1doctor3:

(spoilers for season 10 finale)

Many people have argued quite differently about the Master, Missy
and the Doctor and their motives and relationships. I have discussed
it with a tumblr user in two threads
(x and x)

so for convenience, I collected
the arguments here in one thread because I do have a few things to
add.

The Master is an awful person, to the point of almost being a
one-dimensional caricature of evil.

This is your conclusion so let me start here. The Master, in all
the years he has appeared on Doctor Who is a lot of things but never
one-dimensional. I’m not sure how familiar you are with his
background so let me fill you in quickly. Mind you, I will of course
only canon:

1. During their childhood the Doctor and the Master were bullied
by a boy named Torvic. To save his friend’s life the Doctor had to
eventually kill that boy. Later a personification of death asked the
Doctor to be her champion. He refuses and suggests she takes the
Master instead as her disciple. She agrees and the Doctor forgets
about the whole encounter. In canon it is the Doctor who becomes a
killer first and then conveniently escapes responsibility for it by
making the Master bear the consequences.

2. At the age of eight the drums were implanted into the Master’s
head and always seen as a sign of madness. The drums worsened over
time. It was only when the Master forced the Doctor to actually
listen to them, that the Doctor believed. So we have a little boy
thinking he is not worthy being a Timelord (because why else would he
“turn mad” when he looked?) and not even his very best friend
even so much as entertains the idea that it could be something else.

3. Koschei (as the Master preferred to be called for a while) was
on an academic research mission when the Doctor was expelled from the
academy, forcing him into a conflict of loyalty. Again, it is the
Doctor who is kicked out first. The Master follows on his own accord
because after all they made a pact to see all the stars together.

4. Koschei was obsessed with order to the point that the Timelords
planted a spy to monitor him. That spy, a Timelady posing as a human,
became his companion. When he eventually found out about her true
identity he lost a good part of the ability to trust anyone. Isn’t it
beautiful that the Master wanted companions, too? Companions, not
servants, not “disposables”. And is it really so wrong that he
would despise the Doctor’s companions and insist that they themselves
are the only real companions for each other?

5. Later the Doctor made a deal with Death to grant the Master ten
years of peace and sanity. At the end of those years the Doctor was
supposed to kill him. During those ten years the Master forgot about
his true identity, took the name of John Smith, became a doctor and
even had a stable relationship. If this is the Doctor’s attempt to
take responsibility, it really is rather poorly executed. He never
asked the Master if he wanted that kind of “saving”. What are ten
years in the life of a Timelord after all? Is the Doctor portrayed
here as agreeing to a mercy killing? Possible. But completely without
any consent from the Master. Also, isn’t it ironic that of all things
the Master, free from the drums and his past, chooses to be a doctor?
That “good” is obviously in him.

6. The Master met Sato Katsura, a samurai who was accidentally
made immortal as a result of his involvement with the Doctor. It had
left him so bitter, he began to follow the Master. This is probably
the most obvious moment of the Master picking up after the Doctor.
The Doctor has always liked to use people however he sees fit, often
not caring much about the consequences. An example from New Who would
be the 12^th Doctor making Ashildr use a device that kills
her instead of trying a little harder to eliminate that possibility.

7. The Master was continually used by the Timelords and other
entities to fight for them. He was deliberately turned into a weapon.
The latest example of that is his resurrection to fight in the Time
War but what he saw scared him so much that he turned himself into
Professor YANA and ran away to the end of the universe. The Doctor
however stayed and fought. Sometimes I wonder if this is cowardly
running away as opposed to courageously doing what is right.
Sometimes I wonder if the Doctor’s tolerance for bloodshed, war and
violence is higher than the Master’s.

8. At some point he posed as the Doctor and began to work for UNIT
were he helped them to fight off several alien attacks on Earth. Does
it really matter that he posed as the Doctor? Does doing good only
count when it is done in the “right” way?

There are many more examples but these should make it very clear
that the Master is anything but one-dimensionally evil.

Let’s look at some of your arguments about Simm!Master’s
character:

He told Ten to “get out of the way” because Rassilon was
right there, in front of him – the one responsible for his
‘condition’. The intended catharsis of that scene was about the
Master getting revenge on Rassilon. (…) It was something that
happened in the moment and the status quo of his existence was
restored by the Time Lords. (…) People don’t just change in a
moment.

So even although the Master had tried
to kill the Doctor before time and time again he doesn’t do it when
he can because shooting at the Doctor first and then at Rassilion is
somehow not cathartic enough? Killing them both, the two people he
considers responsible for all that went wrong in his life, wouldn’t
be the ultimate revenge? No, the Doctor spared him and so the Master
spares him in return because in that moment the Master understands
that his friend still loves him, that there is still hope for a
future for them together, seeing the stars.
Maybe it is not the
huge change in character some people want to see. But it is a
redeeming quality. The Master doing “what is right”. All by
himself.

