The Final Game (unproduced TV story)

The Final Game was an unproduced serial intended to end Season 11. Written by Robert Sloman, it would have revealed the details of the relationship between the Doctor and the Master: either that were actually brothers or the latter Time Lord was an amalgamation of the former Time Lord's darker personality. This story originally ends with the Master's Roger Delgado incarnation sacrificing himself in some sort of explosion, with a moral dilemma that should he set off a bomb as intended, he would be killing the Doctor, his former friend. (DOC: The Final Curtain) However, the serial was never produced due to Delgado's sudden death. Instead, Planet of the Spiders replaced this story, and Delgado's character was shelved until The Deadly Assassin, which recast the Master as Peter Pratt, in a decayed state.

Legacy

Several elements from this episode have been recycled throughout the years:

• Two elements were recycled in TV: Logopolis:
  • The Master being the Doctor's dark half was alluded when the Fourth Doctor implied this to Adric and Nyssa.
  • The Master causing the Doctor to regenerate occurs when the Master's Anthony Ainley incarnation caused the Fourth Doctor to regenerate.
• Their possible fraternal relationship was teased in TV: Planet of Fire by the Master's Ainley incarnation to the Fifth Doctor and Peri Brown (but TV: The Sound of Drums later dismissed this theory after the Tenth Doctor was asked this question by Martha Jones).
• The idea of a corporeal 'dark side' was used in TV: The Trial of a Time Lord, when the Master's Ainley incarnation revealed that the Sixth Doctor's prosecutor, the Valeyard, was in fact a manifestation of the dark side of the Doctor's own personality.
• The original ending occurs in TV: The End of Time when the Master's John Simm incarnation sacrifices himself to save the Tenth Doctor from Rassilon. However, the Doctor regenerates soon afterwards due to radiation poisoning.