4) What Is The Master’s Masterplan?
Despite the heavy publicity surrounding his return, the Master doesn’t show up until the episode’s final moments, revealing himself to be Bill’s apparent hobo pal Mr. Razor. It’s a great callback to the classic series when the Master would often wear an elaborate disguise to fool the Doctor. Here, he’s disguising himself for Bill’s sake, as she might remember him from his stint as Harold Saxon, the British Prime Minister.
What we don’t find out in the penultimate episode is exactly why the Master is hanging around the space station in the first place. History tells us he must have a masterplan up his sleeve, but as far as we can tell he hasn’t actually impacted on the development of the Cybermen so far. Unless it was he who drew the station into the black hole, then the time distortion would still have happened and the crew would have upgraded themselves into Cybermen anyway.
Unless the Master has just decided to hijack the Cybermen’s creation in order to get himself a free army? Going by the trailers, it looks like that might be the case. If so, though, that’s one of his laziest schemes yet. Especially as Missy previously controlled a Cyber-army only two seasons ago in season 8’s finale “Death in Heaven.” Reusing old masterplans is not an acceptable thing for a respectable supervillain to do.