For just a moment there, I thought maybe.
This scene, like so many others, broke my heart.
This scene was proof positive that the Master’s self-destructive tendencies, which began with Missy, only continued into the Dhawan face, and it is one more reason why I found the new canon so difficult to bear: for his sake.
He feels that he is an extension only of the Doctor, when he has spent several lifetimes arduously building up a record of infamy just to prove to the world (and therefore, external locus of control, himself) that he is worthy of not only renown, but regard, period.
His need in Spyfall for the Doctor specifically to kneel and call him by his moniker, a moniker all about autonomy and control; his comments in Spyfall that killing people make him feel that he’s doing what he should; his comments in Timeless Children that he has no better self; his comments here, that “I am death”; his every action; ALL of these things point to the belief that he can be no more than a REACTION, and that that reaction must be OPPOSITIONAL to a force of light and creation and hope. It must be darkness and destruction and despair. He’s become more dependent than anyone, and he knows it. He’s destroyed his own planet to prove a point, and still the rage and the helpless despair linger, because of that belief.
And what’s worse, this is a belief he has always held, a fear he has always had: that his world pivots around the Doctor, but hers can go on thriving without him. Now, to him, because of a genetic sequence, it’s “proven true.”
He wants to die. And the Master has never wanted to die before. And it’s devastating, because, as Sacha Dhawan himself said, despite the Master never gives up, he’s indomitable, and something about that makes him admirable.
Where is that indomitability now?
In gestalt theory, one part of an artistic composition being changed–one color, one passage of value or perspective–means that every part is changed. Now that the Doctor’s fundamental selfhood has changed, so has the Master’s.
And that bothers me a LOT.
HOLY SHIT