The Master: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 17:58, 20 July 2021

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"The Master" — known in their first known female incarnation as "Missy" (short for "Mistress"), in their second as "the Lumiat", and at times by various other aliases — was a renegade Time Lord, a power-hungry "lover of chaos" who served as both a friend and an opponent of the Doctor.

Friends from childhood and schoolmates at the Time Lord Academy, the divide between the Master's lust for power and the Doctor's empathy for lesser species would eventually pull the two farther and farther apart — to the point that the Master often sought to kill the Doctor. Despite this enmity, however, the two would on occasion act as allies, and both continued to yearn for their old friendship.

Like the Doctor, the Master fled from Gallifrey in a TARDIS of his own, and, having fully embraced his darker nature, would go on to pit himself against the Third Doctor and UNIT during the Doctor's exile on Earth. Having expended his original regeneration cycle, the Master survived in the ghastly form of a living cadaver, in which form he fought the Fourth Doctor, before exploiting the powers of the Source on Traken to steal the body of Tremas. He would continue his crusade to submit the universe to his will in a variety of stolen or otherwise fraudulent bodies, from using Tzun nanites in order to gain new regenerations, to transferring his essence into a Deathworm Morphant, which allowed him to survive execution by the Dalek Prelature, and continue to survive by possessing a succession of human bodies.

Biographical summary

Early life

Main article: The Master's early life

The Master's incarnations

Lead in:

Unclear incarnations

A number of other incarnations have been chronicled; however, where they fall within the Master's lifetime is unclear:

Personality

The Master was prone to betraying alliances, even with versions of themselves from other points in time. (COMIC: The Five Masters)

The Master was the polar opposite of the Doctor in almost every respect; condescending, arrogant, vain, and lusting for power. (TV: Terror of the Autons, Colony in Space, The Sound of Drums) However, the Master's insanity was in part due to the High Council from Gallifrey's future sending a four-beat rhythm of drums into the Master's mind, (TV: The End of Time) with the Tenth Doctor recalling that staring into the Untempered Schism as a child caused the Master's personality to change. (TV: The Sound of Drums)

The Master had the ability to control their regenerations, with each face selected bearing an imprint of their mind, leading the Master to keep the same characteristics across various regenerations. (PROSE: Harvest of Time) Comfortable with their villainous reputation, the Master took insults about their wickedness as compliments, (TV: The Time Monster, The Five Doctors, Doctor Who, The Sound of Drums) and reacted with offence if someone asked them if they had turned over a new leaf, (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) to the point that they refused to even acknowledge the Doctor's attempts to change them. (TV: The Doctor Falls)

When introducing himself, or enthralling someone, the Master would usually say, "I am the Master, and you will obey me." (TV: Planet of Fire) He also liked to say "my dear Doctor" when addressing his adversary. (TV: Colony in Space, The Sea Devils, Time-Flight, The Caves of Androzani, The Doctor Falls)

Unlike the Doctor, who usually needed their companions to convince people that they knew what they were doing, the Master had no problem manipulating people into helping him with his evil plans, (TV: The Time Monster, Doctor Who) even getting people to side with by exaggerating certain truths about the Doctor to paint him in a bad light. (TV: The Lazarus Experiment; COMIC: Doorway to Hell)

