Character
The Master
The Master in Doctor Who (2005), played by John Simm.
He first appears in two guises: a gentle, absent-minded scientist called Professor Yana tending to refugees at the end of the universe, and Harold Saxon, a telegenic British Prime Minister riding a wave of public adoration. Beneath both masks is the Master, a renegade Time Lord and the Doctor's oldest rival, delighted at last to be recognised.
John Simm plays him as barely contained, all beaming charm and quick wit curdling into something manic and cruel in the space of a sentence. The writing lets him be genuinely funny before it lets him be frightening, so the moment his mask drops feels less like a twist than an unleashing.
Friends and schoolmates at the Time Lord Academy in their youth, the divide between the Master's lust for power and the Doctor's empathy for "lesser species" would eventually pull the two farther and farther apart — to the point that the Master often sought to kill the Doctor. Despite this enmity, however, the two would on occasion act as allies, and both continued to yearn for their old friendship.
Played by
Appears in
Doctor Who2005