#and this makes Missy decide to not become the lumiat - but since she used an elysian field The Lumiat now exists independently

[killjoygem]

I've really liked this theory ever since I first saw it. Story wise, I dont completely hate sachas master being after Missy, because the idea of someone trying so hard to be good and change only to get dropped with some new bombshell that sends them spiralling again is also a good story

But. I love the idea of the spy master being pre missy for a few reasons. One is that it would mean that they didn't go back on all the progress they made, another is that it means there's still a chance the doctor and the master could be friends in the future. I was very worried with the spy masters arc that its a sort of "no going back" kind of situation. And finally it potentially adds a little more angst because it would mean there's a good chance that Missy knew all that stuff was going to happen and deliberately didn't mention it because she knew the 12th doctor wouldn't help her if he knew

Alternatively, you could just say that for whatever reason, she didn't remember the spy master regeneration at all which is why she doesn't mention it, and believed that simm!Master would regenerate into her

back on my bs i just cant cant cant see dhawan master after missy and maybe its because i have a tendency to only want to see the good in people but i also like to think that missy at the end was good!!! she tried so hard to better herself why would she go against all that improvement and become the dhawan master??

[claw-roscoe-rupture]

This would be the dream.

Unfortunately in an audio-book they specified that the Dhawan Master comes after Michelle Gomez’s and Michelle’s comes right after Simm’s.

SPOILERS OF THE BOOK AHEAD

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Missy has no regeneration left (as per Simm’s Master words) but she has enough energy left to go into the Cyberman Factories and to convert that tech in an “Elysian Field” a “prohibited time-Lord technology” that allows, if you know how to and have enough power (say a Black Hole near), to convert/amplify that energy to jumpstart a whole new regeneration cycle within a Time Lord (it’s an information that the Simm Master studied on Gallifrey while they fixed him of his imperfect resurrection backslash).

The grand thing is that when using an Elysian Field you can customise the regeneration with what you want, kinda like the Sisterhood did with the dying 8th Doctor when he regenerated into the War Doctor. And Missy decided to mess with her head to retain the full change of hearts that she had while with 12 and to limit and impede all her darkest emotions. Thus this new version of the Master was born, still female, and donned the new moniker of “The Lumiat” (which means “enlightened one”) and to be a good person around the universe.

Long story short, she got bored really fast of the “classical” saving the universe thing, and everywhere she went they all confused her with a new incarnation of the Doctor (and this was really moving and fine with her - ALSO this happened during the first season of the 13th Doctor, and this is why she could “separate” her life from her old adventures and start anew without interruptions until the Dhawan Master caused troubles: because the Lumiat was solving all those problems), so she decided that she was good enough to “play with the big girls” and went back where her previous incarnation Missy was starting her new evil career and re-wrote lots of times and triumphs of her old self in order to teach her that crime never pays. During this period Missy herself thought that the Lumiat was the 13th Doctor, but then they were forced to cooperate and the truth was uncovered.

Missy and Lumiat traveled together for a while after that (rendering the whole experience fuzzy because of crossed personal time streams) and at a certain point Missy got fed up with her future incarnation and killed the Lumiat. While she was agonising, Missy left her with the TARDIS they were sharing (in a first, unusually kind gesture) and before going away with the Vortex Manipulator she taunted the Lumiat that whatever she had done to render herself so similar to the Doctor was going to bite her back and that anything she removed from herself in this incarnation had to go “somewhere else down the regeneration line, probably even the next one, since the change was so radical”.

Missy left and the Lumiat regenerated into the Dhawan Master that was, as predicted, twice as angry, crazy and evil as the “normal” Master was usually, and with clear memories of what his two previous incarnations had done he went on Gallifrey to recuperate and to find new ways to destroy anything the Doctor loved, finding out about the Timeless Child and thus deciding that if he couldn’t become the Doctor, then the Doctor had to become him.

Meanwhile Missy’s memory was all fuzzy for the crossed time streams, she returned convinced that the Doctor was the one to tear down all her late plans and decided to poke back, finding 11th time stream. Subconsciously and over time, tickled by her travels with the Lumiat (that was so similar to the Doctor but a bit more zealous and righteous), she began to crave to be friends with the Doctor again… and the rest is history.

[Art by alyxwal on Tumblr]

Personally… I don’t hate this succession of events. It makes sense and justifies the Dhawan Master going back to be a complete psycho. I’m just a little bit miffed that this whole storyline was relegated to a mostly unknown audio-book while it could have been such an awesome spin-off series.

