The Stuff Lith Like

Turlough <3

And then the next time the Master is around, Turlough finds out he’s there RIGHT after he finds Malkon and the crashed Trion ship.  He rolls up just in time to see Kamelion-as-Master trying to set Fivey on fire and Turlough is able to save him via screwing up the fire.  Then, hanging around outside the room to see what's going to happen he gets to hear some classic Master OTT at last, “Over the years I've dreamed of a million exquisite tortures to accompany your final moments. That it should come to this. I'm sorry to be deprived of the pleasure of seeing you die, Doctor, although I am consoled by the thought that your imminent and inevitable demise will be excruciating.” He is, I assume, like WTF? 

And then Five ultimatums TURLOUGH?? about abetting the MASTER??  THANKS FIVE.  Does  Turlough ever actually learn that what happened was that Five let him burn? If so, I can definitely see him interpreting that as ‘In the end, he let the Master die because that’s what he deserved’ and rolling that into his fears that the Doctor would have rejected him if he were ever to learn too much more about Turlough’s political situation.  Whereas we know that while obviously the Doctor would absolutely not take it well, what he’d actually do about it would be to go ‘hm.  I see.  I will now systematically shame you out of your opinions, shall I?’  I think the larger wrinkle here might be that Turlough DOES actually know that too, and can’t face that happening, because the Doctor can and will talk him out of his politics, and if Turlough changes his mind about those - that would be the last pillar of his old life kicked out from under him.  That would make every single moment of the war, and his defensive, defiant grumpiness about being perceived as having been on the wrong side (by asshole egalitarian neolibs that ruined everything for no good reason or whatever his impression of the eu situation is), into the full morally crushing weight of actually agreeing (as opposed to merely conceding) that he was on the wrong side in a genuinely unjust and unnecessary war. I don’t think he thinks he can take it. But it's either that or stick to his guns and be forever the bad guy.

OK so. I decided that I MUST know what the heckpants the skull that the Mara terrorizes Tegan with actually is because it definitely is not a snake even a little bit. So I spent nearly every free moment today going through libraries of 3D scans of skulls and the University of Pisa had a really nice spotted hyena that I think is a really close match. Teal for the bits I added, red for the bits I subtracted. It doesn't look like it would take much more to transform a hyena skull into this prop.

And here's a link to the scan, which is cool as hell.

They gave us surprise Turlough in a surprise minisode promoting the Season 21 Blu-ray box set. So of course I had to do a paintover.