It's always nice when new episodes come out that interfere with CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES essays that I've posted. It makes for an easy entry, really. I give a bit of thought to where these tales might fit and then write up a quick update. Far less work than actually having to come up with an original idea and develop it into a proper dissertation!
Series Twelve - for all its controversy - has, at least, brought us back a few familiar faces. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the "no recurring baddies" policy of Series Eleven. But, like any fan, it's always fun when old monsters and/or villains return to plague the Doctor again.
Obsessive/Compulsive Pedantic that I am, I'm immediately trying to get these new appearances of old enemies to fit into the timelines that I've created for them. Rather than just sit back and enjoy the story, I'm looking for any clues in the episode that might indicate when the adventure took place within the histories I have envisioned. It's almost a sickness!
Of course, once I have found a place within my own headcannon for the new stories, I have to come here and write it out for all the internet to see!
PART ONE: THE CYBERMEN:
CYBERMEN FIRST. EVEN THOUGH THEY APPEARED SECOND
We'll start with the events of The Haunting of Villa Diodati, Ascension of the Cybermen and The Timeless Children. A great little Cybermen saga (in my opinion, at least). Technically, this is the second returning baddie of the season that affects an already-written CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES entry but I'd rather tackle this one first. There is a somewhat-controversial decision that I must make about the other recurring villain that appears this season so I'd rather save him for last. It's entirely possible that some readers might be upset about the decision I make about his timeline and won't read on. So it's better we put him second so that you'll still read what I have to say about the Cybermen, beforehand!
Clearly, the events of these three episodes take place at the end of a major war between the Cybermen and Humanity. By my accounts, this could be from one of two different places in Cyber-history that I've chronicled, thus far. The first position is discussed in Part Four of my Cybermen timeline (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_18.html). This would be the war that takes place sometime around the 26th Century. It ends when the enemies of the Cybermen discover their weakness for gold. The glitter gun is created using resources from Voga and the Cyber-race appears to be completely wiped out. Of course, some survive and live to fight another day. We learn about this war in stories like Revenge of the Cybermen and Earthshock.
The second possible setting would be the Cyber Wars that I discuss in Part Five of my Cyber-History Essay (https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_27.html). This battle would have taken place sometime around the 31st Century. This time, a sort of "scorched earth policy" is developed to defeat the Cyber-race. Essentially, any planet that has Cybermen on it is destroyed by special bombs created by the military forces of Earth. The resolution of this war ends up leaving a small hole in the Universe. We learn about this war in Nightmare In Silver.
There is, of course, a third possibility for us to explore. It could be that the dying war we are witnessing in Diodati/Ascension/Timeless Children is one that has never been referenced before. Essentially, a Third Great Cyber War that takes place sometime after the two I've just discussed. I postulate that Nightmare In Sliver happens sometime around the 42nd Century. We see strong indications that the Cyber-Race survives the incident on Hedgewick's World and will go on to terrorize the Universe further. Perhaps their forces grow strong enough to cause a Third Cyber War to erupt. This battle could take place any time after the events of Nightmare In Silver. So, basically, any time after the 42nd Century. How the conflict was actually resolved - we can't say for sure.
SO WHICH WAR WAS IT?
Of these three possibilities, there are several different story elements that indicate that any of these three periods could be the correct one.
When Yaz, Ryan and Graham are setting up a defense system against an attacking Cyber-force at the beginning of Ascension of the Cybermen, one of their weapons uses gold. While the Doctor does mention Cybermen do still have some vulnerability to this particular mineral in Nightmare in Sliver, it would still seem more likely that this is a device made to neutralize Cybermen from the First Cyber War rather than the Second. So this could be the time period they're in.
The Lone Cyberman first appears in Ascension of the Cybermen with two Cybus-Style Cybermen flanking him. It's made fairly clear in Nightmare in Silver that Cybus-style Cybermen were the models that fought in the Second Great Cyber War. This is a very nice visual cue that leads us to believe that this is the end of the Second Cyber War rather than the First.
The fact that we are seeing some new models of Cybermen that we've never seen before (a modern adaptation of the "giant earmuff-style" Cybermen that we first saw in The Invasion and Revenge of the Cybermen and continued on in the beautiful Neomorph model of the 80s) could indicate that this is the tail-end of a hitherto-unheard-of Third Cyber War.
Thus far, things are feeling like a POINT OF DEBATE essay. There's enough ambiguity to make all three assumptions feasible.
SERIOUSLY, THOUGH, WHICH WAR IS IT?!
Let's try to dig deeper and see if we can genuinely establish a valid time period.
I think we can eliminate the First Cyber War. The use of gold as a weapon is a bit tenuous. As I mentioned, it would still be useful against later versions of Cybermen. Also, if this were the First Cyber War than we should still see some Neomorphs lingering about, somewhere. That was the main model that was used during that era.