Extremely self-centred, the Master was willing to destroy Gallifrey to regenerate himself, (TV: The Deadly Assassin) believed that the battle for the Glory was to be between him and the Eighth Doctor, (COMIC: The Glorious Dead) thought that Carmen's prophecy referred exclusively to him, (TV: The End of Time) and viewed the Doctor's saving Gallifrey as an attempt to save her. (TV: Death in Heaven) So great was the Master's ego that he was unable to work with his other incarnations, with the "UNIT enemy" incarnation being psychically attacked by his other selves when he took control of the Sild's telepathic network, (PROSE: Harvest of Time) and the Seventh Doctor defeating the "Decayed" and "Bald" Masters by tricking them into arguing with themselves over ownership of the universe. (AUDIO: The Two Masters) Though the "Saxon" Master and Missy worked more amicably, their clashing views on helping the Twelfth Doctor eventually led them to killing each other out of spite, with Missy purposefully forcing her past incarnation's regeneration to ensure that he would become her and stand with the Doctor. (TV: The Doctor Falls) In the aborted timeline in which "Saxon" tried to avoid his regeneration into Missy, he planned to feed on the life force of five past incarnations and came into direct conflict with Missy herself, who exposed his schemes and manipulated the Masters to her own ends. Three incarnations eventually joined the "Saxon" Master in working against her, so she had them killed. (AUDIO: Masterful) When Missy came into contact with her future self, the Lumiat, she similarly clashed with her, though over a difference in morality rather than ambition. The Lumiat eventually lost her patience with her past self and attempted to shoot her with a TCE, though Missy manipulated the situation to enable her to shoot the Lumiat instead. (AUDIO: The Lumiat)

The Master's schemes usually fell into three categories; conquest, (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, Colony in Space, The Dæmons, The Time Monster, Logopolis, The Sound of Drums) survival, (TV: The Deadly Assassin, The Keeper of Traken, The Five Doctors, Planet of Fire, Survival, Doctor Who, The End of Time) and the death of the Doctor. (TV: Castrovalva, The Ultimate Foe) Similar to the Monk, the Master would also, on occasion, attempt to disturb the flow of history, (TV: The King's Demons, The Mark of the Rani) and, when imprisoned, would devote their energies to gaining their freedom. (TV: The Claws of Axos, The Sea Devils, Time-Flight, Utopia, The Doctor Falls)

Throughout their lives, the Master would adopt many disguises and aliases, often to pursue their goals, (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, Colony in Space, The Dæmons, The Time Monster, Frontier in Space, Castrovalva, The Sound of Drums, Spyfall) though other times with no reason or explanation given. (TV: Time-Flight, The Mark of the Rani)

The Master's disguises ranged from the providence of false qualifications, (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, Colony in Space, The Dæmons, The Time Monster, Frontier in Space, The Sound of Drums) to employing masks and heavy makeup (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos, Castrovalva, Time-Flight, The King's Demons, World Enough and Time) or a change of clothing, (TV: The Sea Devils, Logopolis, The Mark of the Rani, Spyfall) to even changing physical forms. (TV: The Keeper of Traken, Utopia, Dark Water, Spyfall)

In a show of vanity, the Master's choice of alias would often reflect their title of "Master". (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Dæmons, The Time Monster, The King's Demons, The Sound of Drums, Dark Water; PROSE: Doctor Who Fights Masterplan "Q", Night Flight to Nowhere, The Time Savers, Legacy of the Daleks, Last of the Gaderene, The Quantum Archangel, The Duke of Dominoes, The Spear of Destiny, Yes, Missy; AUDIO: Dust Breeding, Trail of the White Worm, Mastermind, The Evil One, And You Will Obey Me, Masterpiece, The Two Masters, The Coney Island Chameleon)

Before their first battle, the Third Doctor called the Master a "jackanapes" and an "unimaginative plodder", (TV: Terror of the Autons) but later came to view him as the "personification of evil". (TV: The Sea Devils) The Fourth Doctor described the Master as both the "quintessence of evil", (TV: The Deadly Assassin) and a "vengeance fixated sociopath with megalomaniacal tendencies". (AUDIO: Trail of the White Worm)

However, the Seventh Doctor recognised the Master as an "evil genius", (TV: Survival) with the Tenth Doctor sincerely calling him "stone-cold brilliant". (TV: The End of Time) The Twelfth Doctor once stated that Missy was the only person "as smart as [him]". (TV: The Lie of the Land)

High Council President Borusa described the Master as "one of the most evil and corrupt beings [the] Time Lord race [had] ever produced" and that his "crimes [were] without number, and [his] villainy without end." (TV: The Five Doctors) Rassilon described the Master as the Time Lords' "most infamous child". (TV: The End of Time)

