The Sound of Drums

OK... Not sure how I feel about this one. It didn't do much for me last night. There are some good bits in it, but overall I didn't warm to it. Especially Simm's portrayal of the Master. It left me feeling much the same as The Runaway Bride did: fun, but silly and ultimately unrewarding. But Bride could get away with it as it was a bit of fluff for Christmas - you expect more for a big season finale. Well, this may all just be build-up to next week, which certainly looked different from the teaser. My friend Nick said the other day that Russell T Davies doesn't really write two part stories, he writes two separate episodes that might share the same setting and characters, but could be stylistically and thematically very different. And this could well be the case here. It seemed to improve with a second viewing, so maybe this one will grow on me, especially when seen in context.

The "three-parter" debate is rumbling on. With the quite summary dismissal of last week's cliffhanger, it looks like I was right to regard Utopia as a separate entity. Unless they do pick up the whole refugee rocket storyline next week - but I can't think how they'd have the time. Some have suggested that it might be revisited next year - maybe even that the search for Utopia will be next year's arc. That could be interesting...

I doubt I was the only person to shout out "Cloudbase" when the Valiant appeared. Although the aircraft carrier was probably a lot bigger - bigger than any seaborne carrier in fact. It looked like it had three runways, with an airliner landing at one point. More like a floating airport! I'm wondering if this could be a subtle tie-in to the continuity of The Indestructible Man. But I'm probably the only one there...

And so to the biggie. There's been a lot of hand-wringing over on OG about this. The depiction of Gallifrey and the Citadel was fantastic. Interesting that they chose to stick with the look of the Gallifreyan robes and collars though, considering that they usually like to redesign the iconography. I'm not sure why the young Master was wearing "War Games" robes either. If they're Academy colours, does that mean the Doctor's trial was conducted by a bunch of students? - it might explain why they let him off so lightly! Perhaps they're House colours? Could Goth and his cronies be from the same House as the Master? Or if they were members of the CIA, could it mean that even at that age the Master had been chosen to serve the Agency? Am I just thinking about it too much?

The big problem though is the depiction of the Master as an 8 year old child. Does it contradict Lungbarrow? On the OG forum, the novel-haters are already using this to wipe the book or even the whole New Adventures range out of canon. Well, good luck to them. I know the novel fans will just find ways around it. The series has always been littered with contradictions, and as I've often said, they're a part of the fun. So on the one hand, you've got the depiction of a Gallifreyan child starting at the Academy. Placed alongside references to the Doctor's father and mother (not to mention his brother and granddaughter), to "Time Tots", to a Gallifreyan maternity service and nursery rhymes, it doesn't seem odd in the slightest. Then you've got Lungbarrow, which suggests Gallifreyans are woven from the Loom in a fully adult state, albeit with the minds of children. Gallifreyan Houses are filled with giant-sized furniture, so the youngsters still feel like children. We actually get this information from Leela, of all people, who's reporting it from what she's learned from her husband Andred. Is it possible that she has simply misunderstood the nature of child development on Gallifrey, and rationalized it according to her own understanding of child-rearing?

Of course, when we get inside the House of Lungbarrow, we see the giant-sized furniture for ourselves - but that in itself seems really peculiar. If Gallifreyans were born as full-size adults, then surely their society and culture would just accept that as normal? - it's the way their minds would work. They wouldn't need to go through some contrived developmental process designed to fool them into thinking they were children - unless it was important for them to fit in with the rest of society. So this got me thinking - the only House we see inside is Lungbarrow itself. What if it's only Lungbarrow that produces fully adult cousins from its Loom, and has to convince them they're kids? The other Houses could just weave actual children. (And I don't think the Doctor explicitly states that he himself was taken into the Academy at the age of 8.) So maybe the Loom of Lungbarrow is damaged or faulty - it might explain why the Doctor's cousins seem to be such a bunch of weirdos and nutters.

(To be generous to Leela though, I'd accept that the House of Redloom might weave adult cousins too - perhaps it's a fault in the Looms that only affects certain Houses...?)

Mind you, they might show an 8 year old Doctor next week, or reveal that actually the Master is his brother after all, which would blow another lovely theory out of the water....