Anthony Ainley

I might have heard of him.

Uh, he took me under his wing a little bit, and there was, uh, another chap called Tony Ainley, and, uh, and Tony Ainley, uh, I apparently sent him the first, uh, fan letter he ever received.

So he took me a, a little bit under his wing, and, uh, I kind of moved from being the sort of fan on the periphery of things and, uh, was able to go and watch, uh, some of the stories being, uh-

Oh, go on.

Yeah.

Now, speaking of people getting parts, Anthony Ainley, 1980, is contracted to play the Master and Keeper of Trockenlegopolis with an option for eight further episodes in season 19.

Yeah.

Did they milk that eight? No.

I accept it only now because it's sort of the template they go forward with to a certain extent with New Who.

I was very disappointed that they leaned more towards maybe you'd say even Anthony Ainley and not lean back.

on Roger Delgado in terms of the impersonation, in terms of the portrayal, I should say, um, that kind of manicness is going to carry over into new

who.

I never liked this Planet Doctor.

And he goes from, like you say, yeah, robotic as he's feeling his way to, you know, okay, midway there with him and Lee, he's a bit more the master.

And then suddenly it's like, where did that come from? And it's like, did you just, you know, call on Anthony Ainley to help you with this or something? Yeah.

Luckily, they drag it back a little bit because him killing Lee is pretty strong.

It's a lot of fun.

Um, I forget that Anthony Ainley plays-

Mm

...

the evil German, and it's, it's really hard because I'm just used to Anthony Ainley just having the master goatee.

Yeah.

But whenever he has, like, his, um, sly, smug bastard grin in that film, you're like, "Oh, yeah, that's the grin that, uh, antagonized Peter Davidson when he tries to deceive the king and stop Magna Carta from-

Oh, so you went in with a, with a bang.

Yes, with John Nathan-Turner and Anthony Ainley I think we went.

We did, we did Chicago, and then they all came very quick after.

I can remember being in the rehearsal rooms at Acton, and we, we were just starting to get noise of these events happening in America.

I mean, all I think about when she's licking his nose there is, that's Roger Delgado.

Like, what's happening here? You know, that's Anthony Ainley licking Peter Capaldi's nose.

Can you imagine if Roger Delgado had licked John Pertwee?

[laughs] I'd love to see it, yeah.

And he's got, uh, Michelle Gomez waltzing around, camping it up.

S- and, and then the revelation, uh, that she's the Master, which given the, um, negative impact she's made in this episode, is hardly designed to thrill because it's not [laughs]...

I'm not watching this thinking, "Oh, this is a villain of the quality of Roger Delgado or even Anthony Ainley." It's, i- it's a poor performance, and so what should be an exciting revelation is just like, "Oh, really?"

That's, well, and I just think it's delivered in a sort of like, you know, "Oh, oh, Missy."

Glitz coming back is good.

The master... turns up and doesn't really do much but it's it's good to have him there um you know i'm quite happy for them to just kind of use a couple of episodes of anthony ainley that they've got contracted up here in the way that they do there's no harm done it doesn't really add to the threat uh too much because we're in more comedy master mode than we are evil master mode um the valiard is the villain which uh it's just so surprising like nobody saw this coming at all like the evil cackling over the top bloke dressed entirely in black for the last 12 weeks is actually the bad guy like heaven for fend um It doesn't really do anything satisfactorily, but it's a hell of a ride and I'm just happy to sort of sit back, switch my brain off and let the ultimate foe happen.

Like I say, it gets points for The Matrix.

It gets points for some of the absolutely great imagery that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.