Iris Wildthyme called the Master a "phallocentric dope", (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress) while Ashildr described Missy as the "lover of chaos". (TV: Hell Bent)

Behind the scenes

Character conception and development

Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks often discussed that the relationship between the Third Doctor and the Brigadier was similar to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and envisioned a counterpart of the Doctor to act as "Moriarty", a character that became "the Master", his name being developed to counter the Doctor's — like that of his enemy, "Master" is an academic title. (DOC: The Doctor's Moriarty)

In the Third Doctor's original final episode concept, Roger Delgado's incarnation of the Master would have redeemed himself and given his life to save the Doctor, after which the Doctor would have regenerated; however, this story was never developed due to the sudden death of Roger Delgado. Over thirty years later, this idea was reused in The End of Time, with John Simm's incarnation of the Master sacrificing himself to save the Tenth Doctor from Rassilon.

In The Deadly Assassin, writer Robert Holmes deliberately chose to show the Master in a "transitional" form, in case future production teams wanted to bring back the character. This transitional form was also used in The Keeper of Traken.

Near uses

The Master was the villain in the early drafts of the 1977 television story The Talons of Weng-Chiang, until he was replaced by Magnus Greel.[1]

When writing the 2015 audio story The Black Hole, Simon Guerrier intended for Constable Pavo of the Time Lord police force to be an earlier incarnation of the Master. This is strongly hinted at in the story, where Pavo makes use of a deadly "silver baton", possesses hypnotism similar to the Roger Delgado Master's, and seems to be on the path to breaking away from Gallifrey's authority, as she ends up wiping the Doctor and companions' memories of their encounter and letting them go so as not to risk implicating herself concerning her own transgressions. However, the connection is not spelled out.[2]

The mystery of the Master's true name

The 1997 novel The Dark Path shows the Second Doctor in what is purported to be his first encounter with the Master since leaving Gallifrey. Throughout the story, the Master is only called by the name "Koschei", and it is only at the end of the tale, when his turn to evil is complete (as foreshadowed by the title), that he proclaims himself "the Master". In Russian folklore, Koschei (rus.Коще́й or Коще́й Бессме́ртный, "Koschei the Deathless") is a villainous sorcerer who hid his soul in an obscure location under many layers of protection so that he may never die. The Face of the Enemy, by the same writer, saw Roger Delgado's Master encountering a parallel version of himself for whom The Dark Path had not happened, who still called himself "Koschei". The Second Doctor recognises Koschei's name in The Dark Path when Ailla mentions it, although the narration also suggests that it is an alias rather than the Master's birth name.

In Divided Loyalties, flashbacks to the Doctor's childhood in "the Deca" have the future Master already calling himself "Koschei" at the Time Lord Academy, although it is no clear if this is his birth name or a school nickname like "Theta Sigma" (the name persistently used for the Doctor in those same flashbacks). Although the flashbacks themselves come in the form of dreams the Doctor has under the influence of the Celestial Toymaker, and are explicitly inaccurate in some respects, the epilogue confirms that "Koschei" eventually became obsessed with "becoming the Doctor's Master".

The comic Flashback was written with the intent that Magnus, an old friend of Theta Sigma who seems to be growing more and more corrupted, was an early incarnation of the Master. However, the comic did not explicitly confirm Magnus's identity, and later sources went on to use "Magnus" as a name for the War Chief, although the Master and War Chief are sometimes thought to be one and the same. Interestingly, in the original script, the name was not "Magnus" but "Magus", the Latin word for "sorcerer" or "wise man"; it was incorrectly "fixed" to Magnus by the letterer, who assumed Magus was a typo.

The Black Hole featured the Second Doctor bumping into a Time Lord called Pavo, working for the Time Lord police to track down renegades (consistent with the claim in Time and Relative that the Master was a "truant officer" who was originally sent by the Time Lords on the Doctor's trail before deciding to become a Renegade himself). This Time Lord was intended by writer Simon Guerrier to be the Master prior to their turning evil; there are other clues to Pavo's identity, such as the silver rod Pavo wields as a weapon or their hypnotic abilities. It is, in any event, not made clear whether "Pavo" is an alias, nickname, code name, or birth name.