Another big clue that we haven't really covered is the fact that there is a Cyberiad in Nightmare In Silver. The word "Cyberiad", of course, bears a strong resemblance to the Cyberium that we see in Diodati/Ascension/Timeless Children. Both also seem to achieve a similar function. They are some kind of neural net that exists as a sort of cloud that can turn the entire Cyber-army into a single unified hive mind. Both of them also seem to require a host body of some sort.
The existence of a Cyberiad in Nightmare would indicate one of two things:
1) It's the Second Cyber War: Sometime after the events of The Timeless Children, the Master will find a way to expel the Cyberium from himself. The formless network of thought will, somehow, find its way to the Cybermen hiding on Hedgewick's World and they will store it til they can find a suitable organic form to carry it. Perhaps the Cyberium changes slightly in nature during its journey to Hedgewick's World and is, thus, re-christened the Cyberiad.
2) It's the Third Cyber War: The Cyberiad that we see in Nightmare In Silver is a sort of prototype of the Cyberium we will eventually see in Diodati/Ascension/Timeless Children. It will change its name slightly as it evolves.
FINALLY COMMITTING TO A TIME PERIOD
Okay, things are getting narrowed down a bit. There does, however, still seem to be an equal amount of evidence to support the idea that this is either a Second or Third Cyber War. So it's time to grasp at straws. Or even just base things purely on personal opinion.
Ascension of the Cybermen does seem to take place in a war-torn section of the Universe. There's still the occasional planet here and there, but much of it seems to just be a bunch of debris. The devastation has spread so far and wide that you need to get to a special gateway that will instantly transport you to a more civilised and/or occupied location in space.
It's likely that this is the Tiberian Spiral Galaxy that gets mentioned in Nightmare in Silver. We are told that this region is a sort intergalactic wasteland, now, with little of anything left in it. We get a view of it from Hedgewick's World in the Neil Gaiman tale. In Ascension of the Cybermen, we're seeing what it looks like from the inside.
It's also likely that the Cybus-Style Cybermen were the dominant model during the Second Cyber War but that other models were developed and, subsequently, wiped out. All the Giant Earmuff Cybermen that we do see in Ascension are either floating around dead in space or were left in hibernation on a badly damaged ship. So it would seem that they are a, sort of, lost model that are now getting a bit of a re-boot since a batch of them were discovered by the Lone Cybermen. This gets the new model of Cybermen that we're seeing to still be a part of the Second Cyber War rather than the Third.
My final point in support of this being the Cyber War of the 31st Century would be the simple notion that coming up with a Third Cyber War would just be a stretch on credulity. Can the Cybermen really just keep having gigantic wars against Humanity where they get wiped out over and over? Let's just keep things to two Cyber Wars. It seems more feasible.
HOW IT ALL FITS INTO CYBER-HISTORY
So the final verdict is that the saga of the Lone Cyberman and his quest to recover the Cyberium takes place at the tail end of the Second Great Cyber War. The Cyberium is created during this war and it turns the Cyber-Race into the most deadly and efficient army, ever. Humanity manages to, somehow, steal away the control node of this hive mind and send it into the past on Earth (Ko-Shamus appears to have been on a committee of some sort that makes this decision).
The Lone Cyberman, a strange partially-converted Cyberman who believes in the ideology of the Cybermen but still retains much of his humanity, goes back in time to recover the Cyberium. He returns with it to the tail-end of the Second Cyber War.where he intends to initiate a master plan that will fully mechanise the Cybermen. He meets the Master, who lures him to a devastated Gallifrey. The Master then mocks the Lone Cybermen for his strategy and tissue compresses him. The renegade Time Lord steals the Cyberium from his shrunken victim and hatches his own mad scheme to create hybrids that he will use to conquer the Universe.
Ultimately, the Doctor stops the Master's plot (with a little help from Ko-Shamus at the most opportune of moments). Somehow, the Cyberium will still survive this catastrophe and find its way to a group of Cybus-Style Cybermen that are hiding out on Hedgewick's World. On its journey, the Cyberium changed its nature in some way and will re-christen itself the Cyberiad. The Cybus-Style Cybermen will also evolve into a new model. Nightmare In Silver begins here.
So, that reconciles the Cybermen. Now let's deal with the controversy.
PART TWO: THE MASTER/MISSY:
WHERE THE DHAWAN MASTER FITS - THE PRE-MISSY THEORY
There has been much debate about this. Many fans want to believe that the mutual destruction created between Missy and the Simm Master at the end of The Doctor Falls is the final death of the Renegade Time Lord. The Simm Master, of course, will regenerate from the wound his successor inflicted upon him. But Missy dies from the blast she received by the laser screwdriver. It makes sense, really. Only at the end, does the Doctor's arch rival become his friend, again. There's a nice poetry to it all.
