Talk:Meet Missy! (short story)

Fourteenth regeneration?

Having read this story a while back I thought that the Master attempted to regenerate for a fourteenth time but this failed, hence why he ended up crispy and decaying - therefore he is still in his thirteenth and final incarnation.

The information on the page currently seems to agree with my conclusion saying that the crispy Master was “the result of a failed regeneration that should never have been”. KennethBenidorm ☎ 12:13, October 26, 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the idea that he's a failed regeneration definitely seems like a sound assumption to me. There's nothing to suggest that he's the fourteenth incarnation, only that he tried to regenerate and ended up all cadaverous. Also, contrary to the recent edit summary, I have read the story, otherwise I'm quite unsure how I would have thought it to be speculation) Danochy ☎ 12:21, October 26, 2020 (UTC)

People shouldn’t be assuming what others have / haven’t read. It is a case of different interpretations. I believe that it is complete speculation to suggest that this was the fourteenth incarnation. KennethBenidorm ☎ 12:25, October 26, 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm sorry for my mistaken assumption, at any rate, but I don't quite agree with your conclusions. The Master attempted a thirteenth regeneration, and it massively altered his body to the cadaverous state.

That's not what a regeneration is supposed to do, but it's not nothing, either ; thus my understanding of "failed regeneration" when I used the term in my summary was that it failed in the way an exploding toasted "fails", as opposed to a toaster that fails to heat up. (Apologies for the, perhaps, strange simile. But "Crispy" Master, and all that.) The Master enacted a regeneration, and it turned him into something else than he was when he started it; I'd say this means the result is a new incarnation, albeit not one he ever actually wanted to incarnate himself into.

Also, while the following reasoning does not in and of itself make a valid source, it seemed to me that the point of this idea/retcon in Paul Lang's mind must have been to explain why the Master in The Deadly Assassin is played by Peter Pratt, rather than whoever the Thirteenth Master was (whether that was Roger Delgado or Geoffrey Beevers). When we have a new version of a Time Lord, played by a new actor, and resulting from a regeneration attempt, I feel like we can term this an "incarnation" in good conscience.

Calling the Pratt Master an "incarnation" based on this story does not seem to me to be speculation at all, let alone "complete" speculation. It is at worst a disagreement in how to define the term "incarnation". However, there is no right answer in semantics; if the consensus remains against use of the term "incarnation" to describe what we have going on here, I'll defer to said consensus. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 12:59, October 26, 2020 (UTC)