Okay so I think we can all more or less agree that if Sacha Dhawan's Master is post-Michelle Gomez that like... kinda sucks for the character development they did with her. And while they've never explicitly said in the show Dhawan's is pre-Gomez, they haven't explicitly said he's post-Gomez, either. That said, personally I think some of the choices Dhawan made in PotD suggest that he's pre-Gomez.

After taking the Doctor's body, it seemed to me that he was playing a very slightly... softer version of the character. Still murderous, evil, etc, but particularly in his interactions with Yaz, he did seem more intent than I would have expected to convince her to stay with him. And right before being returned to his own body, he outright said "Don't make me go back to being me."

Now, personally, my interpretation is that his time in the Doctor's body had some level of influence, enough that his motives began to shift from ending the Doctor to befriending the Doctor, and I think that Missy's interactions with Twelve are all the more funny if she KNOWS he's the Timeless Child and isn't saying shit about it.

So here's my opinion of the order here. The End of Time, Simm Master is pulled back to Gallifrey where they for whatever reason heal him. Gallifrey is saved by the Doctor in Day of the Doctor, and Simm Master acquires a TARDIS. He ends up in World Enough and Time, where after some interaction his future self, she kills him, he kills her, and he ends up regenerating in his TARDIS into Dhawan's Master.

He moves on to Spyfall, then Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children, before, after swapping bodies back and forth with forced regeneration with the Doctor and then causing the Doctor to regenerate herself, he succumbs to his own wounds and presumably makes it back to his TARDIS before regenerating into Michelle Gomez.

Following this is just about the order we see Gomez in. Meddling in Earth's history with the Nethersphere using the Time Lord technology Dhawan Master bragged about gathering, showing up in The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar, and then her time in and out of the Vault before her eventual death in The Doctor Falls.

Now, I want to be clear. I'd be okay to see the Master post-Missy one day. But dropping their character development would just kinda suck imo.

[time-qxeen]

darkerdeariegold​:

He simply nodded, not quite sure what it meant by being on the same path. Did it mean that this was all simply leading down a pre-determined road that would end in Missy’s death and regeneration? Or was it relating to the fact that she was on the path of darkness that the Lumiat didn’t want her to be on? It could easily be both, or knowing this universe, neither at all.

“I’m aware of that,” he replied, sighing as he did. “But it’s my magic that has kept you from regenerating.” Which meant somewhere along the line he did something wrong. “Am I dead, by the time it happens?” he asked her bluntly, wondering if that was why it failed. Maybe all the devices and trinkets he’d made her had been used and that was simply the first time it happened to her without him able to replace them. Whether she knew about that, he didn’t know, but he still needed to ask it. 

Sighing, he again was rubbing at his eyes, tired because of this but wanting - needing - answers. He needed to know what he had to do to stop that from happening. He couldn’t lose her. He refused to lose her.

“I wish you’d told me.” He wished she’d trusted him enough to tell him. This would have all hurt a lot less if he’d been prepared for it. But he hadn’t, so it did. “I’m not foolish enough to think that it’s impossible that something could go wrong, but the fact you knew about her and didn’t share that with me, despite everything we’ve done revolving around your regeneration is difficult for me to understand.” 

Missy honestly didn’t know any of the answers to his questions - he probably knew more than she did, at this point, because when she’d met the Lumiat she hadn’t shared any information. Missy didn’t know how she would die, or when, or because of who—the whole thing hadn’t had much of a lasting impact, because... well, with the little information she had, it didn’t feel real. Yes, the Lumiat said she would die one day, but wasn’t that a constant threat? And after meeting Rumple, and successfully keeping her face during her regeneration, it had just... slipped her mind, she supposed. It had felt even less real. “I don’t know. All I know is that she said I would be alone.” 

Stepping towards him, Missy reached out to take his hands in hers. “You have to understand - I didn’t hide it. I met her years ago. I decided years ago that nothing would happen to make me become her.” She hadn’t hidden anything intentionally - it just hadn’t ever seemed relevant. She’d barely thought about it all, honestly, because the encounter had been so brief and she’d been cocky enough to believe that she would never let herself get to a point where she had to use an Elysian Field. “I’ve had bigger issues since then, and it was... pushed to the back of my mind, because it felt like I’d dealt with it already. That I would just... keep making sure to protect myself.” 

“I wouldn’t keep anything from you if I thought it was important, dear, you know that.”