The Sound of Drums

191b - The Sound of Drums
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Companion Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones)
Production
Directed by	Colin Teague
Written by	Russell T. Davies
Executive producer(s)	Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	3.12
Series	Series 3
First broadcast	23 June 2007
Chronology
← Preceded by "Utopia" Followed by → "Last of the Time Lords"

"The Sound of Drums" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 23 June 2007, and is the twelfth episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series. It is the second in a three-part story.

Synopsis

The Master arrives in the 21st Century — as Mr Saxon, Prime Minister — and the UK enters a period of terror when contact with an unknown alien race the Master calls the Toclafane is announced.

Plot

File:Saxon Toclafane.jpg

The Master introduces the Toclafane.

The Doctor, Martha, and Jack materialise in a London alleyway, having used Jack's Vortex Manipulator, repaired by the Doctor, to escape the Futurekind in the year 100 trillion. Martha asks the Doctor how he will recognise the Master, to which the Doctor replies that he will know him when he sees him. The trio look around to see "Vote Saxon" posters everywhere. Saxon makes an announcement on a giant TV screen, and the Doctor realises that the mysterious "Mr Saxon" is the Master.

Elsewhere, a woman named Vivian Rook asks for an interview with Mrs Saxon in 10 Downing Street. She warns her of "Saxon", saying he doesn't exist and that he only appeared eighteen months earlier. Though she acts convinced at first, Mrs Saxon turns to the Master, who is now standing by the door. He confirms that Saxon doesn't exist, and then introduces his "friends", four floating, mechanical spheres, which materialize and kill the woman. The Master promises his wife that "everything will end tomorrow".

Meanwhile, the trio have gone to Martha's house to find out more about the Master's "Saxon" persona. Among his apparently diverse history is the Archangel network, which Martha says is a mobile phone network founded by Saxon. The Master makes a televised announcement about the spheres seen earlier, which he calls the Toclafane. The Doctor knows this name to be a fake: it's the Time Lord equivalent of the bogeyman. As the Master makes his speech, the Doctor discovers a bomb on the back of Martha's TV. They make it outside just as her flat explodes. Martha then rings up her mum, to check on her; Francine wishes for Martha to come to her house, claiming that she plans to get back together with Clive. As Francine passes the phone to Clive, he tries to warn her about Saxon but the "sinister woman" is listening. She orders the police to arrest him as well as Francine. Martha hurriedly drives to the scene with the Doctor and Jack, but before she can do anything the police open fire on them and she is forced to drive away.

As the Doctor, Jack and Martha escape, Martha phones Leo wanting to warn him about the threat from Saxon, relieved to find out that he is in Brighton. Saxon is listening in on the conversation and the Doctor takes the phone from Martha. The Doctor tells the Master about the Time War and how it all ended. The Master reveals to the Doctor that he was revived by the Time Lords in order to fight as a soldier in the war but he ran away in fear. He then informs the Doctor that they are now Britain's most wanted terrorists and tells them to run, noting that Torchwood has been sent on a wild-goose chase in the Himalayas.

Using Martha's phone, the Doctor discovers that the Master is using a mysterious four-beat rhythm on the phones to subliminally persuade people to vote for him, adding that this is what kept him from previously detecting the Master. He goes on to give some insight into the Master's background, explaining that Time Lords on Gallifrey stare into the time vortex at a young age: some are inspired, some are frightened, and some are driven mad, the latter of which he believes happened to the Master. He creates a perception filter and adds it to the TARDIS keys, allowing the trio to move about unnoticed so long as they remain inconspicuous.

While the TARDIS crew look on, the US president, Mr Winters, arrives on Air Force One, and tells the Master that he is disobeying a United Nations convention agreed in 1968 that first contact should be through him and UNIT. He insists on moving first contact to the Valiant and conducting the meeting himself. The trio follows using Jack's Vortex Manipulator to teleport onto the Valiant. Onboard, they find the TARDIS, which has been "cannibalised" into a paradox machine that will reach critical mass two minutes after first contact is made.

