WARNING: The following contains SPOILERS for Doctor Who season 12 episode 1, “Spyfall – Part 1.”
The premiere episode of Doctor Who season 12 not only brought back the character of the Master, but it also brought back the Master’s signature weapon: the Tissue Compression Eliminator (TCE). The weapon originates from the Doctor Who 1970s episodes in which the Master first appeared, and it kills people by shrinking their bodies. It’s a classic weapon for a classic character.
First appearing in the Third Doctor story “Terror of the Autons,” the Master has long been depicted as the Professor Moriarty to the Doctor’s Sherlock Holmes. Whereas the Doctor is a benevolent alien who uses advanced technology to save lives, the Master is a would-be conqueror who uses the power of the Time Lords to enslave other races, usually as part of a larger scheme to annoy the Doctor. While the Master’s reasons for hating the Doctor have never been explained in the show, the two were once best friends. Despite their mutual animosity, Doctor Who and the Master have a history of working together against common enemies, usually hostile aliens whom the Master had underestimated and double-crossed.
The Tissue Compression Eliminator defines the Master in the same way that the Sonic Screwdriver defines Doctor Who. A showy hand-held device that serves no purpose other than killing, the TCE destroys by compressing the atoms in an object. While this can be used to safely shrink inorganic material, the effect on living creatures is lethal. While it was possible to shrink the victims down to a microscopic size, the Master usually reduced them to the size of a doll, leaving their corpses behind as a macabre calling card to let the Doctor know that he had returned.
The Tissue Compression Eliminator
“Spyfall – Part 1” revealed the return of the Tissue Compression Eliminator along with the return of the Master. After spending most of the episode working alongside former MI6 horizon watcher O (Sacha Dhawan) to stop a new alien menace that seemed to be targeting Earth’s spies, the Doctor was stunned when O revealed himself to be her “best enemy” in disguise. When the Doctor protested that she had met O once before and knew for a fact that he was a real person, the Master agreed and said that he had replaced the original O years earlier, but that the spymaster remained “a man very close to my heart… in my pocket, actually.” The gleeful Master then pulled out a small matchbox, which held the shrunken body of the real O.
The return of the Tissue Compression Eliminator is, like the return of the Master himself, a sign that Doctor Who is getting back to basics and will be paying tribute to its history in the coming season. Indeed, “Spyfall – Part 1” was a tribute in more than one respect. In addition to the story being a stylistic modern update of the classic spycraft stories that dominated the Third Doctor era of the show, the episode was also dedicated to writer Terrance Dicks, the co-creator of the character of the Master who passed away in the summer of 2019. Appropriately, the episode’s credits ended with the note “Dedicated to the memory of the Masterful Terrance Dicks.”
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