They didn’t just bring back the Time Lord ceremonial robes, they dress the young Master in the clothing seen in the last part of the 2nd Doctor story The War Games.
Anyway, the episode was very over-the-top, but there was much to like about it being so.
Possibly my favorite part was simply the fact that the Master’s motivations throughout the history of Doctor Who make sense: He’s batshit insane.
Sure, everyone always talks about how Roger Delgado’s Master was all about calculated evil, but really, most of his so-called plots were poorly thought out alliances with alien forces that he would switch sides against as soon as the Doctor pointed out that he was going to be converted to Axonite as well.
Really, the fractured mind driven to creating conflict makes me feel better about the character who’s supposed to be the Doctor’s intellectual equal when those half-assed plans of conquest get revealed.
At the very least, his newly revealed mental condition explains why the hell he felt the need to disguise himself as a mysterious asian magician in pre-historic earth. Or his odd obsession with children’s shows.
Other than that, I also really liked the cell phone conversation between the Master and the Doctor. It makes for a nice change of pace where both Tennant and Simms tone down the wacky humor.
Another subtle item within the episode is the fact that, yet again, the Doctor is to blame for all of this. Martha tells him it’s all his fault several times throughout the episode. Just like in Human Nature, he brought yet another malevolent threat right to Earth’s door step. What Martha doesn’t know, however, is that the Doctor was the one to make it possible for the Master to become Prime Minister when he started the “doesn’t she look tired” meme in the Christmas Invasion which made Harriet Jones an easy defeat.
There are, however, some things not to like about the episode. For one thing, the Master had the perfect opportunity to kill off the Torchwood team and spare us a season two, but instead merely sent them off to the mountains, which I suspect Owen will get them out of by using his giant fish mouth to eat his way through the snow banks.
Another was the fact that despite all the money being spent on CGI, we get a Gallifrey citadel snowglobe that manages to look cheaper than any model shot during the early sixties. The Time Lord space citadel from 1986’s Trial of a Time Lord wins hands down.