Dr.Who S29E12 "The Sound Of Drums"

[Stark]

Orange, you really are a sad little man. Days later, and you're almost - ALMOST - caught up with the original post.

Thanks for YET MORE dribbling on about stuff we already know, by the way: I love your pretensions. Here's a hint, dumbass - don't tell me a bunch of shit I already know unless you have a point. 'lol dr sayz' doesn't actually help you, and I *already acknowledged* that Jack would become visible. You'll note that he CAN'T DIE so this DOESN'T MATTER. Is any of this getting through?

Let's break this down. As you can see from my original post, I fucking know how the filter works. Jack steps away from the others and shoots the Master. The Master was aware of them, but he was trying (badly) to not look - he's not a fucking mindreader, he's not going to get his spidey-sense going off when Jack pulls out a gun. So Master is sans head, Jack is now visible. The retard guards can shoot him all day, or he can port out, whatever. Hell, he could have shot the Master and immediately ported everyone out, then PORTED BACK and walked back in and probably be filtered again. He doesn't have to go anywhere near the Master, the Master wasn't even fucking looking, and the Master is dead the moment Jack becomes visible.

Of course, the Doctor is an emotionally crippled hypocrite so none of this could happen, but I can still condemn people for being passive idiots and then - world in flames - simply trying to HUG the Master instead of just shooting him. The only explanation I accept is that Jack thinks Simm is hot and doesn't want him to regenerate.

And law enforcement officers or Master goons not rapidly converging in on the Doctor in the centre of a dense urban area is either the Master intentionally holding them back or a minor plothole.

Amusingly, this is exactly what I said. Thanks for the argument.

And as for the ending of tomorrow's episode - I also really hope that their is not going to be another Deus-Ex resolution and that the problem with the Master ruling over Earth would not go away properly until next season or the Christmas special (but I'll probably be setting myself up for a disappointment).

The likely reset is lame (and weakens the buildup - the previous finales had the 'zomg world in flames' in the middle of the last ep, not at a break, so it wasn't as obvious) and while the *idea* of running with it is interesting, all the 'time lord empire' ideas floating around are just so stupid I can't imagine it being better than suck.

[Drooling Iguana]

The thing is, the Master's plan was already in motion and would have still gone ahead even if he was dead, however he is also the only one who really knows what's going on, so keeping him alive might be the Doctor's only chance of finding out what the Toclafane are and how to stop them.

[Stark]

100% true. I'm not suggesting this would have made any difference whatsoever, as the Master wouldn't be dead and the Paradox Machine is on a timer. However, doing *something* is better than standing around with a thumb up your ass while the Master kills the President and conquers the world, and then make a futile attempt to grab the Master and get shot. Jack got shot anyway, but he COULD have got shot doing something a little more respectable than hugging the Master *after* he conquers the world.

[Drooling Iguana]

If he'd actually shot the Master it would either have had no significant effect (since the Master would just regenerate again) or, if he did it in such a way that the Master couldn't regenerate, would have put the planet in even more trouble than it was already since, as I've already pointed out, the Master is the only one who really knew what was going on and thus he was the key to stopping it.

[Stark]

I've just got a problem with 'heroes' who stand around, passively impotent, while a superpowered psychopath conquers the Earth and carts off 600 million people in a worldwide catastrophe. Particularly since he's almost certain to escape later.

The likelyhood of a bullet to the brain preventing regeneration is extraordinarily small. However, taking the Master down would at worst allow the Doctor to escape without being aged, and possibly break the Master's control over the UNIT carrier. And later, nobody would be able to say 'so you guys could have done something but didn't, why is that?' The Doctor says 'you he's mine homies', and then does... nothing. This is failure.

[Patrick Degan]

First Contact policy was decided by the Secutiry Council in 1968.

Is 1968 significant in Dr Who canon, or did RTD just make that up?

1968 was the year of a Cyberman invasion of Earth; these being a group from Telos, and the first official deployment of UNIT against an alien menace ("The Invasion"). It was months earlier that the army had faced the Yeti incursion in the London Underground ("The Web Of Fear") and of course there was already the history of the Shoreditch Incident ("Rememberance Of The Daleks") so it's reasonable to assume that the British government as well as the UN had put some sort of policy in place to deal with alien encounters by that year.

[andrewgpaul]

Ah. Figured it was something like that, thanks.