Beyond all those possibilities, several accounts suggest the Master's true name was something altogether more alien than "Koschei," "Magnus," "Magus" or "Pavo". In Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, Adelphi speaks the Master's birth name to the Doctor when warning him about the Master's arrival on Earth (the suggestion being that he has only recently adopted the pseudonym of "the Master", which Adelphi believes the Doctr might be unfamiliar with). It is described "a string of mellifluous syllables — one of the strange Time Lord names that are never disclosed to outsiders". This was eched by the 2018 short story Lords and Masters, which had Missy stating that her real name contained thirty-two letters. However, this does not foreclose the possibility that though any one of the spelled-out, shorter names given in other sources might be nicknames, they could be formed by shortening the Master's true name, similar to Romanadvoratrelundar usually going by "Romana".

How many Masters?

Especially in comparison to other prominent Time Lords like the Doctor and Romana, the number of the Master's incarnations has been left unclear by many stories. TV: The Deadly Assassin gives the first clue when the Master is said to be near the end of his thirteenth and final incarnation. PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks shows the transformation from the Roger Delgado Master into the degraded form portrayed by Peter Pratt in The Deadly Assassin, establishing that they, and Geoffrey Beevers, are playing a single regeneration of the Master. However, the comic Doorway to Hell contradicts this by showing the Delgado incarnation's regeneration, and AUDIO: The Two Masters features the Beevers incarnation of the Master before disfigurement.

Evidence in invalid entries

Behind-the-scenes material for TV: The Curse of Fatal Death referred to Jonathan Pryce's incarnation as the Seventeenth Master, although this was unsupported in the TV story itself.

The first to fifth incarnations of the Master (NOTVALID: The Doctor Who Role Playing Game)

The Doctor Who Role Playing Game by FASA, which admits to taking liberties with the source material in its opening pages, gives a rundown of the Master's first thirteen incarnations in "The Master" supplement book, which was similar to (but not entirely consistent with) the in-universe biography given for the Master in FASA's own CIA File Extracts.

According to the book, the Master could control the form of his incarnations, and frequently used the same face. His first to fourth incarnations lived on Gallifrey and regenerated due to his researches. The Fifth Master kept the same face as his predecessors, but lasted over four-hundred-years due to his retirement. He eventually regenerated, aged over 700-years-old, when his rebellion on Gallifrey failed and forced him to become a renegade, with the War Chief among his followers. The sixth and seventh incarnations were "the Monk", as portrayed by Peter Butterworth, being different from his previous incarnations mostly by lacking a beard, who regenerated when repairing his TARDIS after the events of The Time Meddler. The Eighth Master, aged over 800-years-old, regenerated following the events of The Daleks' Master Plan, returning to a bearded Delgado-like appearance and being the first to call himself "the Master". He kept these features up to his twelfth incarnation which combed his grey hair back. The thirteenth incarnation, still aged over 800-years-old, started intervening against UNIT, but, after his death to the Daleks following Frontier in Space, took on the decayed appearance of Peter Pratt. The Fourteenth Master, aged over 900-years-old, was portrayed by Ainley, who stole the body of Tremas and he survived the events of Planet of Fire, due to the gas which gave him a new cycle and he regenerated into a similar fifteenth incarnation.

The 2010 edition of The Visual Dictionary indicates that the Master played by John Simm is the seventeenth incarnation. However, this source is considered invalid by this wiki for being non-narrative.

Valid entries

The short story Girl Power! showed eighteen deaths on Missy's Spacebook page. This results in nineteen true incarnations to result from regeneration, not including incarnations who come into being as possessed bodies (although notably, the Spacebook entry mentions one singular instance of body-theft). While the identities of the Master's first regeneration cycle's incarnations are not named by this story, and the unique cases of the multiple Ainleys and of the "Tzun" regeneration are not addressed, it does account for most regenerations of the Master to have appeared in spin-off media at the time.

