The Master
- This article is about the renegade Time Lord known as "The Master." For other uses of the term "Master" in the Doctor Who Universe, see Master (disambiguation).
The Master, once known as Koschei or Magnus, and also by various temporary aliases and pseudonyms, is a renegade Time Lord, who the Doctor opposed many times. On at least one occasion, he threatened the existence of the universe itself. He was once called "one of the most evil and corrupt beings the Time Lord race ever produced" (DW: The Five Doctors).
Biography
Early life
Koschei, later known as the Master, grew up on Gallifrey, in the House of Oakdown. (PDA: Divided Loyalties)
In his seventh incarnation, the Doctor related a story which explained the Master's origins. He said that both he and the Master had been mercilessly and viciously bullied as children. The youthful Doctor found himself forced to kill the bully in order to save his friend's life. He was later confronted by the personification of Death who insisted he become her disciple. The Doctor refused and instead suggested Death make the Master her champion instead, to which she agreed. The Doctor said that, because of this, he always felt partly responsible for the carnage the Master would later cause. (BFA: Master)
- It's not clear whether this event occurred before or after the event described below.
Like most Gallifreyans taken as Time Lords, the Master would be taken at the age of eight for his training. During the ceremony where he gazed into the Time Vortex through a rip in space and time, it is said that the Master went insane. (DW: ''The Sound of Drums) Apparently, this manifested by the constant drumming he heard ever since the event. (DW: Utopia/ The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords)
At the Time Lord Academy, Koschei belonged to a clique of six young Time Lords with the collective name of the Deca. The Doctor and other future rivals [Ushas]] (who would later take the title of the Rani) and Magnus (later known as the War Chief) also belonged to the Deca. (PDA: Divided Loyalties) The Master was significantly better at the Academy than the Doctor, his degree in Cosmic Science being a category higher. (DWN: Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons)
After the Doctor left Gallifrey, Koschei was recruited to pursue and apprehend him. His unstable obsession with order however, prompted the Time Lords to plant the Time Lady Ailla as a spy to monitor Koschei's actions. Ailla posed as a Human so that Koschei would take her on as his companion during a stopover in the 28th century. Koschei caught up with the Doctor at the Darkheart colony in the early years of the Federation. The temptation posed by the Darkheart device proved too much for Koschei, and the revelation that Ailla had been a spy killed the last traces of good in him. After the Doctor trapped him in a black hole, Koschei, the Master, swore revenge on him. (MA: The Dark Path)
After escaping from the black hole, the Master started off several more interplanetary wars. The Time Lords tried to track him and his activities, but were unsuccessful. (DWN: Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons)
Vendetta against the Doctor
The Master then sought to defeat the newly regenerated Doctor on Earth and in doing so came up against him, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and the rest of UNIT.
- For details on this period of his life, see separate article.
Degeneration
Susan Foreman triggered an explosion when the Master attempted to kidnap her. He exhausted his regenerative cycle recovering from the injuries sustained in the explosion on the planet Tersurus (EDA: Legacy of the Daleks), where Chancellor Goth found the Master, in a wasted condition. The Master had by this time reached the end of his regeneration cycle and had turned into an animate though rotting corpse. The Master, with the collaboration of Goth, lured the Doctor to Gallifrey in order to have him framed for the assassination of the Lord President. The Master nearly succeeded in acquiring the Eye of Harmony and using its energy reserves to renew himself. (DW: The Deadly Assassin)
- Quite possibly the Master's exposure to the Eye of Harmony re-vitalized him and prevented his body from disintegrating completely. It has been argued the Master is visibly regenerating when he is seen just prior to his TARDIS dematerialising, while the Master's corpus on his next appearance was noticeably less putrescent than it appeared to be on Gallifrey. The motive of acquiring a new cycle of regenerations would occur again and again throughout the Master's later battles with the Doctor.
Usurpation
On the planet Traken, the centre of the Traken Union, still in his degenerated form, the Master plotted to take over the Source, the power behind the Traken Union. The Master did manage to steal the body of Tremas, the father of the Doctor's future companion, Nyssa. (DW: The Keeper of Traken) In this form, he was directly responsible for the "death" of the Doctor's fourth incarnation and continued to plague the fifth, sixth and seventh incarnations of his rival. At one point, the Master was called into service by Borusa and the High Council of the Time Lords and offered a new regeneration cycle in exchange for his help in rescuing the Doctor's then-current five incarnations from Gallifrey's Death Zone. His efforts were rebuffed by the Doctors and he was later apprehended; during this incident he encountered the Doctor's first incarnation, and told him they went to the academy together, but the First Doctor did not recognize him (possible because, as the Master was not in a natural Time Lord body, he was unable to "sense" his fellow Gallifreyan); the Master also briefly encountered the Doctor's second incarnation but had little direct interaction with him. (DW: The Five Doctors)
New Regenerative Cycle
The Master was able to teleport from the Cheetah World to 1953 Earth where he constructed himself an identity as Major Kreer. He made a deal with the Tzun to restore his corrupted Time Lord DNA, which his physical merger with the Trakenite, Tremas had caused to happen. This was a success, and he was able to regenerate into a new body. (NA: First Frontier)
The Master later attempted to seize control of a powerful artifact known as the Warp Core. This plan backfired and due to his exposure to the device the Master's body reverted to a state similar to his degenerated form. For a while he persisted in trying to acquire the Core. During that time he habitually wore a mask and adopted the alias Mr Seta. (BFA: Dust Breeding)
- Note: Dust Breeding occurs before First Frontier for the Doctor and Ace.
