Not to fanwank what’s just an obvious error from someone who doesn’t grasp all the ins and outs of American electoral nomenclature, but wasn’t there a line about how no sovereign nation could be the first to initiate contact or it couldn’t take place on sovereign soil or what-not? Thus, a President-elect (not yet a sitting head of state) could have been tapped by the UN to take on the meet-n-greet because the sitting President was disqualified under UN protocol.
It was from Shada, an episode that Douglas Adams wrote that was never completed due to an unfortunatley timed strike. (At least that’s what I remember it from - anyone who remembers it from another episode, please chime in.) So I think you have to be more than a casual fan to have run across it. (That scene could have been used in retrospectives, too, though. That might expand the audience.)
I found an old VHS, once, with the shot scenes interspersed with Tom Baker explaining what was supposed to happen in the intervening scenes. (My favorite line is one about Adams.) Shada is also available online as a cartoon with cheaply done animation, on the BBC website. It’s been updated to use the 8th Doctor.
The punting scene in *The Five Doctors * was lifted from Shada. And Professor Chronotis was reincarnated by Adams into *Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. *
Getting back to the Drums timeline, I’m not sure if I like the new Master or not. This is the first time there’s been any hint that he’s got this unfortunate disability from childhood with which we ought to sympathize. Previously, he’s just been evil. We could sympathize with him being fed up with the Time Lords, perhaps, but no more.
I don’t think I’m going to like a mentally handicapped Master. It will probably depend on what he does in the future.
I’ve seen “comparisons” on another board. Apparently BBC America trims a bit for time, too. But the cuts are done more skillfully. And commercial breaks are placed more intelligently than on SciFi.
It was the Master’s companion that got me…wow, she played subtly-evil-sexy like I’ve never seen.
Good episode overall I thought, I always give loose reigns to continuity with Doctor Who, so none of that bothers me. Wibbly wobbly timey wimey and all that.
I don’t think you can use those two words in the same sentence. 
BBC America USUALLY cuts more mildly and skillfully than SciFi. But they lost massive fanpoints when they hacksawed “The Christmas Invasion” to half its length. They even cut the very same scenes they’d been featuring in the trailers they’d run several hundred times a day for the whole summer. I hope no one was watching TCI for the first time that evening; they would have been horribly confused.
Rant over, return to topic:
Bravo for not only understanding “decimation” but using it correctly!
I would like to know more about Mrs Saxon. Is the Master physically a Time Lord, and if so, has she noticed the two-heartbeats thing? Is she really aware he isn’t human? Is SHE actually human? (In the biological sense; she’s certainly “inhuman” in the moral sense.)
I do like her being set up as sort of Rose’s dark mirror, as the Master is the Doctor’s: another fun-loving blonde companion, but this one is well-bred, well-educated, well-off, well-dressed, and utterly lacking in conscience or compassion.
My wife and I wondered about her. She asked me if I thought she’d refer to The Doctor as Grandfather.