Off-screen relationships

Although they played antagonists on screen, in real life Roger Delgado and Jon Pertwee were actually close friends. In interviews and convention Q&A sessions, Pertwee often cited the death of Delgado as one of the factors that led him to give up the role. (DOC: PanoptiCon 93, MM VHS 15)

Long before Tom Baker met Anthony Ainley during the filming of Baker's final serial, Logopolis, he had lived with his brother, Richard Ainley, an acting instructor. Tom often saw Anthony, who would come over to play with Richard's children, but always thought of him as mysterious.[3]

Information from invalid sources

The Doctor Who Fun Book

A glimpse into the Master's life on Gallifrey is provided by the short story NOTVALID: TARDIS Stolen! from 1987's The Doctor Who Fun Book, which is not considered a valid source by this Wiki due to its parodical nature, such as revealing that the Master's true name is "Cuthbert Windbottom", though he is already going by "the Master", a choice of identity the author of the Gallifreyan Gazette article finds unsurprising.

Following the First Doctor's theft of the TARDIS and flight from Gallifrey, the Master is interviewed by the Gallifrey Gazette to give his opinion on the probable motives of his old classmate's crimes; the Master claims that the Doctor had been very excited in the last month over a phone call from "the BB Corporation" and attempts to convince the interviewer that these were surely some of Gallifrey's oldest enemies in whose league the Doctor had entered. Yet another hint as to the Master's activities is the classified ad for "lifelike dolls" to be purchased from him, which heavily suggests that the Master is already in possession, and making illegal use of, a Tissue Compression Eliminator.

Doctor Who The Official Annual 2018

According the Doctor Who The Official Annual 2018, which is not accepted as a valid source for in-universe articles on this wiki due to not constituting a story as such, Missy remained on Skaro after The Witch's Familiar, adopting a Slyther as a pet that ate the Thals she met.

Doctor Who: Legacy

In the story of Doctor Who: Legacy, time travelling Sontarans' attacks on the timeline are felt by the "Saxon" Master. After witnessing the universe collapse with Lucy Saxon on Utopia, the Master, seeking to establish his New Time Lord Empire, leads the Toclafane in overrunning the Sontaran Empire and pursuing the Doctor. As the Doctor's incarnations assemble, the Master likewise gathers his other selves, retrieving his decaying incarnation from the collapsing reality. Next to be summoned is the "UNIT enemy" Master, wielding a paradox generator.

Other matters

  • The 2020 animated version of the Second Doctor serial, The Faceless Ones, retroactively makes this story the Master's first appearance, though they do not appear in person. He appears on two separate wanted posters, one showing his Roger Delgado incarnation, and another showing the incarnation played by Sacha Dhawan.
  • The character was originally supposed to be killed off for good in The Final Game, which would have seen him sacrifice himself to save the Doctor and reveal that they are split parts of the same personality (the Doctor being the Ego and the Master being the Id). Roger Delgado's death prevented this.
  • He was originally supposed to be the main villain of The Talons of Weng-Chiang, presumably the Peter Pratt incarnation.
  • Planet of Fire was supposed to be his final appearance, as Anthony Ainley's contract was expiring. Dialogue from The Mark of the Rani explaining how he survived was cut.
  • Missy's appearance was based upon that of the Julie Andrews version of Mary Poppins. For example, when first introduced in the stage directions from the script of Deep Breath, Missy was physically described thus: "She's dressed a little like Mary Poppins." Furthermore, Missy imitates the style of Mary's iconic arrival (floating down from the sky using an umbrella) in Death in Heaven.
  • Though Robert Holmes has received a creator credit for the Master in the revived series, no such credit is given for Missy.
  • The "Spy" Master's costume was conceived by Ray Holman, based on Sacha Dhawan's suggestions.[4]
  1. ↑ http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/4s.html
  2. ↑ https://twitter.com/0tralala/status/1104079021510402048
  3. ↑ http://www.tom-baker.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=756
  4. ↑ Dhawan's instagram post
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