a central plotline, all revolving around The Master.
It's rare that Davies' writing follows the guidelines set by the Doctor Who pioneers of yesteryear, but after watching this episode, Davies for the most part seemed to stay focused on story development. The previous installment left us with a traditional cliffhanger, with The Master regenerating and dematerializing in The Doctor's TARDIS, leaving The Doctor, Martha and Harkness to the Futurekind. Davies opens the second part of The Master trilogy with The Doctor, Martha and Harkness appearing in present-day Earth via Harkness' wrist teleporter.
The pacing of the episode was average for Doctor Who - not too slow, not super fast either. The plot seemed to thicken evenly on both sides of the fence - The Doctor's and The Master's - throughout the duration of the episode.
John Simm was terrific at portraying a ecstatic, diabolical Master. The Cabinet scene was particularly well done, from the moment he enters the room and tosses the portfolios, to the time when a Cabinet member's dying w
ords are, "You're a madman!!!" At which point The Master, wearing a gas mask, gives the political "thumbs up." Another scene that was well done with The Master was at the airport when The Master greets the President of the United States.For the most part, the incidental music in this episode was used sparingly, usually being absent for the serious dialogue scenes. That's always worth a point or two on the Whoscale. When Murray Gold did use music, the scores were usually subtle such as those in "Blink," "The Empty Child," and "Boom Town;" which although is orchestrated, doesn't sound like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Lord of the Rings. This episode suffered the most damage during the final ten minutes, when Davies reveals that he is still hell-bent on his villains being obsessed with world domination. The Master shouts,"Here come the drums!" and a song titled "Voodoo Child" starts blasting for a few moments.
As with all of Davies' season finales, he goes with world domination and strength in numbers for the base of his plot. Six billion Toclafane decend on Earth at the end of this episode, instructed by The Master to kill 1/10 of the population.
Davies also does something abnormal for his writing and goes to great lengths in this episode to link the new series with the original series. Indicated in this episode by flashbacks of Gallifrey, Time Lords, and a conversation between The Doctor and The Master about their lives long ago on their home planet. Something else that echoed the original series was the aging of The Doctor into an old man, which was reminiscent of "The Leisure Hive" with the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker.
While Davies' stories are usually peppered with plotholes, we learn a great deal in this episode that suddenly make many events throughout the season make sense that otherwise wouldn't have. For example, I mentioned in my review of "The Lazarus Experiment" how Martha's family was always involved. We learn in this episode that The Master had in fact been on Earth for eighteen months prior to Martha even leaving with The Doctor at the end of "Smith And Jones," thus at that time he had already experienced the events of "Utopia" and went about taking steps to lure The Doctor and company into a trap. This is tricky to understand, because it was so well conceived, but in short, it's a ginormous paradox spanning the events of the season. Certainly a paradox worthy of rivaling those written by Mr. Moffat. The Master even refers to the events of "The Lazarus Experiment" moments before reversing the effects of Professor Lazarus' experiment and applying it to The Doctor, resulting in his sudden aging. Davies obviously already had this well thought out, because during a tank scene in "The Runaway Bride" (months before the airing of Series 3, mind you) a voice on the tank's radio mentions Mr. Saxon's name - the alias The Master operated under since his arrival on Earth prior to the events of that episode.
For the most part, a fantastic episode. Davies often let me down with two parters because he often had to incorporate two separate plotlines running parallel to each other in order to sustain a story for the length of two episodes. The "sub-plot" was often a personal, emotional, love story for The Doctor and his companion. However, in the case of this trilogy, so far Davies had been able to provide two installments of Doctor Who that both stuck tightly to a central plotline, all revolving around The Master.
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