Likewise, time has passed since then. The Master went back
through the gate with Rassilon to Gallifrey, the Time Lords made a
mutual bargain to remove the drums from his head and fix his botched
regeneration (…) He just continued with his old ways because that’s
what the Time Lords enabled him to do, it was convenient for them to
do that in order to get rid of him.

Sometimes I wonder what the other
end of that bargain was. What did the Timelords do to him, or make
him do for them to remove the drums? After all, they have used him
all his life. Why change so suddenly. I think it is very plausible
that the Master ran away again and hid on that spaceship (a “mutual
kicking out” can mean many many things). Also, despite everything
he has done, the Timelords still keep him around. Later, Missy isn’t
executed as ordered by the Timelords. They still need the Master for
whatever future war they need a monster for. I can’t even imagine
what that does to a man. Going back to his “old ways” after once
more being confirmed by the Timelords that that is all he is and all
he can do is really not that surprising. After all, if they fixed the
drums they could have fixed so much more. They could have helped him.
Truly helped. With all their knowledge and wisdom. Instead they try
to keep him as a convenient weapon.

The premise of the argument “the Master is not
self-destructive” kinda falls apart because he literally chose to
die at the end of The Last of the Time Lords instead of being at the
Doctor’s side. The last two of their kind and he chose to die, not
knowing that his ring would be picked up by Miss Trefusis and he’d
later return.

Two things:
1. He chooses to die because the idea that the
Doctor would imprison him and just “keep him” was so incredibly
appalling to him that he couldn’t bear it. It’s not just for his own
good or the good of the universe. The Doctor sees the Master as his
responsibility, his burden. Considering that the Doctor played a
considerable role in the Master becoming the Master, that is
incredibly arrogant and self-righteous.
2. The Master has “died”
so many times before seemingly without the ability to to come back.
His mind has been in other people and objects before. Even if he
wasn’t entirely sure about the ring, he must have known (and said so
to the Doctor before) that he is pretty much indestructible.

He sees Missy as such a fundamental violation of who he is with
regards to her perspective on the Doctor that he chooses to kill his
future self. That is who he is in extremis.

Exactly. He simply cannot agree with the fact the Missy has been
changed so much that she would forget who she is and how she came to
be. He hates that she basically turned into one of the Doctor’s
fangirls. He can’t understand why she would regress so much in her
development that she is barely more than the child they used to be,
looking up at the Doctor hoping for guidance. Let’s remember here
that yes, the Doctor saved their life as a child by killing someone.
And he put the blame on the Master. The Master simply cannot allow
Missy to forget that the Doctor is not morally pure and superior. He
cannot allow that standing with the Doctor on the Doctor’s terms
leads to their death. He’d rather do it himself. If anything, this
was a mercy killing, just like the Doctor agreed to do with the
Master many years before. Considering that the Master has survived
many of his “final deaths” we can be sure that they will return.
When they do it will most likely not be pretty because right now, she
thinks that the Doctor believes that she has betrayed him and that he
lost his hope for her and does not come after her once more. She
might also believe that he is dead and blame herself. The Master’s
next regeneration could be the most messed up yet.

And there really was nothing at all self-righteous,
self-victimising, or egotistic about the Doctor’s speech. It was
about self-sacrifice, out of kindness. (…) the message was simply
to just be kind.

The Doctor tries continuously to sacrifice himself. The 9^th
legion, the cybermen, … It’s a compulsion. Makes me wonder why? Is
it because he is so incredibly good (then why does he never die, only
regenerate, when he does? Why is his sacrifice never real?) or is it
because he needs redemption and forgiveness just as much as the
Master does? The Doctor is consumed by guilt and tries to get rid of
it by offering himself up again and again. That is not without reward
and therefore not entirely and purely good. There is always an agenda
behind what the Doctor does, especially when it’s self-sacrifice or
kindness. He always goes to extremes to prove that he truly is “good”
even although it is only his definition of “good” that counts
here. Good is only good in extremis. Only in self-denial and
self-sacrifice.

I mean… the Master is a sadistic murderer. (…) The
Doctor didn’t “force” anything on her, and, to be honest, what
you want when you’re somebody who commits the kind of atrocities
that the Master does on a regular basis really doesn’t matter all
that much. (…) Your “leave their names out” argument
doesn’t really work because that’s just removing the context from
the situation. The Doctor has always been a flawed hero, but the
whole thing with Missy’s arc is really not an instance of that.

