Though he initially felt that he’d want to step back from Doctor Who after Jodie Whittaker’s swansong as the Thirteenth Doctor, Sacha Dhawan says he feels “major FOMO” — that is, Fear Of Missing Out — and would want to play the Master again.
He reflects:
“I’ve been seeing all the speculation in the press and I have such major FOMO. I know it’s going to be so good, as well. I think it’s good to maybe have a break from it, and if I was asked to maybe come back, I think I’d inject a new lease of life into it now having had a break from it.”
Dhawan’s Master was last seen in The Power of the Doctor, sparring off the Thirteenth Doctor and temporarily being the Doctor (ish, sort of, maybe, in a cosplaying sense) too.
So what does Sacha think the future holds for Doctor Who?
“I think Ncuti [Gatwa, the Fifteenth Doctor] is going to be great, hearing through the grapevine from certain crew members that I’ve crossed paths with, he’s sensational. I think just, when I see a new Doctor, even some of the past Doctors – Matt Smith – I kind of immediately think as an actor, ‘I’d love to spar off them as the Master, I wonder what that energy would be like.’
“So when I see Ncuti, one of the reasons I’d love to go back at some point, possibly, is to get in the ring with him as the Master and see what happens, that dynamic, the electricity. The Doctor and the Master have a real love/hate relationship, and I love exploring that.
“I feel like each Doctor and the series kind of represents what’s going on in the world right now on some subliminal level. I really do think in the last couple of years, as a nation, the world has really taken a hit in so many different ways; there’s been real highs, real lows, people just trying to survive, and I think Doctor Who reflects that.”
Dhawan is a fantastic actor, and I’d love to see how Russell T Davies would write his incarnation. Davies does like the Master — during his first tenure as showrunner, he got the brilliant John Simm in four (and a bit) episodes of Doctor Who to play the mad Time Lord, so we could see the Master coming back again to battle the Fifteenth Doctor.
Would you like to see the Master return for a new era of thrills and terrors?