Doctor John Smith
The Doctor related a story of how he made a deal with Death whereby the Master would have ten years of peace and sanity, at the end of which the Doctor must kill him. The still-scarred Master had become a physician with no memory of his past, and took the name Doctor John Smith. He was still somehow deeply aware of his dark nature and troubled by it. The Master had in the meantime become emotionally involved with a woman named Jaqueline Schaeffer during this time.
At the end of the ten years the Doctor duly arrived but strove to avoid fulfilling his side of the bargain. The Master became aware of the Doctor's role in pledging him to Death as her servant but forgave him for it. Death herself was present then, disguised as the Master's maid. She manipulated events so that it would appear inevitable that the John Smith persona would crumble and the true Master become dominant once more. (BFA: Master)
Glory
Eventually, he was tried and executed and physically destroyed by the Daleks on Skaro as part of a Time Lord-Dalek treaty. However, his essence survived in a fluid-like form; his "last wish" was for the Doctor to transport his remains to Gallifrey, which allowed him the opportunity to escape during temporal transit and find a new body. He was able to take over the body of Bruce, an ambulance driver on Earth.
At the end of his battle with the recently regenerated Doctor, the Master fell into the Eye of Harmony, and he appeared to be destroyed. The Doctor claimed that he had been eaten by the TARDIS. (DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie)
However, the Master was rescued from the Time Vortex by a being named Esterath, the then-controller of the Glory, the focal point of reality. It would soon be time for the Glory to gain another controller, but the power had to be fought for. Of course, the Master assumed the battle would be between himself and his greatest foe.
Given a new body, the Master trailed the Doctor for some time without his enemy suspecting - even after they had met face to face. He was present in London during the crisis resulting from Grace Holloway's attempt to merge Human and Time Lord DNA (the alien DNA was in fact that of a morphant from Skaro). He killed an MI6 agent with the TCE at this time, but fortunately the Doctor departed before the Master's trademark was discovered. (DWM: The Fallen)
The Master later made contact with Sato Katsura, a Japanese samurai unwillingly rendered immortal as a result of his involvement in the Doctor's adventures. The embittered warrior became the Master's follower. At his behest, Sato adopted the identity of Cardinal Morningstar and became leader of the Church of the Glorious Dead, instigator of a holy war that altered the history of Earth and led to it becoming known as Dhakan. Passing through the Eye had given the Master the ability to influence the flight of the TARDIS, which he used to send the craft to times and places which would weaken the Doctor's self-belief and confidence. This done, the two fought for the Glory, with the Master apparently triumphant.
However, the Master was mistaken: the true battle was between his companion, Sato, and the Doctor's, the Cyberman Kroton. Kroton was the ultimate winner of this contest, and amongst his first acts as controller of the Glory were to cleanse the TARDIS of the Master's influence, and to banish the Master himself to parts unknown. The Master declared he would survive and return. (DWM: The Glorious Dead)
One account tells of how he later escaped from the Eye and possessed the body of a Human native of 1906. (ST: The Forgotten)
Return
During the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords themselves brought the Master back from oblivion and gave him a new set of regenerations, wanting to use him as a weapon in defence of Gallifrey order to use him as a weapon in a Time War. However, the sheer scale of the conflict frightened even the Master, and he deserted the instant the Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform. (DW:The Sound of Drums)
- It is not known whether any regenerations occurred between his resurrection and his later transformation into Yana.
He fled to the end of the universe and used a Chameleon Arch to become Human, remaining in the guise of the elderly Professor Yana (an acronym of "You Are Not Alone", the Face of Boe's last message to the Doctor (DW: Gridlock)). As the Master later observed, this disguise was so perfect that he forgot who he was, although Yana was plagued by half-remembered fragments of his former life and terrible headaches (in which he heard the beat of drums). The Doctor, when he used the Arch, similarly lost his original identity into that of John Smith and likewise experienced fragments of memory, but without any apparent discomfort (DW: Human Nature) perhaps because he does not hear the drumming sound the Master does. Yana retained the Master's brilliant intellect and ultimately became responsible for sending the remnants of Humanity to Utopia.
