finally watched The Deadly Assassin
turns out i completely missed it back then. no wonder i was confused about a lot of Gallifreyan things. some stuff still makes no sense of course but hey…
OK so… the russian-sounding castellan was a sweet hardboiled but earnest detective type. everybody was old funny looking white guys but they were different shapes so i mostly could tell which was which. also the different colored robes did help. Also some of the mean ones had fake tans.
so it’s the classic [primary suspect must find the actual killer] story except they go in the matrix (if you die in the game you die IRL… wow, wachovskis, so original?!) which was actually a quarry, the doctor dressed like a pirate and entered a western movie and/or an episode of M.A.S.H. to fight crispy!master’s henchman…. and received an A- for their efforts from their old prof.
the doctor protested throughout how despicable the Master was while also praising his brilliance almost as highly as their own (and 4 is meant to properly hate Crispy from what i’d read) but didn’t seem terribly concerned about having let him escape at the end.
part 4 has some great quotes which i’ll search later. and best of all… i was both curious and dreading watching this because i couldn’t imagine crispy!master being presented without extreme ableist tropes like i mean worse than Davros is what I was expecting. but everybody was pretty matter-of-fact about his appearance and only related it to his desperation to live (which only makes sense, since it’s connected), not to his evilness. the doctor did call him insane but that’s general with that character, not incarnation-specific.
other best of all, kinda feel like i understand (sort of) about the eye of harmony now…
