History Recap / DoctorWhoS40E2TheDevilsChord

The person instantly appears sitting at the piano, and Timothy warns Henry to get away from him. [[NonHumanNonBinary "It's them"]] the person insists, but Timothy is confused by this. The person greets Henry affectionately, and Timothy wonders how they know each other. Henry claims the person is his Daddy and asks Timothy to check his name. Timothy sees that Henry's full name is Henry Arbinger, and before his eyes the words change to form the word Harbinger.

* AbstractEater: The Maestro can eat music, but unique from other examples they can also eat music that goes unplayed, meaning that engineering the death of anyone that can play music still feeds into their power.
* AlternateHistory: Due to the Maestro's interference in the 1920s, music as a concept has become looked down upon by the 1960s, with Music/PaulMcCartney and by extension the rest of the Beatles only forming for monetary gain. The Doctor also finds a newspaper detailing a threat the USSR has made towards Finland, showing that the politics of this world are being affected by the lack of music as well. This eventually culminates in the Doctor and Ruby returning to 2024 to discover London (and presumably the rest of the world) has become a desolate wasteland, due to a nuclear war breaking out, as without music no one had any healthy outlets for their heartbreak and frustration, ultimately turning to unrestrained violence.

* AvengingTheVillain: SubvertedTrope. The Toymaker warned the Doctor in "[[Recap/DoctorWho60thASTheGiggle The Giggle]]" that his legions would arrive in the universe, but the Maestro thanks the Doctor for banishing their father.
* BadFuture: The Maestro's meddling leaves humanity with no outlet for their emotions, causing a HopelessWar that reduces Earth to a wasteland by 2024.
* BeyondTheImpossible: Ruby points out that the Maestro shouldn't even have been able to fit inside an upright piano, let alone have it still work with them inside it, but as a child of the Toymaker, [[RealityWarper the laws of physics mean nothing to them]].

* BreakingTheFourthWall: When Ruby is kidnapped by the Maestro's musical notation, the Doctor briefly notes that he thought the music he'd been hearing was non-diegetic, suggesting he could hear the soundtrack of the episode itself.

* CloseEnoughTimeline: The Doctor defeats the Maestro in 1963; it's not clear if this undoes everything they've done since 1925, or just gives a new generation of musicians an opportunity to fix it.

** The Maestro's piano rendition of the ''Doctor Who'' theme tune plays over the opening credits, just like [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E4BeforeTheFlood the Doctor's own electric guitar rendition once did]]. Both of the preceding cold opens mention Beethoven, too.
** The Maestro mockingly calls the Doctor "[[Characters/DoctorWhoTenthDoctor timey]]-[[Characters/DoctorWhoEleventhDoctor wimey]]" when they meet.
* ContrastingSequelAntagonist: Compared to the Toymaker, who wanted everyone to play his games, the Maestro wants to be the sole person that plays music. Whereas rules of the game define the Toymaker, the Maestro has no qualms about cheating. While the Toymaker kept his first victim alive to torment for decades, the Maestro kills theirs within a couple minutes of meeting them. Defeating the Toymaker required only beating him at a game - ''any'' game - whereas Maestro requires a very specfic chord to be banished. And while the Toymaker was explicitly a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain who repeatedly made racist remarks, the Maestro is a PoliticallyCorrectVillain who uses they/them pronouns and briefly mocks Timothy Drake for accidentally misgendering them.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Downplayed, as it's just confusion rather than intolerance or hatred. Timothy Drake, a man from the 1920's, instantly pegs the Maestro as a man in drag, but when the Maestro [[PoliticallyCorrectVillain insists on they/them pronouns]], Timothy reacts with confusion (seemingly not realizing that they/them can be a singular pronoun), something the Maestro mocks him for.
* DiegeticSwitch: At the end of the cold open, the Maestro taps out the first few notes of the ''Doctor Who'' theme, blending into the theme proper, and it ends by leading into a rendition of the theme on the Doctor's jukebox.
* DraggedOffToHell: The Maestro is sent back from whence they came when the Beatles complete the lost chord that the Doctor began on the studio's piano.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: The Doctor tries pointing out to the Maestro that their father adamantly stuck to the rules and never cheated. The Maestro isn't so constrained.
* EvilIsHammy: The Maestro is quite possibly one of the hammiest ''Who'' villains ever, and that is saying something. Appropriately enough, they're the child of another such LargeHam, the Toymaker.

* HopeSpot: The Doctor seems to find the lost chord that will banish the Maestro, but then they get the last note wrong, which allows the Maestro to recover and send the piano out of the room. It takes the combined effort of Music/JohnLennon and Music/PaulMcCartney to finish the chord and send the Maestro packing.
* HorrifyingTheHorror: The Maestro is thoroughly weirded out and declares that something is "wrong" with Ruby upon hearing the rendition of "Carol of the Bells" echoing from her childhood. They're also terrified by the possibility of The One Who Waits returning, further building up the being's status as TheDreaded.
* InSpiteOfANail: In a world where people have avoided good music since the 1920s to avoid attracting the Maestro, Music/TheBeatles are still signed with EMI, they're just intentionally bad.