However, Martha Jones made the Professor suspicious of a watch in his possession, so 'Yana' activated the device and thus returned to his true identity. He was shot by his assistant, Chantho as he was destroying their work. He then slew Chantho, (the last of the Malmooth species) with an electric wire, and there fore he killed the entire Malmooth species. As he was shot he was forced to regenerate. He commandeered the Doctor's TARDIS, leaving the Doctor and his companions trapped at the end of the universe with a rampaging horde of Futurekind on the verge of breaking down the door. (DW: Utopia)
He came to early 21st century Britain, where he called himself Harold Saxon and successfully ran for the position of Prime Minister. This was achieved through the Archangel Network in the form of a subtle mind manipulation system that rang the drumming beat the Master heard in his head into the subconscious of every person on the planet, giving him the trust of the world. The Master then faked a first contact with the Toclafane, a race pretending to be aliens but actually the humans from Yana's time that cannibalized themselves into a race of childlike, psychotic cyborgs after discovering there was no Utopia. Using the TARDIS, the Master built a paradox machine to facilitate the Toclafane Invasion, taking over the world. At the same time, the Master used a Laser screwdriver to turn the Doctor into an elderly man, capturing both him and Jack Harkness though Martha Jones escaped.
A year later, the Master was planning to unleash the Toclafane upon the universe using a countdown through the Archangel Network. However, the return of Martha Jones and the rumors of a gun capable of killing a Time Lord permanently threatened his plans. The Master captured Martha though found out the gun was a ruse: Martha had instead told the world of the Doctor and to think his name at the end of Archangel's countdown, which the Doctor has spent the year telepathically infiltrating while the Master's prisoner. This empowered the Doctor massively and led to the Master's plans being foiled as Jack Harkness destroyed the paradox machine, reversing time back to the point of the takeover of Earth, undoing most of the Master's destruction in "The Year That Never Was".
- For more details, see Harold Saxon.
At the conclusion of this, the Master then died at the hands of Lucy Saxon, though a resurrection seems possible as an unknown person took the Master's ring and the Master's voice could be heard suggesting his soul is inside the ring.
The Drumming
For most of his life, the Master has been tormented by a four-beat drumming noise inside his head. This was attributed to going insane after looking into the Untermpered Schism. Although the Master seems to have died in Last of the Time Lords, a four-beat noise has been heard in The Unicorn and the Wasp as music and in The Stolen Earth as the signal for the subwave network. Also, near the end of Last of the Time Lords a mysterious hand picked up the Master's LazLab ring from the pyre. See http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=935ky9L3u8U&feature=related
Companions
Unlike the Doctor, the Master was most often encountered working and travelling alone. On rare occasions, he had been seen with companions. Examples include Chang Lee, a young human who the Master met in San Francisco (DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie); Chantho, a female assistant and companion to the Master during his Professor Yana identity (although she was unaware of his true nature) (DW: Utopia); and Lucy Saxon, his wife, who was described as having travelled with the Master in the TARDIS in the same fashion as the Doctor and his companions. (DW: The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords) The Rani may have also travelled with the Master for a time, likely under duress. (DW: The Mark of the Rani)
Other versions of the Master
- Following graduation from the Time Lord Academy, the Master, using the name Koschei, pursued a career as Magistrate for the High Council. In this capacity, his devotion to justice and discipline in time devolved into an obsession with order which marked the beginning of his descent into darkness (PDA: The Infinity Doctors)
- We do not know if this event occurred before the Master had left Gallifrey, in an alternative timeline or after he had reformed and returned to Gallifrey.
- While helping UNIT stop an invasion by the parallel Earth, the Master met that alternate reality's version of himself, still using the name Koschei, imprisoned and vivisected by order of that reality's version of the Doctor. The Master killed his other self, claiming this was an act of mercy. (PDA: The Face of the Enemy)
- In an apparent alternate time line, a version of The Master exists as an android companion to the Alternative Ninth Doctor (Scream of the Shalka).
- In the Turn Left reality created around Donna, it can be assumed that as a result of the deaths of the Doctor and Martha Jones, the Master didn't find out who he really was and never travelled back to the earth as the Doctor never visited him. Or at least there was no TARDIS at the end of the universe with which The Master could save himself.
Behind the Scenes
- When conceiving the character, the production team had originally considered the idea of the Doctor having a female, rather than male, arch-nemesis.
- The FASA Doctor Who Roleplaying Game and the charity publication fan novel Time's Champion identify the Monk and the War Chief as earlier incarnations of the Master (although Time's Champion only identifies the War Chief as such).
- During Anthony Ainley's tenure as the Master, anagrams of the actor's name were often used in the credits for the Master's disguises, such as Neil Toynay for the Portreeve in DW: Castrovalva. Tremas is itself an anagram of Master. At the same time, in Series 3 (season 29), the Master takes on two new identities: Professor Yana in DW: Utopia, and Mr. Harold Saxon in DW: The Sound of Drums and DW: Last of the Time Lords (as it happens, "Mister Saxon" is an (unintentional) anagram of "Master No. Six" as "Sam Tyler" is an anagram of "masterly").
- The regeneration of the Master as depicted in non-televised media is, as with most things, of uncertain canonicity. However, the fact another actor other than Ainley is shown (briefly) playing the Master at the time of his "execution" by the Daleks in the TV movie, leaves an opening for more incarnations of the Master to exist beyond the Ainley version.
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