Doctor Who is a series that’s served as a basis for British television and science fiction. It’s a story that naturally has a “never ending” nature and has featured a revolving door of talented actors from Sylvester McCoy to David Tennant. But the Doctor and his journey through time and space has also had an equal constant that’s more threatening than many would anticipate. That constant comes in the form of the Master.
In Doctor Who Magazine #582, it was revealed that the current Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, would be encountering the Master once again. The upcoming Centenary Special, Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor, will reportedly depict their final battle similarly to that of the Reichenbach Falls in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “The Final Problem.” With that realization, it’s more apparent than ever that The Master is indeed the James Moriarty to The Doctor’s Sherlock Holmes.
How James Moriarty Parallels The Master From Doctor Who
James Moriarty is an antagonist in the Sherlock Holmes stories that opposes the detective at every step. He foils every aspect of Holmes while also balancing that with his intelligence. To that point, he always tries to outsmart Holmes with his deadly and precise plans. In fact, they are so evenly matched in their skills, it ultimately takes the two plunging to their apparent deaths so that Holmes could end his menace once and for all.
Conversely, the Master is a long-time former friend of the Doctor who also escaped Gallifrey with a TARDIS. The Doctor, however, is driven by a desire to help lesser beings in the cosmos, whereas the Master is more focused on death and destruction. Like Moriarty, he fights to outsmart the Doctor with deadly plans that would push the latter’s intelligence to its limits. In fact, in a final bout with the Tenth Doctor, the Master placed him in a situation where the only way he could win was by sacrificing himself to save an innocent. Like Moriarty, The Master is malicious because he knows the right buttons to push on the protagonist.
How The Doctor’s Final Showdown Could Mirror Reichenbach Falls
Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor has only teased that this would be the final battle for this iteration of the Doctor and the Master. The Master has also set up his plan in a way that has the Earth threatened by alien forces worse than anything seen before. The Doctor may have to choose between ending things with the Master or saving the planet. Like Moriarty and Sherlock, this could only end with the end of them both as the antagonist has seemingly set up a no-win scenario.
While the Doctor is one to do everything she can to solve the mystery the Master has provided, like Moriarty, it also opens her up to being vulnerable to an attack of any sort. This is why the Master is so dangerous and why the final bout would have to end in the untimely end of one or both of the characters. Like Sherlock, The Doctor also has a level of arrogance that has often allowed the Master to slink through a situation unnoticed.Unfortunately, this has often led to the Master exploiting this weakness, and making the choices the Doctor must face even harder.
More often than not, the Master will use humans or the Doctor’s own companions against them. This equally forces the Time Lord to have to make a sacrifice or a mortally dangerous decision at the last minute. As a result, the Master’s Moriarty-like tactics often push the Doctor to make deadly choices. The upcoming battle in The Power of the Doctor, however, will ultimately solidify these two characters as the ideal Holmes and Moriarty of science fiction.
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