To maintain this theory, fans speculate that Sacha Dhawan's Master takes place some time prior to Missy. No one knows for sure when. Some place him as early as pre-Delgado or as late as between Simm and Missy (Missy even claims that she's not sure if Simm regenerates immediately into her). But he's definitely not an incarnation that exists after the conflict that takes place on the colony ship bound for Mondas. To place him there would nullify the whole gorgeous redemption arc that Missy moves through during the Twelfth Doctor era.
I can see the point that these fans are making. This really is a great place to kill off this character once and for all. Any new incarnations we meet should exist sometime before this moment. Since there are a lot of "grey areas" within the Master's two regeneration cycles, this theory is quite feasible.
However, it's not what I like to believe.
WHERE THE DHAWAN MASTER FITS - THE POST-MISSY THEORY
(SUBTITLED: WHERE I REALLY THINK HE FITS)
During Part One of The End of Time, the Doctor finally asserts that the popular Gallifreyan Mean Time theory that fans have held for years is real. He, basically, tells Wilf that Time Lords always have to maintain linear relationships with each other. The Tenth Doctor can't run into the Corpse Master one day and the Eric Roberts Master, the next. He has to keep dealing with the Simm Master and can't even dip back a day or two into his past. His explanation contains a ridiculous amount of techno-babble - but that's, basically, what he's saying.
Which means, quite simply, that Sacha Dhawan comes after Missy. To exist prior to her would be an ongoing violation of Gallifreyan Mean Time. Yes, this rule does get broken slightly here and there. But never to such a great extent as we are seeing with Dhawan and Thirteen. So things must still be moving in a linear fashion between the two of them. Dhawan follows Missy.
I know we can make all kinds of good arguments against this. The biggest one being: "Why would the Master bother to follow the rules?!" But this is one code he has always adhered to. Anytime we have seen the two Time Lords clash, it has always been their most recent encounter. We've never seen them meet out of order before. So I can't see the Master suddenly breaking this law, now.
Sorry everyone who doesn't want Missy's Redemption to mean nothing, after all. But that's how I feel on the matter.
SO IF YOU'RE GOING TO SAY HE'S AFTER MISSY - HOW DOES THAT WORK?
Of course, to just say: "Dhawan comes after Missy because of Gallifreyan Mean Time." is not enough. We have to figure out how Missy turns into him when Simm explicitly states that she won't be capable of regenerating from the damage he's done to her.
Technically, this is my second appendix on the History of the Master. In the first one, I do take a stab at guessing how Missy may have survived the attack. If you'd like to read the full thing, here it is: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2017/07/chronlogies-and-timeline-history-of.html. I don't actually offer my hypothesis til near the end of the post.
Should you choose not to go back and read the entry, my basic theory is that Missy was lying to Simm when she said her memories of their encounter were sketchy. She falsely claims that their timelines getting tangled have caused her to forget things. That doesn't tend to happen when it's just two incarnations meeting each other (Time Crash heavily supports this idea. There are other circumstances affecting the Doctor's memory during Twice Upon a Time and The Two Doctors. Normally, he would remember those encounters too). If you're watching carefully, she seems evasive whenever her previous self questions her about her recall of events. She even starts revealing a lot of details about what's to happen next once she stabs himself. It's as if she's known everything all along.
Missy is fibbing about this for a very specific reason. Her earlier incarnation becomes furious that she's joined the Doctor's side. He wants to kill her. Had he known that she would remember everything, he would guess that she would have prepared herself for his attack with the laser screwdriver. Even though he was dealing with his own regeneration, he would have stuck around to make sure she was dead. But, because he believes Missy wasn't expecting his drastic actions, he doesn't hang about waiting for her to die. He departs in the lift he's summoned and returns to his TARDIS.
Because she knew what was coming, Missy has set up some means of defending herself against the attack. A sort of high-tech flack vest or even a personal force field of some sort. But she is keeping the defense system on a very low setting. She still has to absorb some of the impact, herself, to make it all look convincing to her predecessor. The laser can't just bounce off of her or her trick would be ruined.
So the blast does do some damage to her. Not enough to kill her. But enough to make her regenerate.
OKAY, YOU'VE GOT A REGENERATION THEORY - WHERE DOES DHAWAN GO FROM THERE?
So I have a workable theory about how Missy regenerates into Dhawan. Good for me! But when we see Dhawan for the first time in Spyfall, he's on Earth with a TARDIS. How did he end up there? The Simm Master left in his TARDIS - leaving him with no means of egress. So how does he get off a colony ship that is fighting a Black Hole?