** Invoked by the Doctor. It ''is'' possible to trick and even defeat a god, but any solution you come up with will only work once. This is vividly demonstrated during the climax, where the Maestro completely shrugs off and seemingly ''breaks'' (or at least damages) the Sonic Screwdriver after it was previously used to mute all sound in their vicinity.

* KickTheDog: The Maestro gives an [[ScreamDiscretionShot unspecified]] [[SoundOnlyDeath nasty fate]] to an elderly woman who heard Ruby's piano playing, who then sat down at her own piano in her apartment to play some music (presumably something she remembered from before the Maestro arrived in the 1920s and started taking music away).
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: After eating Timothy Drake's inner music, the Maestro glares right at the viewer, before [[DiegeticSwitch tapping out the beginning of the show's theme]]. They also WinkDing at the camera before closing the curtains into the flat of the old woman they're about to do something horrible to.
* LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn: As the Doctor and Ruby rush to try and stop the Maestro, typical energetic music is playing... then Ruby notes that ''she'' can hear the music as well.

* MagicAIsMagicA: Once he learns that the Maestro was summoned by playing the Lost Chord, the Doctor accurately deduces that there must be a chord that banishes them. The problem with that, of course, [[OneInAMillionChance is figuring out which one out of countless note combinations]].

* MythologyGag: After leaving the Earth silent and humanity-less, the Maestro declares their next goal will be to destroy the [[Recap/DoctorWho2008PSMusicOfTheSpheres Music of the Spheres]], leaving themselves as the only composer of music in the universe.
* NearVillainVictory: The Doctor flubs the ending to the lost chord that would seal away the Maestro, and both he and Ruby get imprisoned in nearby instruments with little effort on the Maestro's part. Only the intervention of the Beatles on the piano saves the day and gets the Maestro DraggedOffToHell.

* NonHumanNonBinary: The Maestro is a cosmic entity and child of the Toymaker who uses they/them pronouns.

* OmnicidalManiac: The Maestro's goal after wiping out all life on Earth is to take their act on the road, and wipe out all life everywhere, becoming the ultimate solo act.
* OutOfGenreExperience: When Russell T. Davies said that this episode would be more fantastical than anything the show had ever attempted before, he certainly meant it. The Maestro's powers are probably the closest thing to actual magic yet seen on the show (even more so than their father, the Toymaker, or some of the villains who fought the Seventh Doctor), with no attempt ''whatsoever'' to give a scientific explanation for their reality-warping powers; both the Maestro and the Doctor lean on or outright break the fourth wall on multiple occasions; and the whole thing culminates in a DancePartyEnding.

** We get more hints that something weird is going on with Ruby's birth, as the rendition of "Carol of the Bells" which was playing on the night she was abandoned at the church is somehow embedded into her soul and powerful enough that the Maestro themself is left dumbstruck by it. The Maestro attributes this to "the Oldest One", whom they claim must have been there on the day Ruby heard the song, though they can't explain why. As they're banished back to where they came from, the Maestro also makes another reference to "the One Who Waits", claiming that they are almost here.
** During the DancePartyEnding, Henry Arbinger appears to watch in confusion. This is despite him appearing to only be a construct of the Maestro who was destroyed at the start of the episode. This implies that he is much more than he seems, and will return.

* SpecialGuest: Creator/JinkxMonsoon, Broadway star and winner of both ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'' season 15 and ''Series/RuPaulsDragRaceAllStars'' season seven, portrays the Maestro.

* StevenUlyssesPerhero: In the cold open, the Maestro asks Timothy Drake for the name of the boy whom he tried to teach the piano to, and then [[EvilLaugh cackles]] when his name, Henry Arbinger, spells out "Harbinger".

* ThemeTuneCameo: The theme tune is played on the TARDIS jukebox at the beginning of the episode, the Maestro also plays part of it a few times.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: The Maestro was accidentally called to the earthly plane by a musical genius discovering and playing the "Lost Chord". He ends up their first victim.
* VaguenessIsComing: Much like their father, the Maestro cryptically warns that The One Who Waits is coming, before the Maestro is DraggedOffToHell.
* WhamLine: A wham ''sound''. As the Maestro emerges from the piano, they emit [[Recap/DoctorWho60thASTheGiggle a very familiar giggle]], revealing their connection to the Toymaker.
* WhosOnFirst: The Maestro does a game of this when explaining their pronouns to Timothy:

* WorldOfSilence: Ironically this is the Maestro's ultimate goal. First engineering Earth to be blasted into a wasteland by war, the only music being the wind blowing through the ruins of humanity, before moving onto the greater universe and stopping the music of the spheres, leaving them the only musical performer left in the universe.

** The Maestro angrily attacks (and is heavily implied to have killed, from the ScreamDiscretionShot) an elderly woman in London who heard Ruby's piano playing from the rooftop and was inspired or reminded to sit down at her own piano and start playing herself.
** In the episode's cold open, the Maestro's first victim, Timothy Drake, is fairly advanced in age himself.

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