We'd seen multi-Doctor stories before, but for his and Peter Capaldi's intended swansong Steven Moffat gave us the first multi-Master story. It's more like The Two Doctors than The Three or Five Doctors, in that it only features certain incarnations, rather than trying to cram them all in, and they feature in a conventional story as opposed to a big anniversary special - albeit a season finale.
The choice of Masters is a purely practical one. Other than Eric Roberts, who is never out of work if the number of movies he makes every year is anything to go by, all but one of the classic era actors is dead - and that is the only briefly seen interim Master from The Keeper of Traken, Geoffrey Beevers.
He's done quite a few audios, but his incarnation has only very limited potential for TV appearances.
There were only ever two significant Master actors, and they were Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley.
Here we have Missy (Michelle Gomez), the current incarnation, encountering the Saxon (John Simm) version. It wasn't immediately obvious that this was her previous incarnation, but this was confirmed towards the end of The Doctor Falls.
The story simply wouldn't have worked had Missy retained memories of this other self, because the pair will fall out of love with each other after their initial spell of self-adoration.
When Doctors get together, the dynamic is always mildly antagonistic - they're jealous of, and want to outdo, each other. They always come across as individual characters, though. It can be difficult to see them as aspects of the same person.
When the two 'Masters' get together, it's an entirely different dynamic. At times they flirt with each other, but mostly the impression we're given is of a pair of malevolent siblings.
Each brings out the worst in the other. Missy's rehabilitation is apparently undone within seconds of meeting her earlier self.
It's only fitting that the two come to dislike each other - it's in their nature not to trust anyone, and that includes themself.
For her, he symbolises everything that she has come to see as wrong about herself, having taken on board the Doctor's rehabilitation. For him, she is a traitor to his true nature - an aberration which must be wiped from his own personal history, even if it's his future history.
So, when it comes to their parting in the forest it comes as no surprise that they kill each other. Ironically, her actions are the very thing which will bring her into being. She is inevitable.
What is odd is that the Master had, from the very beginning, a powerful sense of self-preservation. Suicide is never in his nature, so he will rapidly join forces with his oldest enemy if it means his survival when warned that the Nestene etc. will turn on him as soon as they conquer the Earth.
Later we'll see him cling to life after his regenerations have been used up, quite prepared to destroy Gallifrey just to extend his lifespan.
In Last of the Time Lords he wills his own death, but we'll later discover that's he's prepared a resurrection for himself.
In The Doctor Falls, he puts his own particular incarnation first and endeavours to kill Missy in such a way that she can never regenerate again - which is a form of suicide.
It doesn't fit his usual frame of mind.
As it will later transpire, he fails in his efforts as we've now had a new incarnation (presumably the one which followed Missy, though that's never made explicit). He may have failed to kill himself, but at least his most recent incarnation is a Time Lord after his own hearts - a crazed genocidal maniac, shorn of the Doctor's "improvements".
He won after all. Heck, he even finally got round to destroying Gallifrey, but that's another story...
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