The Deadly Assassin Part Four

The one where the Master tries to destroy Gallifrey in order to extend his own life...

Has Dr Who ever looked so beaten and bedraggled as Tom does at the start of this episode, following his fight with Goth in the water? The sight of Tom's soaked and wilting curls and his torn and bloodied clothes proves the Doctor has been through hell and back, all in order to try and prove his innocence to Spandrell - which, incidentally, he doesn't strictly do. Spandrell ends up simply believing the Doctor because of what he goes through in the Matrix, and is also willing to believe that Goth is a traitor, without any physical evidence at all. Maybe he was disposed to the Doctor's truth all along, which makes me wonder whether all the Matrix scenes were actually necessary!

Goth is sacrificed by the Master, and left burnt and charred on the brink of death. To make matters worse, the Master calls Goth a "poltroon", a word so unusual and archaic that I had to look it up (it means coward, derived from the 16th century Italian "poltro", or sluggard). The Master is nothing if not well-educated in archaic Earth linguistics...

The Doctor, freed from the Matrix, asks Engin what lies beneath the APC, and discovers that there are vaults "dating from the Old Time". Later, Engin reveals that the President of the High Council of Time Lords has access to the relics of Rassilon, the founder of their society. The Sash and Key of Rassilon are from the Old Time too, and everything about Rassilon and the origins of Gallifreyan society can be found in the Book of the Old Time. This links directly to something Lady Peinforte refers to in Silver Nemesis, when she threatens to reveal the truth about "the Old Time, the Time of Chaos". In the light of what was revealed in The Timeless Children, it's easy to see that whatever did supposedly happen in the Old Time may have been "adjusted" in the manner that Cardinal Borusa later refers to. Fascinating how all of this does actually begin to weave together, despite the gap of decades...

Goth tells the Doctor that he met the Master on the planet Tersurus. He was on the verge of death, having reached the end of his final incarnation. Engin also reveals that Time Lords can only regenerate 12 times: "After the twelfth regeneration there is no plan that will postpone death." All of these revelations about the history and society of the Time Lords were brand new and controversial back in 1976, but have become standard knowledge today (even if lots of it has been altered over the years, like the Master being offered a whole new life cycle in The Five Doctors, and the Doctor being capable of endless life cycles in The Timeless Children).

Incidentally, the passing reference to Tersurus here takes on a greater relevance in Doctor Who expanded fiction. In the (controversial) New Adventure book Lungbarrow, back in the Old Time "the Other" (the Doctor?) sent Susan to Tersurus to protect her from the civil war erupting on Gallifrey. In the BBC book Legacy of the Daleks, the Master apparently hitched a ride to Tersurus with Susan, who thought she defeated him there, but it seems further spin-off fiction (Big Finish) says differently, and the Master ended up disfigured following a run-in with a future incarnation of himself there (this is all crazy, but this point does tell us that the Peter Pratt Master would be aware that he had future incarnations, perhaps spurring him on to seek out that future existence in The Deadly Assassin). Of course, the maddest appearance of Tersurus in Doctor Who is as the setting for the 1999 Comic Relief spoof The Curse of Fatal Death, where the Doctor and Master lock horns again. Argh, my brain hurts...

Where were we? So much mythology to grab hold of! Rassilon ventured with his fleet into the Void, where he harnessed the Eye of Harmony, otherwise known as the nucleus of a Black Hole (interesting that both Rassilon and Omega dabbled with Black Holes). He brought it back to Gallifrey and used it as the central source of power on the planet, bringing "balance to all things" (is the Key to Time also something to do with this?). Although the passage of time means modern Time Lord society thinks the Eye of Harmony is a myth, the Master has established that it is in fact real, and housed just beneath the Panopticon. All he needs to access it is the Key of Rassilon, which is conveniently inside a glass display case just to the side of the Panopticon.