It is exactly here that the greatest flaw of your perception of
both Doctor and Master becomes obvious. We are talking about fiction
so for a moment let’s talk about real life. Operation Neptune Spear
as sanctioned by then-President of the USA Obama was a capture or
kill mission directed at Osama bin Laden. US-offficals have also
simply called it a kill mission. The mission was accomplished in May
2011 resulting in the death of Osama bin Laden. Criticized as a
“revenge mission” by foreign governments and organizations like
Amnesty International, this mission remains controversial until
today. The reason is simply that a criminal, no matter how bad, does
have rights, that human rights are non-negotiable, that the crimes of
a person do not make them less human. At the same time, acting as if
a criminal has lost his human rights because of (past or future)
crimes is morally incredibly flawed and honestly, simply plain wrong.
It’s not hard to see the parallels to the Doctor and Missy here. It
does matter if there was consent or not and if there continued to be
consent because Missy is still a sentient being with rights and the
Doctor (with Gallifrey being back) has no authority whatsoever to
decide otherwise. By locking Missy up and isolating her the way he
did he violated her. He of all people who always thinks he is morally
superior. He messed up epically here. Leaving the names out returns
them to what they both are: sentient beings with rights.

She said to the Doctor that she’d be good, asking him to
teach her how to be, and consented to being imprisoned for
rehabilitation. Whether that was what she actually wanted at the
start or if she was saying that to get out of being executed, that
was something she made good on. She says as much that she could have
escaped the Vault if she’d wanted to, but she’s chosen to stay
and engage in the process.

Again, it is highly questionable if it was continued consent, or
even just consent born out of an honest desire to change and not just
desperate words uttered to save her life.  And yes, continued consent
is a thing and it is necessary. Ask anybody who agreed to anything
and then changed their mind mid-way through. It’s one of the very
obvious symptoms of rape culture to think that continued consent is
not a thing. Besides, the difference in power between them was so
huge by then that in order to keep at least some kind of dignity
Missy would have probably said anything, including suggesting that
she could have escaped the vault, something the Doctor clearly
disagreed with.

It’s not just that Missy decided to stand with the Doctor…
It’s that the reason WHY she decided to do that was because her
whole perspective and understanding of him has changed. (…) she
says to her former self “he’s right”. It’s not just about
standing with her friend because she wants to, it’s that she
actually has come to understand and empathise with his philosophy.

I stand by what I said in the first
place. Isolating a prisoner and depriving them of stimuli is torture.
And no, a few books and a piano are not enough to keep someone like
the Master sane. Time and time again it was shown in studies and
experiments that sentient beings, from monkey to human to most likely
Timelord are social animals and lose their minds if isolated for too
long. That alone, that isolation over decades must have worn her out
so much that the Doctor could have planted any kind of philosophy
into her head. He chose the only one he knew of course. Self-denial
through self-sacrifice. Let’s remember here that his self-sacrifice
has always been fake. Doctors 10 and 11 regenerated after acts of
self-sacrifice but it is just never real because he never dies. He
always knows that he has a way out. Regeneration. And so his
sacrifice doesn’t mean all that much. He of course cannot see that
and so he believes his way to be the “most good”, the only right
way. And that is the way he tries to make Missy understand.

And she kills her former self, not just to get him out of the
way, but to ensure, in that moment, that he will regenerate into her
so everything will come back around to this moment – to make it
happen. Without hope. Without witness. Without reward.

There is literally no reason to get the
Master out of the way at this point. She doesn’t know that he would
shoot her should she try to go back to the Doctor. She could have
literally shoved him into the elevator, sealed the door and send him
back down. There was no reason whatsoever to kill him. Especially
because she utters remorse about having lost herself, about not being
how he is. She is not burning anymore and she knows it. Mind you, we
do not know if she refers to her whole existence as Missy or just her
time as the Doctor’s prisoner.
But even if she does kill him to
ensure that she comes around to this point, isn’t that a reward all
in itself?
Let’s also not forget that the Master concludes from
Missy not being able to remember her “birth” that he will
regenerate in the very near future. He knew it and simply wasn’t
ready for it. Another reason why he wouldn’t stand with the Doctor.

Conclusion:

1. The Master has never been
one-dimensionally evil. If anything the Doctor and the Master are
more ying and yang than black and white.

2. The Master and Missy never lost hope
that they could be reunited with their childhood friend but they
always wanted it to be a mutually benefiting reunion. A reunion that
happened on both their terms. The Doctor continually insisting on it
to be one-sided was too much for the Master.

3. The Doctor mistreated and violated
Missy greatly and the Master could not accept that. And honestly, who
would?

4. The Doctor doesn’t understand that
his so-called self-denial that does work quite well for him, just
isn’t the go-to-thing for everybody and so he screws Missy up and
blows his reunion with the Master.

In the end Missy was right, she has
always been on the Doctor’s side. All her faces, all her
regenerations. They were always his friend. He just always insisted
that they be that on his terms and his terms alone.