Doctor Who: Tremas – the worst “in-joke” in the show’s history?

Doctor Who has included a lot of nods and in-jokes over the years. Some for the fans, and some just for the production team. But the worst in-joke ever is in The Keeper of Traken, and it concerns a character’s name…

When it comes to Doctor Who, we all have those little moments that bother us. Nothing major, nothing huge, but something small that somehow sticks out. For me, that’s Tremas. Not the character, but the name.

Tremas was a character introduced in The Keeper of Traken, played by Anthony Ainley. Now, if you haven’t seen the story, you probably think you already know who he really is. After all, Anthony Ainley is most famous to Doctor Who fans for playing the Master during the Eighties, and it’s really not hard to see what “Tremas” is an anagram of. So surely “Tremas” is the Master in disguise, right?

Well, no. He’s not the Master at all, not at first. And that’s a real problem.

Tremas was someone who genuinely helped the Doctor in The Keeper of Traken against the Master. He was very much his own character, and was even the father of Nyssa, someone who would later become the Doctor’s companion.

It was only at the end of the story that the Master found Tremas and possessed his body, effectively killing him. That’s right: in one of the biggest and most unlikeliest coincidences ever, the Master – someone who’s fond of using anagrams already – possesses a completely different person whose name just happens to be an anagram of Master. Who thought this was a clever decision?

John Nathan-Turner

As a documentary on the DVD and Blu-ray release of The Keeper of Traken revealed, in earlier drafts, Nyssa’s father originally had a completely different name. It was only at John Nathan-Turner’s insistence that the character was renamed “Tremas” as a little in-joke for the fans.

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Unsurprisingly, Christopher H. Bidmead, the script editor for the season, wasn’t too keen on that idea. And it’s not hard to see why. Like I said, if Tremas had been the Master in disguise – even one like Professor Yana in Utopia, where he didn’t even know he was using a disguise – the name would make sense.

But because it’s someone completely different that the Master possesses, it just comes across as the unlikeliest of coincidences.

This is one of a few key examples where John Nathan-Turner didn’t fully understand the fandom. Sometimes, he had a habit of including little “in-jokes” that he thought the fans would appreciate, such as adding question marks on the clothes in a nod to the show’s title. But these kind of choices would rarely be popular, and in fact, primarily served to alienate a key part of the audience.

As I’ve mentioned before, this is only a small, tiny little thing, in the grand scheme of things. But we wouldn’t be Doctor Who fans if we didn’t let inconsequential little things bother us, would we?

What little thing in Doctor Who bothers you? Do you agree that naming the character Tremas was a bad decision instead of a good in-joke? Let us know in the comments below.