Afterword

Mixed Emotions

When I first set out to write this story, I didn't expect it to balloon all the way up to 95 pages, single-spaced; I was thinking maybe 50 pages, max. Very quickly the piece took on a life of its own, so instead of posting it when it was done, as I usually do with my fanfic, I posted it in installments. Seeing all the "please post more!" reviews kept pushing me to write faster, and I finished the story a full week and a half before I expected.

I don't usually write commentary on my stories, preferring to let them speak for themselves, but a number of readers posted specific questions in their feedback, and I thought I'd address some of them here.

General background: this story was prompted—as I suspect many fanfics have been—by a sense of deep disappointment over the Doctor Who season 3 finale, "Last of the Time Lords." After two episodes of fairly brilliant set-up, normally reliable writer Russell T Davies delivered a slipshod, cringe-inducing effort that struck me as the storytelling equivalent of a student paper written the night before it's due. It's not so much that what he did was bad, it was just incredibly unfulfilling—he'd built up so much intriguing possibility and then never followed through on any of it. I was dying to know more about Lucy's background and motivations; I drove myself to distraction trying to imagine why the Master heard drums in his head. I wanted to see a great hero-villain face-off between the Doctor and the Master (a la Nine/ Blon in "Boom Town" and Ten/ Mr. Finch in "School Reunion"); I wanted to see the Doctor deal with his own god-complex and emotional barriers; I wanted to see Jack make some meaningful contribution to the story; I wanted to see Martha confront the Doctor openly about how he'd been treating her all season. It baffled me when none of this happened. Instead, we got a stereotypical Evil Villain Overlord(tm) and his stereotypical battered wife, much scenery chewing, David Tennant covered in latex makeup and then reduced to a horrifically bad CGI effect, John Barrowman doing precisely nothing, very little meaningful interplay between the Doctor and the Master, a lot of frankly embarrassing religious metaphors, and of course the brain-gargling revelation that Jack is in fact the Face of Boe. The hell?

The lack of Doctor-Master interaction rankled, especially considering the momentous events that had transpired since the two adversaries had last locked horns. Apart from the wonderful phone call in "Sound of Drums," most of the interactions between the characters consisted of so much pissing and posturing. Why hire such gifted actors, only to give them such sub-standard material to work with?

A few things were okay. The red herring of the gun in four parts, Martha's journey, her "getting out" speech at the end, the Master dying in the Doctor's arms—those individual elements were well-realized, but a few powerful moments can't carry an entire script on their own.

And so, this fanfic took root in my mind, and it's probably no surprise that a good chunk of it consists of the Doctor and the Master actually talking to each other. It also gave me the opportunity to incorporate some mythology from the original series, indulging my geeky fangirl tendencies. Rather than try to rewrite the whole season finale, I'd change the ending and spin off from that point. Thus, "Sympathy for the Devil" was born. In a sense, the story is a detour, circling out in a wide loop before returning to the moment when the TARDIS crashes into the Titanic. It was important to me to preserve continuity with whatever is in store for the fourth season.

Now, on to specific questions:

"I was wondering why didn't you use the point from the Eighth Doctor that he is half human on his mother's side. Or are you going more with the whole Loom birthing method?" (Star Mage1)

First things first: I've never actually watched the 1996 TV movie, and the few clips I've seen on You Tube haven't encouraged me to do so. I've read a synopsis of the plot, so I'm aware of the major events that took place in the story. However, when it comes to Who canon, it's IMO very much a matter of pick-and-choose. I personally think the notion that the Doctor is half-human is ridiculous, and since Russell T Davies has never brought up the matter in three seasons of the new series, I can only assume he's chosen to disregard it. As far as I'm concerned, the Doctor is fully alien. I don't need him to be half-human to be able to 'relate' to him, or to understand why he's different from the other Time Lords, etc.

I also can't quite get my head around the whole notion of "loom" birthing, though I have no problems believing the Time Lords would conceive their children in vitro. In fact, I imagine that the Time Lords would consider giving birth to be a primitive exercise, which is why I made up the bit about surrogate mothers for this story. It seemed to fit with how the Time Lords are depicted in the original series, which was not terribly flattering! I imagine their society as very sterile emotionally, which may have been one of the reasons why the Doctor left in the first place.

"May I post a link to this on my LiveJournal account? I know lots of my friends would love to read such an excellent Doctor/Master fic as this!" (Eryaforsythe)

Yes! I would never say no to free publicity. Any of my stories can be linked to Live Journal pages and other blogs, or recommended to other readers at fan forums such as Outpost Gallifrey or Television Without Pity. Please email me at and let me know you've done this. Thanks!

