The Master (The Destination Wars)

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Inventor Master

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The Master
Main aliases:	The Inventor
Species:	Time Lord
Place of origin:	Gallifrey
First appearance:	The Destination Wars
Appearances:	AUDIO: The Home Guard, The Psychic Circus, Blood of the Time Lords
Main voice actor:	James Dreyfus

Incarnations of the Master+
Original regenerative cycle+
Interim+
Renewed regenerative cycle+
Ambiguous+
Other realities+

Sometime after leaving Gallifrey, the Master found himself being confronted by various incarnations of the Doctor on Destination - where he spent some time under the alias of the Inventor, on Segonax and on a human colony planet.

Biography

Background

The Master began calling himself "the Master" when he was "beginning to hone [his] talents", during an unspecified incarnation. At this point, he still knew the First Doctor.

Later, he departed his home world "in much the same circumstances" as the Doctor, except that the ship he took from the repair bays was "not quite so operational", because the Quadriggers had not yet had the chance to "overhaul" it. He managed to travel for an unknown period and had an encounter with Harry Houdini, but eventually the ship "simply fell apart around [his] ears". He crash-landed on Destination, a planet in "the farthest arm of the galaxy, in the earliest Segments of Time". The Master would later attribute this to "an experiment gone wrong", and say that it left him with "the bare minimum of components." (AUDIO: The Destination Wars)

As the Inventor

The Master poses as "the Inventor". (AUDIO: The Destination Wars)

The Master took charge of the planet Destination, assuming the title of "the Inventor", and developed the planet's technology for his own ends. He pitted the human colonists against the Dalmari, so that the colonists would develop the nuclear technology he planned to use to refuel his TARDIS's engines.

When the First Doctor arrived, he changed his plans and tried to steal the Doctor's TARDIS to escape. He was able to trick Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright into leading him to the ship, but they were able to overpower him and use the fast return switch to take the TARDIS back to Destination. The Master ultimately became trapped in his own laboratory after the Doctor had rerouted its power to help Destination to rebuild. (AUDIO: The Destination Wars)

Early exploits

The Master during his "home guard" plot. (AUDIO: The Home Guard)

On arrival on a planet where human colonists had settled in a fictional recreation of an English village during the Second World War to live in peace away from Earth, the Master took control of the environment, organised a home guard and armed the original population of the planet to entice a conflict and demonstrate that an outgunned and outnumbered group of people could resist against a much greater enemy when properly motivated.

When the Second Doctor arrived with Ben Jackson, Polly Wright and Jamie McCrimmon, the Master hypnotised them into joining his experiment. The Doctor, however, immersed himself too deep in his role of commander of the home guard and made contact with the aliens to reach a peaceful solution, resulting in the aliens attacking earlier than the Master had anticipated. In the ensuing battle, the Master escaped in his TARDIS, with the intent of returning to look on the results of the conflict. However, when he returned, the Doctor had already set a trap for him after persuading the fighters into a peace. The Master was captured and put on trial for illegal use of mind control, while his TARDIS was confiscated. (AUDIO: The Home Guard)

Crossing into the future

The Master on Segonax.(AUDIO: The Psychic Circus)

On Segonax, the Master allied himself with the Gods of Ragnarok, and used a pendant they gave him to contact a street artist on Zamyatin named Kingpin and use his free spirited energy to cause a psychic storm, which caused a revolution on Zamyatin. The Master then persuaded Kingpin to organise a collective of various artists and bring them to Segonax to become the Psychic Circus, before convincing the Chief clown to organise a talent contest, so that new energy could be acquired.

When Kingpin managed to contact the Seventh Doctor, the Master used his abilities to stop him from reaching the Circus; first creating an illusion of him landing on Zamyatin, and then one of him returning to Paradise Towers. When the Doctor eventually came to the Circus, he and the Master confronted each other on a psychic plane, where the Doctor exploited the Gods' curiosity to buy time to steal the pendant from the Master and pass it to Kingpin. Kingpin then used the pendant to free the Circus from the Master and the Gods' influence, and the Master was left at the mercy of the Gods of Ragnarok. (AUDIO: The Psychic Circus)

Post-mortem

When the "Tremas" Master was stripped of his Trakenite body by the Time Lords, and after his plot to steal the Fifth Doctor's regenerations failed, he found himself confronting mental projections of all his past incarnations, and was able to steal a bit of life energy from each of them, allowing him to regenerate back into his Trakenite body. (PROSE: The Velvet Dark)

Appearance

When he met the First Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara on Destination, the Master had short hair and a beard, both of which were almost completely grey, save for some dark patches. His eyes were brown in colour. He wore an asymmetrical black overcoat with a large white lined collar on the left-hand side. (AUDIO: The Destination Wars) He later adopted a black Nehru jacket by the time he met the Second Doctor. (AUDIO: The Home Guard)

Psychological profile

Personality

This incarnation of the Master was very self-centred, willing to influence a whole planet's development to refuel his craft, and equally willing to abandon his plans just to steal the Doctor's ship. He found amusement in shaping a culture to his benefit and looked down on others as his inferiors, claiming to have "longed for a mind equal to [his] own" when confronting the Doctor on Destination. He particularly disregarded humans as "ape-descended primitives".

The Fourth Doctor highlighted this Master's youthful insecurity as his key trait: "in this incarnation, the Master is the most unscrupulous he's ever been. He's not simply an arch-pragmatist willing to quash anything in his way - he's a fractious creature, quick to take offence, to let the whole universe burn, like a child holding a magnifying glass to a butterfly." (AUDIO: Blood of the Time Lords)

Skills

By this point, the Master had already honed his hypnotic abilities, subjugating even adepts such as Susan Foreman with ease. (AUDIO: The Destination Wars)

Behind the scenes

The Master as seen on the cover of Solo.

• James Dreyfus had previously appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures television story The Man Who Never Was as the villainous John Harrison.
• This incarnation of the Master was first created for Blood of the Time Lords where an uncertain Fourth Doctor asks him whether he was in his second or third "regeneration". The Master, angered by the Doctor's forgetfulness, refuses either to confirm or deny his guesses. It was David Richardson who proposed during the production of The Destination Wars they "introduce the First Master". And while James Dreyfus was initially promoted by Big Finish Productions as portraying the "first incarnation" of the Master, or "the first Master", writer John Dorney has stated that none of that made it in any of the scripts, and that if anything, it was contradicted. Dorney also noted that the name "First Master" could be interpreted multiple ways, as meaning either "first incarnation, first to call himself Master or first the Doctor meets in continuity."
  • When asked whether Dreyfus portrayed the Master as he originally was before he ever regenerated, Nicholas Briggs replied that that's intentionally left unanswered and open for interpretation.
• According to James Dreyfus, this incarnation of the Master was intended to appear in the anniversary story Masterful, but was removed due to a series of transphobic remarks made by Dreyfus being posted on Twitter. Dreyfus would later claim that he had "no idea" why Big Finish cut ties with him.
• James Dreyfus's credit was removed from the cover of The Psychic Circus following controversy over transphobic remarks he had posted on Twitter.
• As a result of the aforementioned controversy, a composite of George Pravda as Spandrell and Anthony Ainley as the Tremas Master was used to provide the likeness of this incarnation on the cover artwork of Solo, the anthology which Blood of the Time Lords was part of.