Timothy Drake was a music teacher and composer who tutored children to learn the piano.
Biography
In 1925, after teaching Henry Arbinger about the "devil's chord", Drake accidentally found the "lost chord" and summoned Maestro, who revealed themself to be Henry's parent.
Drake knew nothing of the non-binary gender, and was confused when Maestro revealed their personal pronouns to be "they/them".
Maestro seemingly removed Henry from existence. They played upon Drake's vanity, calling him a genius for having discovered the lost chord. They told him that he had simply never had luck, never gotten the break that he needed. He eagerly agreed that nobody had ever understood him. Maestro asked if he would like them to set free the songs in his heart. He told them that he would. Maestro then killed Drake, devouring his unsung songs and stifled melodies. (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
Behind the scenes
- Drake is most likely a reference to an artist of the same name behind an album titled "Symphonies of the Planets (Complete Nasa Voyager Recordings)" from 2016. It is an unofficial compilation of official magnetic wave data recorded by NASA's Voyager probes which could be described as aeolian tones; "music without the need of people". The same music that motivated Maestro's desire for the destruction of life in the universe. "Symphonies of the Planets" is also seemingly a connection to the phrase "music of the spheres" mentioned by Maestro. The concept the phrase is attached to was first recorded to be linked to Pythagoras in reference to his theory that the planets of the solar system create a sort of music from their distances between each other and motion. It is not known whether the "Timothy Drake" responsible for this album is a real person or a pseudonym.
- Due to the lack of explicit depiction, it is not entirely clear if Drake's fate was altered when the Doctor and Ruby defeat Maestro at the end of the episode: depictions of the Pantheon of Discord within this season depict their influence being reversed once defeated and their victims restored, such as Charles Banerjee being freed from the Toymaker in The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023). and Sutekh's gift of death in Empire of Death [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024)..