The last chapter of Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin, chapter 12, is titled 'An End - and a Beginning', which, to me, suggests they were up to more with this story than had ever occurred to me before (it could, of course, just refer to the fact the master survives at the end. Mind you, he hasn't got his new regeneration cycle, so it would be a stretch to call that 'a Beginning').
As a chapter title, indeed a closing chapter title, it reminds me of the endings of three of the anniversary specials ('Silver Nemesis' very much ploughs its own seed).
The Time Lords! Look, they've sent me a new dematerialisation circuit. And my knowledge of time travel law and all the dematerialisation codes, they've all come back. They've forgiven me. They've given me back my freedom
TEGAN: You mean you're deliberately choosing to go on the run from your own people in a rackety old Tardis? DOCTOR 5: Why not? After all, that's how it all started
I have a new destination. My journey is the same as yours, the same as anyones [sic]. It's taken me so many years, so many lifetimes, but at last I know where I'm going. [...] Where I've always been going. Home, the long way round
The last episode of 'The Deadly Assassin' was broadcast on 20 November, so pretty near an anniversary. Mind you, it was broadcast in 1976, so the rather unspectacular 13th anniversary (unless you want to get all mystic over the newly declared 13-lives limit for Time Lords). The novelisation was released 20 October, so again near an anniversary (though not quite near enough to not feel tenuous), but the 14th anniversary witnessed by 1977 feels even more arbitrary than the 13th.
Let's assume this isn't an attempt at an under-the-radar minor anniversary story. Whatever they were doing, let's assume it's because Holmes and Hinchcliffe felt it was time to either rewind (as 'The Three Doctors'), restate (as 'The Five Doctors') or reimagine (as 'The Day of the Doctor') the Doctor's relationship with Gallifrey and the universe.
What's difficult here it the fact that Hinchcliffe/Holmes only did three more stories after 'The Deadly Assassin', and two of them were by Chris Boucher suggesting their flavour may have more to with his interests than with any intended shift in direction on the production team's part. However, Hinchcliffe has suggested a change of direction was afoot. At a BFI screening of 'Genesis of the Daleks', Morgan Jeffery says 'Hinchcliffe explained that he'd begun plotting a series of possible adventures with an Indiana Jones feel', quoting him discussing taking 'the programme in a slightly different way', imagining the Doctor as more transparently 'like a colonial explorer, with a pith helmet out in the jungles' (Morgan Jeffery, 'Doctor Who's former producer Philip Hinchcliffe reveals his plans for 'lost' season of Tom Baker stories', digitalspy.com/tv/cult/a860236/doctor-who-lost-stories-tom-baker-season-15 [25/06/2018]). Had this happened, it would easily have reflected backwards on 'The Face of Evil' (especially the way the Doctor's wanderings are responsible for all the troubles he finds in that story in the first place), and 'The Robots of Death' could easily have read into a shift away from gothic horror pastiches focused on evils from the dawn of time too.
So where would 'The Deadly Assassin' fit into all this? Well, as El Sandifer observes, the Master's return to the screen saw him transformed into just 'another iteration of the classic Baker-era villain—the returning menace from the past' (Philip Sandifer [Elizabeth Sandifer], 'Master Restitution', Tardis Eruditorum IV). We could go a step further and suggest, since the Master is from the Doctor's home planet and the show's own past, he is chosen to represent the culmination of these returning menaces from the past (yes, I know Magnus Greel sort of fits the type too, but since he's technically from the future, we'll just quietly glide over him). Maybe the idea is that, now the Doctor has now faced off against the ultimate foe history the mists of time can unearth, he is free to resume his earlier, more carefree style of wanderings? It would certainly make sense of his soon-to-emerge repeated demands that he's due a holiday.
Anyway, for a more sure-footed look at some other aspects of Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin, the page is up now.
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