Last Saturday night, I sat down with my husband and my eldest son (14) to watch the second half of Dr Who: The End of Time on BBC America.
Dr. Who, The End of Time, Part 2
About three-quarters of the way through, my son exclaims: “Mom! This guy didn’t read the evil overlord list, did he?”
And before I go any further, a cut for major spoilers.
My son was referring the scene where the Doctor holds off James Bond with a revolver. I know, the character was called Rassilon but he was only named that once and being someone not familiar with Old Who, he seemed James Bond to me. Besides, regeneration explains all the different Bond looks nicely.
At one point, the Doctor menaces James Bond with a revolver. The Doctor then turned his back to our villain to aim at the Master instead. The back and forth happened several times.
Which prompted my son’s original remark about the Evil Overlord list.
I asked him which rule.
“‘Shooting is not too good for my enemies,” he said.
And James Bond, who often benefited from adversaries who also didn’t read the evil overlord list, should know better.
That made me wonder how many rules of the list the Master and Rassilon violated in this episode.
Here’s what I found:
–My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
The Doctor even called the Master on this one.
–I will not gloat over my enemies’ predicament before killing them.
James Bond, you should stop standing there looking smug and just kill him the Doctor.
–No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.
Just exactly how was that machine damaged by ONE conventional bullet, anyway? And, wait, wasn’t the signal so strong because all the Masters contributed to it? So why didn’t it stop working once James Bond changed things back? At that point, it didn’t seem like they needed the machine.
(Aside, you probably don’t want to watch a mystery with me, either. There was one episode of NCIS that revolved around finding a buried laptop. It was still sending out a signal after three days and I said “C’mon! Laptop batteries don’t last for three days. ” My mother was not pleased.)
–I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
Use that glove that you just used for mass genetic rearrangement of the entire Earth, James Bond, especially when the Doctor turned his back on you. Several times.
I didn’t see “don’t tell your crazy underling that he’s too crazy to join you in ultimate power” on the list but I’m sure it should be.
If villains ever became geeky enough to read the Evil Overlord list and learn from it, I suspect all our heroes would be in big trouble.
At least neither James Bond or the Master turned into a giant snake. Which never helps.
