The Return Of A Favorite ‘Doctor Who’ Villain Suggests An Intriguing Storyline

With less than two weeks to go before Doctor Who‘s tenth season (which just so happens to be Peter Capaldi’s last) premieres Saturday, April 15 at 9 p.m. ET on BBC America, good news keeps popping up. Most recently it was newcomer Pearl Mackie’s revelation that her character, Bill Potts, would be the long-running series’ first openly gay companion. Now it’s former Doctor Who actor John Simm’s confirmation that, over seven years after his last appearance on the show as The Master, he will return to do battle with his fellow Time Lord yet again.

“I can confirm that it’s true, thanks to the power of time travel I’m back,” Simm told BBC News. “It’s always a pleasure to work with this great team of people and I can’t wait for you all to see what the Master gets up to in the next series.” Simm has since acted in State of Play, Prey, and countless other television series and mini-series since his departure, which coincided with former showrunner Russell T Davies and 10th Doctor David Tennant’s exits. However, what makes his return to Doctor Who unique is the fact that Michelle Gomez’s “Missy,” a later female incarnation of the same villain, is also returning this year.

Current showrunner Steven Moffat, who’s also leaving with Capaldi after this year’s Christmas special, confirmed Simm and Gomez’s versions of The Master would appear onscreen together on Doctor Who. “It’s been a huge pleasure to have fan favorites John Simm and Michelle Gomez face to face in the same role,” he said, adding: “It’s not often you get to see a solo personality clash.” Neither Simm nor Moffat would say anything more about it, though with Gomez slated to appear in the new season’s sixth episode, “Extremis,” it’s a good bet Simm will show up then as well.

Gomez, whose Missy initially popped up in Calapaldi’s first full season as the 12th Doctor, immediately won the fans’ approval and delivered one of the show’s consistently best performances in subsequent episodes. For those who’ve been watching the Doctor Who reboot since the Tennant/Davis era, however, Simm’s Master stands out just as well. Seeing the two together, playing essentially the same character (but not), invokes similar multi-Doctor episodes from the show’s history: The Day of the Doctor, The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors and so on.