Name:
Maestro
Affiliated With:
The Gods of Chaos
Father:
Children:
Appearance:
Main Actor:
Jinkx Monsoon
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Maestro, a child of the Toymaker, was an elemental manifestation of music itself, and as such had control over music and consumed it, in the form of unsung songs and stifled melodies, as sustenance. If they did this directly from an individual, as with Timothy Drake in 1925, it would kill the victim. They could be summoned and banished with two different “lost chords” respectively, and came into conflict with the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday in 1963 at the EMI Recording Studios in London. They particularly loved aeolian tones, such as the sound of a nuclear winter, which they described as “the purest music of all”.
BIOGRAPHY
EARLY LIFE
Maestro was a godlike cosmic entity born to the Toymaker, presumably outside of N-Space; The Doctor presumed them to be “part of the pantheon”. Despite this lineage, they had little love for their father, singing that the Toymaker, or “daddy”, was “mean” and “tough” after stating that they “should be thankful” to The Doctor for trapping him. They had the ability to control music itself, weaponizing it, transmuting the audio into a physical form, and even consuming it to sustain themself. Maestro was the parent of Henry Arbinger, whom they named so as to make his initial and surname spell out “Harbinger”, meaning a person or thing announcing or signalling the approach of another. They called him their “prelude” and then made him disappear possibly from existence in 1925.
The Maestro sought to consume music and grow strong enough to devour the music of the spheres eradicating all life in the universe and leaving nothing but aeolian tones. Their efforts were foiled when The Doctor, and then John Lennon and Paul McCartney, completed the lost chord of banishment and removed them from existence. Much like the Toymaker, this banishment appeared retroactive as 1963 returned to how it originally was immediately with no lingering sign of Maestro having ever existed. However during the subsequent musical celebration led by The Doctor and Ruby, Henry reappeared at the EMI Recording Studios, possibly foreshadowing his parent’s return. (The Devil’s Chord)
BEHIND THE SCENES
To portray Maestro, Jinkx Monsoon took inspiration from both Disney villains (which she notes is already built into her drag performances) and past Doctor Who villains, having previously watched the show as a fan. Monsoon particularly looked to Michelle Gomez’s performance as Missy, citing her as someone who “tows that line between the heightened, stylized, almost Shakespearean elements of Doctor Who, but also is very truthful, genuinely scary and just a very effective villain.”[1]