"And the bits where they hashed over a nice cross-section of the Doctor's companions, and mentioned past adventures (i.e. Traken, etc.)... agh, this must have taken some dedicated research but how gorgeous it is!" (Verna S)

Many thanks for the compliment! I've seen most of the original Who episodes and read a lot of the novelizations, but that was ages ago. I've found the best fact-checking sources to be the episodes guides at Outpost Gallifrey, as well as the Dr. Who pages on Wikipedia.

"What? You just make him kill himself now?! Like that?!" (Zourouni)

See my note above about not wanting to mess too badly with the show's continuity. I did make one big change: the Doctor retrieves the Master's ring and hides it away, which pretty much assures the Master won't be coming back—different from RTD's decision to leave an opening for future production teams, in case they want to resurrect the character.

My personal feeling is that any villain who comes back time and time again starts to lose teeth. The wonderful actress Hudson Leick (Callisto on Xena: Warrior Princess) once said memorably at a fan convention that there's only so many times a villain can say "I'm gonna get you" and not follow through on it. My preference would be for the Master to stay dead: the character has been overused enough, and he was getting dangerously close to a caricature by the end of LotTL. Obviously, I wanted the Master to find a small measure of peace, to understand the cause of his madness. But in my view, he's essentially a coward who would have no courage to face the magnitude of his own evil. Really, truly changing and becoming a different person would require the kind of inner strength he has never demonstrated in the past.

Also, it's in the nature of the show that the Doctor will never really settle down. There won't be any white picket fences in outer space for him. He'll always be wandering, giving help to those who need it, and if his focus shifted to "reforming" the Master, my sense is that saving the universe would take something of a back seat.

Finally, in keeping with the season finale, I envisioned this story as being very much a tragedy. The Doctor learns the only other surviving Time Lord is the Master, and after a year of defeat and hardship, he is able to have the Master cured. But the Master can't handle the cure and kills himself. This is incredibly difficult for the Doctor, but he is able to accept the loss, begin healing, and move on. We saw a similar thing happening in LotTL, but I wanted this aspect to be more emphasized (and hopefully have more emotional resonance) here.

"One other thing... what's with the SEX?!" (Zourouni)

This is a funny one, because I'm not normally a big fan of slashfic. Apart from my Willow/ Tara fic "Unsaid Warning," I usually write hetero romance. But I feel like there's some precedent for it with Doctor-Master. It's canon that they were good friends at the academy, so it's possible there might have been something deeper going on as well. Both the Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley Masters demonstrated a degree of obsession with the Doctor (they certainly enjoyed tying him up/ strapping him down and then getting into his personal space) that suggested a sexual interest—in fact, the Rani even scolds the Ainley Master at one point that he's obsessed with the Doctor! But it was the phone call in "Sound of Drums" that cemented it for me, the fact that the Master was so clearly turned on by talking to the Doctor. He also seemed to get quite a sexual charge out of torturing/ aging the Doctor later. Throughout much of the arc, the Doctor is curiously submissive in all this; in fact, he all but hands himself over to the Master in "Sound of Drums." It's almost like he's begging the Master to punish him.

Also, the Doctor's treatment of the Master is incredibly tender, and his expression when he announces that now he has someone to care about is full of love. So I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine a love-hate or lust-hate relationship between them. Certainly, I think it adds to the emotional resonance of the story—the Doctor isn't just trying to save the only other member of his species; he's trying to save someone he dearly loves. And of course it makes the eventual loss of the Master all the more painful. Pain equals good drama!

I could probably write a dissertation about Time Lord sexual practices, but in short, I see little reason to believe that they'd have the qualms about same-sex romance as we have in many societies here on Earth. We don't even know if Gallifrey has an institution of marriage. So I feel there's a lot of creative leeway. This is definitely one area where the viewer's/ reader's mileage is going to vary a lot.

"Nothing ever works out for the Doctor, does it?" (Dagniro Vanaliel)

LOL, not really. If it ever did, the series would probably end.

"Hey, where does the line 'the plans I made still have you in them' come from?" (Eryaforsythe)

From a simply wonderful song called "The Background," by Third Eye Blind, on their debut CD, Third Eye Blind (1997). In chapter one, I quote, "I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel." This is from "Hurt," by Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral (1994).

And that would appear to be all for the moment. Again, many thanks to everyone who posted feedback on this story!