The Master attempts to open the Eye of Harmony, confident that the Sash of Rassilon will prevent him being sucked into the heart of the Black Hole and that he will be rewarded by power and dominion over all matter (including his own life). He manages all this unchallenged. Where is the Chancellery Guard? Are there no alarms or cameras overseeing security in the Capitol?

It is up to the Doctor to clamber his way 100ft up a ventilation shaft (of course!) to stop the Master's dastardly plan, and as the power of the Eye begins to leak out, the Capitol comes under great strain, with masonry crashing to the ground and huge chasms appearing as the Panopticon begins to splinter. It's all very apocalyptic, and the final fight between the two Time Lords is well choreographed, until the Master tumbles into a chasm, seemingly to his doom.

Later, prissy Cardinal Borusa says that half the city is in ruins and countless lives have been lost, and it's a shame we don't get to see some of this, rather than just be told. We see nobody die at all, nobody crushed by falling polystyrene masonry whatsoever. Borusa plans to adjust the truth once more, making Goth the hero and erasing the Doctor's involvement altogether. Nevertheless, the Doctor's old tutor does award his former student 9 out of 10!

The final scene sees the Doctor make off once more in his TARDIS, alone but thirsty for adventure. We glimpse a grandfather clock in the corner, which could also be glimpsed in part 1, and it transpires this is actually the Master's TARDIS. The not-dead Master escapes in his TARDIS in the closing moments, but this scene is so poorly executed that it almost totally undermines everything that's gone before. "Look, the Master," says Spandrell in as much of an uninvolved monotone as George Pravda can muster. Spandrell and Engin are so monumentally unbothered by the Master's survival and escape that it feels like a big joke, but it really does backfire. Why don't they at least try to warn the Doctor? Instead they just observe and comment like automatons. To be fair, the fault is in the writing as much as the acting, but the whole thing is an underpowered, unconvincing mess, and works hard to try and spoil the story as a whole.

The Deadly Assassin is seen as a stone cold classic in fandom, but while it is nicely made and makes some major contributions to Doctor Who and Time Lord mythology, it doesn't quite zing for me. In parts it's quite pedestrian, a little inconsequential despite the density of its revelations, and although it all looks super, the Doctor's foray into the Matrix is largely unnecessary, and could have been richer.

Back in 1977, Jan Vincent-Rudzki, president of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, was particularly galled by this story. "What must have happened is that at the end of The Hand of Fear the Doctor was knocked out when the TARDIS took off and had a crazy mixed-up nightmare about Gallifrey," he wrote. "As a Doctor Who story, The Deadly Assassin is just not worth considering. I've spoken to many people and they all said how this story shattered their illusions of the Time Lords and lowered them to ordinary people. What has happened to the magic of Doctor Who?"

And in September 1978, David Fychan proved fandom was still up in arms about what Robert Holmes had done to Doctor Who, writing: "The most important question about the adventure is not 'how does it fit in?', but 'is it worth trying to fit in?'. The Deadly Assassin is an incongruity in Doctor Who."

Holmes's take on Gallifrey and the Time Lords would become less incongruous just a few months later with the broadcast of The Invasion of Time, but this backlash against the direction the production team tried to take the series would be echoed just as loudly several decades later when Chris Chibnall blew everything we thought we knew out of the water.

Thirty-three years after The Deadly Assassin was shown, readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted it their 20th favourite story of all time, and it had only slipped to number 21 for the 50th anniversary survey a few years later. How times, and opinions, change. Maybe The Timeless Children will endure a similar redemption over the next few decades?

First broadcast: November 20th, 1976

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The final battle between the Doctor and the Master, amid falling masonry and apocalyptic destruction, is well staged.
The Bad: That final scene, in which two old men couldn't be less engaged with the gravity of what they're witnessing.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (story average: 7.3 out of 10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05

NEXT TIME: The Face of Evil...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-deadly-assassin.html

The Deadly Assassin is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Deadly-Assassin-DVD/dp/B001UHNYWI