When first contact begins, the Toclafane complain that the President is not the Master. The Master reveals himself at this, and has his friends kill the President. He takes the other world leaders as prisoners. The Doctor attempts to stop the Master, but is rooted out and captured by the guards. The Master "kills" Jack with a device he refers to as a laser screwdriver. Turning it on the Doctor, he explains that the device also has a compact version of LazLabs genetic manipulation technology, which when coupled with the Doctor's biological data — which the Master obtains from the Doctor's dismembered hand that was cut off during the battle with the Sycorax leader on Christmas Day — allows him to age the Doctor by 100 years.

Noting that the time has come, the Master plays "Voodoo Child" while the paradox machine activates, creating a massive rift above the Valiant, which releases six billion Toclafane. He orders them to decimate (in the literal sense) the population of Earth. He refuses to explain the Toclafane's true identity to the aged Doctor, saying only that the revelation would break the Doctor's hearts. The Master looks down on "his new dominion" with his wife, but Martha has teleported to Earth using the Manipulator, promising to return.

Cast

• The Doctor — David Tennant
• Martha Jones — Freema Agyeman
• Captain Jack Harkness — John Barrowman
• The Master — John Simm
• Lucy Saxon — Alexandra Moen
• Francine Jones — Adjoa Andoh
• Clive Jones — Trevor Laird
• Tish Jones — Gugu Mbatha-Raw
• Leo Jones — Reggie Yates
• Sinister Woman — Elize du Toit
• Vivien Rook — Nichola McAuliffe
• Albert Drumfries — Nicholas Gecks
• President Arthur Winters — Colin Stinton
• BBC Newsreader — Olivia Hill
• Chinese Newsreader — Daniel Ming
• US Newsreader — Lachele Carl
• Sharon Osbourne — Herself
• McFly — Themselves
• Ann Widdecombe — Herself
• Toclafane voices — Zoe Thorne, Gerard Logan, and Johnnie Lyne-Pirkis

Cast notes

• Lachele Carl previously appeared as a reporter in "Aliens of London", "World War Three" and "The Christmas Invasion".
• Elize Du Toit returns in this episode as the "Sinister Woman", the same role she played in "42".
• Zoe Thorne previously voiced the Gelth in "The Unquiet Dead".

Continuity

Gallifrey

• The Time Lord homeworld, Gallifrey, appears in this episode. This is the first televised depiction of Gallifrey since The Five Doctors (although a Gallifreyan space station appeared in The Trial of a Time Lord). John Barrowman asked a day previously in Totally Doctor Who "How old must the children of Gallifrey be to enter the Academy?"
• The first televised black Time Lord appears in this episode, during the Gallifrey flashback sequence, although a black Time Lord appeared in the spin-off novel The Shadows of Avalon by Paul Cornell, and Time Lord founder Rassilon was portrayed in several audio plays by black actor Don Warrington.
• The adult Time Lords are depicted dressed in the ceremonial robes first seen in The Deadly Assassin. The boy Master wears a black outfit similar to those worn by the Time Lords in the earlier episodes (first appearance in The War Games).

The Master

• In "Utopia", Professor Yana refers to a lifelong "sound of drums", which only he can hear. In this episode, the Master tells the Doctor that he is still distressed by the never-ending sound. The narrative in the trailer for "Last of the Time Lords" suggests that the Master has heard the sound calling him to war ever since he first looked into the Time Vortex as a young child on Gallifrey.
• The Master reveals that the Time Lords resurrected him to fight in the Time War. In his last televised appearance, he was sucked into the Eye of Harmony in the Doctor Who television movie. He fled the war before its outcome.
• When talking to the cameras towards the end of the episode, the Master paraphrases the beginning of his speech delivered in similar circumstances in episode four of Logopolis (1981) — "People of Earth, please attend carefully."
• The Master refers to wife Lucy Saxon as his "companion", a title regularly assumed by the travelling partners of the Doctor. The Master previously had "companion" characters in the television movie.
• The Master is shown enjoying an episode of Teletubbies, continuing a fascination with childrens' television programming first seen in The Sea Devils, when he watched an episode of The Clangers. As with The Clangers, he believes the Teletubbies to be a genuine Earth species.