It seems apparent to me that the ship will eventually achieve escape velocity and make its way to Mondas. I even believe that the Cybermen on the colony vessel will be responsible for converting the Mondasian population once it arrives on the planet (for more details, check out this link: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_9.html). More than likely, the newly-regenerated Master escapes the Solar Farms before the Doctor blew them up and makes his way to another level. There, he hides until the ship is free of the Black Hole. He then, probably, steals a shuttle and makes his way to wherever he last left his TARDIS back when he was Missy. Or, maybe, he finds some way to steal a new TARDIS from Gallifrey. Or something of that nature.
"But we haven't been given any onscreen explanation of how the Dhawan Master escaped!" those-who-want-to-believe-he's-prior-to-Missy may point out, "This supports the idea that he doesn't come after Missy!"
Personally, I think that explanation will probably come at a later juncture. The Doctor, quite simply, hasn't had a chance to ask him, yet, how he got off the colony ship. We should also take into account that the Doctor was not present when the Master and Missy injured each other. So she probably just believes they left together in the Simm Master's TARDIS and parted ways sometime afterwards. More than likely, she's not even all that particularly curious about how the Dhawan Master now exists.
"But wouldn't they have had that conversation, already?!" the Dhawan-came-before-Missy Camp persists, "Surely, an explanation should have been given by this point! Missy is the final incarnation! Dhawan is an earlier version. Eldrad Must Live!" (I assume the level of fanaticism surrounding this issue would cause weird random expressions of devotion to other villains on the show)
There are many examples that negate the idea that an explanation of the Master's survival shouldn't take that long. For instance: we don't actually learn how the Master escaped his fate in The End of Time until six seasons later. And, of course, there are any number of cliffhanger endings for the Master in the 80s that are never properly resolved. Yet we know that when we see the Ainley Master next, he managed to extricate himself, somehow, from his last peril. So the "if it's never explained how he got out than this must be an earlier version" concept doesn't really hold water.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THAT REDEMPTION ARC?!
As I said earlier, I understand why people want Dhawan to be before Missy. If he comes after, it ruins all that progress that she made throughout her era. And I'm not just talking about the rehabilitation she went through once she was placed in the Vault. Look at the way she offers her army of Cybermen to the Doctor in Death in Heaven. Or the how she actually goes to rescue the Doctor in Magician's Aprrentice. Missy was finally moving towards becoming someone good. It would suck if all that was, suddenly, washed away.
But there's more to it than just wishing for this character to die a good person. There's a sort of leap in logic that's going on, too. The Dhawan Master is back to totally hating the Doctor and wanting her dead. He's also plenty happy to mercilessly slaughter people and execute plans that will get him to take over the Universe. If Missy finally made the choice to "be good", how does she suddenly go back to being the wretched villain she once was? It doesn't make sense.
Well, it can still make sense. Particularly when you factor in regeneration. It's not just a change of appearance, it can also be an alteration of attitude, behavior and even personality. Just look how Eleven's cheery disposition changes to a grumpy old man as he transitions into Twelve. Or the huge shift in attitude that happens when Eight transforms into the War Doctor. He went from a man who refuses to fight in the Time War to someone who is ready to dive right in. "Doctor No More" he proclaims. You can't change more radically than that.
Something similar must have happened during the regeneration from Missy into Dhawan. All the work she did on herself during her incarnation can, easily, fade away after a such an unpredictable biological process. So it is quite believable that the Dhawan Master simply rose from the ashes of Missy and thought: "Screw being good! Look where that got me! I'm going back to my old ways!"
But even if you don't bother to factor in the effects of regeneration, there is the plain and simple fact that people will make major life choices and then go back on the decision at a later time. Recovering addicts are the best example of this. Frequently, they have to make the choice to stop using several times over before they well-and-truly quit. Even then, many of them use a "One Day at a Time" mentality and accept that they can go back to their old life at any given moment. The Master/Missy certainly has a compulsive personality that might be comparable to an addict. So it's entirely possible that the Dhawan Master has fallen off the wagon.
It's even more likely that he will never get back on it. That, from hereon in, the Master is back to being evil.
All right, then. Appendixes Updated. I have a crazy idea to do another type of Appendix, though. One that is based on my BOOK OF LISTS series. So that might be where I go next.
Wait and see.....
There are a tonne of CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES entries that I am citing, here. It may be good to give you the full histories and appendixes that I have written on both the Master and the Cybermen.
Here they are:
History of the Cybermen
Part One:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of.html
Part Two:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_9.html
Part Three:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_13.html
Part Four:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_18.html
Part Five:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/02/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of_27.html
Super Sexy Special Glossary:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/03/special-glossary-models-of-cybermen.html
History of the Master:
Part One:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/10/chronologies-and-timelines-master-part-1.html
Part Two:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/10/chronologies-and-timelines-history-of.html
Part Three:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/10/chronologies-and-timelines-master-part-3.html
First Appendix:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2017/07/chronlogies-and-timeline-history-of.html
Should you actually bother to read all of these entries, you will become my new Best Friend!!!
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