This is so delicious (at least by the guidelines of writing a good, solid archvillain properly).
He knows damned good and well the way she will react, and he knows why. He knows exactly how to establish rapport with her, how to then break that rapport by revealing that her greatest regret–their lost friendship–will always haunt her. By demonstrating “all those things you enjoyed, all those things we did together, I was lying in wait all along to break your trust and stick you and your friends in an inescapably lethal situation. And then I removed you from the situation and made you watch as they hurtled to their death.”
He turns around and shows a feigned face of innocent bewilderment to the Companions because he wants them to be as horrified by the revelation of who the Doctor really is, and what her real limitations are; he wants them to experience the horror and disillusionment he felt centuries and centuries ago. This is more than mere mockery: it sends a message. It aims for COMRADES in the HATE for the Doctor. Everything he does, down to asking Yaz on the motorcycle “is this what traveling with the Doctor is like” and offering Graham a chance to peek into his files on the Doctor: that is him trying to get the Companions to acknowledge the monster (the “Oncoming Storm”) that he feels he’s known all along.
This is up there with getting Twelve to nearly shoot Clara inside a Dalek armor, and befriending Bill for ten years only to hand her over to become a Cyberman who “waited for you.” This is up there with making Ten an old man who had to bear witness to the future of humanity slaughtering itself.
This is targeting the Doctor’s friends, the “replacements” for the Master whom the Doctor left behind–because they ran through those red grasses in Gallifrey so long ago, but the Doctor kept running, and the Master “never was a good sprinter”–and hurting them, and implying to both them, and the Doctor, “you can’t save everyone, because you will never save me, and you bring death and ruin to those you care for, no matter how determinedly you may run from your past.”
“Doctor, what did you bring here?”
“Gotcha, finally.”
“Everything you thought you knew is a lie.”
Chibnall knows how to write the Master. 13/10.