Torchwood

• Jack and the Master refer to Jack's colleagues at Torchwood Three in Cardiff. The Master says that he led Torchwood Three on a "wild goose chase" to the Himalayas (as Kingsley Shacklebolt does in Harry Potter 6), thus preventing Jack getting help from them.
• The Doctor and Jack talk about the events at Torchwood One as seen in "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday".
• Music cues composed for Torchwood are used when Jack reveals to the Doctor that he works for them.

References to other stories

• The Master offers Lucy Saxon a jelly baby, a confection often associated with the Fourth Doctor and, to a lesser extent, the Eighth Doctor.
• Vivien Rook refers to the fall of Harriet Jones, who appeared as an MP in "Aliens of London" before being elected Prime Minister by the time of "The Christmas Invasion". Although that episode hinted at her downfall due to the Doctor, this episode confirms her defeat as well as this event being the beginning of Saxon's rise to power.
• The Master, while leading the Cabinet, refers to the reconstruction of the Cabinet Rooms, which were destroyed at the climax of "World War Three".
• Clips from "Aliens of London", "Army of Ghosts", "Doomsday", "The Runaway Bride" and "The Lazarus Experiment" are used.
• Martha's television is shown to be manufactured by, or rented from, Magpie Electricals — this company manufactured televisions in "The Idiot's Lantern".
• The Master reveals he was responsible for Tish getting the job working for Professor Lazarus in "The Lazarus Experiment", hoping to trap the Doctor and Martha. In this episode, the Master uses the technology developed by Professor Lazarus to accelerate aging instead of reverse it.
• The Doctor has encountered premature aging before, most notably in the 1980 serial The Leisure Hive, where the Doctor was aged by centuries in a few seconds. He also aged rapidly in The Daleks' Master Plan, before going back to his previous age.
• This episode brings the death toll of Earth's heads of government to four since the series was relaunched: the British Prime Minister and the acting Prime Minister die in "Aliens of London and "World War Three", respectively; parallel Earth's President of Great Britain is killed in "Rise of the Cybermen"; and this episode features the death of American President Arthur Winters.
• It seems as if Mr Saxon or one of his associates has been in Martha's flat as there is a bomb on the television and the message left on her answer machine by her mum at the end of The Lazarus Experiment has been deleted as only a message from Tish is heard.

Errors

• President Winters refers to himself as "President-Elect", which means that he is not yet President of the United States of America and so has no actual authority.

Outside references

• "Voodoo Child" by Rogue Traders is played diegetically within this episode. The song, from the album Here Come the Drums, has the phrases "The sound of drums" and "Here come the drums" in its lyrics.
• The Master uses the classical definition of decimation, ordering the Toclafane to kill one tenth of the world's poplulation, as opposed to the more common current usage.
• The Master begins one of his speeches to the public with "Britain, Britain, Britain". This is the catchphrase of the narrator in Little Britain, Tom Baker, who also played the Fourth Doctor.
• Both the official Doctor Who website's Fear Forecast for this episode and Radio Times note the Valiant's similarity to Cloudbase from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
• The official Doctor Who website's Fear Forecast for "Utopia" notes the similarity between the drumming motif repeated in this episode and the opening of the Doctor Who theme tune as composed by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire.

Production and publicity

• This (with "Utopia" and "Last of the Time Lords") is the first three-part story in the revived series of Doctor Who.
• The episode was advertised on BBC television with a spoof party political broadcast, featuring celebrities Sharon Osbourne, McFly and Ann Widdecombe showing their support for Mr Saxon. During the broadcast, drums can be heard. There is also a different trailer which shows still shots of the Doctor, Martha Jones and Captain Jack over the top of which Mr Saxon's speech, in which he says "... what this country really needs, right now, is a doctor", can be heard and at the end there is a small clip of him showing his trademark smile. The celebrity appearances in the episode itself differ from those in the trailer, most noticeably that of Ann Widdecombe who appears alone in the trailer but alongside Mr Saxon in the episode.