Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Key points:

1. The Master didn’t need to die. How ‘Batman’ do you want to get, killing off key characters just because the story needs to end. Yes, RTD pulled a Ming the Merciless-style ending, so we do have a stab at return for the wayward Time Lord, but…
2. Martha gone for a little while, and joining Torchwood for three episodes. Neat.
3. Toclafane humanity from the future! I would have survived with a Dalek return, in truth… or some twisted return for the Time Lords. I think the floating monsters got seriously wasted in the story as is.
4. John Simm played a fine Master in the end and deserves better treatment.
5. I can envisage John Barrowman reading through the three parter and then querying why he never seems to get the opportunity to strip down to his underwear at least. ‘Only topless, Russell? Are you sure?’
6. So, why did The Master emulate the Doctor in the second episode, with the jelly babies and the red-lined cloak?
7. And, what really were those drums about? Pure and simple insanity seems like such a waste.
8. RTD better have a good explanation for the ‘Titanic’ crashing into the TARDIS, given that the interior and exterior of the time machine represent disassociated constructs of Gallifreyan multi-dimensional mathematics. You can have something crash in the outside, but it will not come through the inside as a result.
9. Kylie Minogue will appear in the Christmas episode of Doctor Who. Two presents for the price of one. Yay!

In the tradition of the three-parter (think ‘Star Wars’ here), The Sound of Drums did an admirable job of maintaining the pace and keeping the action coming. A marvellous blend of evil, continuity, action and good humour – it definitely offered something for seasoned fans and newbies alike. Over-the-top evil, Teletubbies (mirroring The Master’s encounter with the Clangers), red coat lining, jelly babies, visions of Gallifrey and the Timelords…

But what next? Two lines of thinking here…

It seems that the Toclafane intend to take on humanity one-on-one (given their numbers… The Master said there were 6 billion Toclafane and the planet has a population of approximately 6.5 billion) and judging by the spoiler intend to transport themselves somewhere else. I’m thinking, the future – to Utopia.

Perhaps the Toclafane come from the far future and sought something from Humanity, but insufficient numbers remained. So, they somehow struck a deal with The Master to build a device that would allow the Toclafane to come back from the future on-masse and take all they needed.

What could they need from Humanity? Raw materials, perhaps, to rebuild their dying civilisation, maybe.

I hate to say it – but what race of beings do we know to be really on their last legs? The dear old Daleks. Perhaps Caan couldn’t temporal shift to a place and time, getting stuck in the Vortex instead. Trapped and desperate, he sent a message out through the Vortex – just as a young, impressionable Master stared into it at age 8. Which is how the Toclafane struck a deal with The Master… cause the deal has been with him, haunting him since his childhood… a sort of sleeper command, a trigger. The Sound of Drums…

Too convoluted?

Well, try this. When we first met Professor Yana, he wore something akin to the outfit of the First Doctor. The Master wore a red-lined coat in ‘The Sound of Drums’ – like the Third Doctor – and offered his wife jelly babies – like the Fourth Doctor. Did he do anything akin to the Second Doctor? I’ll probably have to look back again… However, it seems to be The Master either has the Doctor on his mind a lot… or there’s something more to his return than simply a matter of the Timelords requiring a warrior for the Time War (they did something something, enlisting The Master, in ‘The Five Doctors’). A version of the Doctor from the parallel universe Rose got trapped in?