Tissue Compression Eliminator
The Tissue Compression Eliminator (or TCE), also called a decompression eliminator, (AUDIO: The Evil One) the Incredible Shrinking Device (TV: Spyfall) or simply the Compressor, (TV: The King's Demons) was a trademark weapon of the Master. When fired at a target, it would shrink them down to the size of a doll, killing them in the process. However, the Master at one point admitted that he wasn't sure about the name; if it eliminated victims through tissue compression or if it, in fact, eliminated tissue compression. (AUDIO: The Two Masters) Some versions wouldn't be fatal. (COMIC: The Glorious Dead, GAME: An Unlikely Heist)
Function
The Third Doctor once described the method by which the Master killed as death by implosion (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons) while the Fourth Doctor described it as "matter condensation." (TV: The Deadly Assassin) As its name suggested, the TCE killed by drastically compressing the bodies of its targets to the point where life functions ceased, firing a modulated beam of gravitons and Pym particles. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) Eventually, the victims were no longer visible after the exposure, but the Master liked to leave the shrunken doll-like corpses of his victims as a calling-card for the Doctor to discover in places the Master anticipated the Doctor would look. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, The Timeless Children)
The TCE was equally capable of shrinking inorganic tissue: victims' clothes were also shrunk. On one occasion, the Master demonstrated the weapon by shrinking empty space-suits to intimidate Peri when he took her captive on Sarn to ensure she co-operated with him. (TV: Planet of Fire)
According to Sally Armstrong, it usually compressed people by a factor of 10. (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) Generally corpses retained the make and constitution of their original selves, being found in disheveled, spread-limb states in the vein of the dolls they were known to resemble. Other outcomes were possible, as The Spy Master's TCE compressed bodies, clothes and all, into a state closer to plastic figurines, with stiff unmoving limbs and a slight bounce when falling to the ground. (TV: Spyfall)
The TCE had settings that could be modified to allow a living target to survive the compression, (PROSE: The Velvet Dark) as well as to reverse the process and restore them to normal size. (COMIC: The Glorious Dead) This extended to inorganic beings, as demonstrated when Death's Head was shrunk from a multi-story mech size to that of an average humanoid by the Seventh Doctor, who noted this as an unexpected outcome. (COMIC: The Crossroads of Time)
TCE devices displayed a level of multifunctionality; one adapted by the Seventh Doctor could electrocute and knock out robots of Death Head's design, (COMIC: The Incomplete Death's Head) while various ones handled by the Master could work as a communicator. (AUDIO: The Reviled, TV: The Timeless Children)
History
Early exploits
When conducting an experiment on a planet, an early incarnation of the Master used a Tissue Compression Eliminator to dispose of anyone who broke his conditioning. (AUDIO: The Home Guard)
Use against UNIT
The Master used the TCE to kill Goodge to infiltrate a radio telescope for the Nestene Consciousness. (TV: Terror of the Autons)
He once materialised his TARDIS within UNIT H.Q. and attacked the Third Doctor. In the brawl, the Doctor took the TCE and the Master fled.
The Master would later threaten the Eighth Doctor with the device, hoping he would hand over the TARDIS. Ultimately, he decided against it and handed the weapon to his future self. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
When the Master joined forces with the Third Doctor to stop Ramón Salamander's plan, he used his TCE against the staff. (COMIC: The Heralds of Destruction)
The Master's disfigurement
According to one account, before his disfigurement, the Thirteenth Master decided to "spice things up a bit" by using a staser instead of the TCE. After swapping bodies with a future self, (AUDIO: The Two Masters) he returned to using the TCE. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
Another account, however, suggested that the same incarnation of the Master who had been fond of using the TCE in his plots against the Third Doctor was the one who had become disfigured, and that, in fact, it was the device which caused his injuries. Specifically, Susan Foreman, after psychically assaulting the Master, stole his TCE and intended to use it to destroy the matter transmuter the Master had stolen. With the crazed renegade refusing to let go of the transmuter, she fired the TCE at the machine while he was still holding it, and the interaction of the two advanced matter-manipulation device tore apart the Master's body, also preventing regeneration. (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks)
Having been forced to survive as a grotesque living corpse, the Master later used his TCE to kill a Public Register Video cameraman on Gallifrey, which alerted the Fourth Doctor to his presence. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
Use in Tremas's body and beyond
After gaining a new body, the Tremas Master used it to kill several humans and Logopolitans in 1981. (TV: Logopolis)
The Fifth Doctor was able to use the TCE to sabotage the Master's TARDIS. (TV: The King's Demons)
The Master later attempted to improve the design of his weapon, but a laboratory accident resulted in the lab itself and him both being reduced in size instead. This did not appear to harm him. The Fifth Doctor later used it to kill Kamelion at his own request. (TV: Planet of Fire)
On another occasion the Master used the TCE against a velociraptor revived by the fountain of youth. However, it landed right back in the fountain, re-emerging unharmed but miniscule in size, making a comical sight. (PROSE: A Town Called Eternity)
The Sixth Doctor stole and used it to threaten the Tremas Master and the First Rani; later Peri Brown did the same. (TV: The Mark of the Rani)
Izzy Sinclair was shrunk after being shot with a TCE without being killed outright by the Master's disciple Sato Katsura. She was later able to use the weapon to reverse the process. (COMIC: The Glorious Dead)
A later, bald incarnation of the Master used the TCE to kill two Time Lords on Tersurus. (AUDIO: Dominion) In his attack on his thirteenth incarnation, he used the TCE as a distraction before employing another weapon to burn his past self "to a crisp". (AUDIO: The Two Masters) He later gave one to Sally Armstrong. (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master, The Reviled)
The Master used a TCE, or a similar device against Strax. (WC: Strax Saves the Day)
The Seventh Doctor's use
During his first encounter with the artificially-enlarged mechanoid freelance peacekeeping agent Death's Head, the Seventh Doctor used a TCE (which he happened to have on him) to defend himself against the mercenary. Death's Head was not injured, but found himself returned to his original size (that of a normal humanoid), which he retained for the rest of his career. (COMIC: The Crossroads of Time)
The Seventh Doctor also used a modified TCE to shock and incapacitate Death's Head (to prevent him from killing his future self and wipe his memory) during Bonjaxx's birthday party on Maruthea, knowing it had worked on him before. (COMIC: The Incomplete Death's Head)
Abandon by the Master
By the start of the Last Great Time War, (AUDIO: The Heavenly Paradigm, The Devil You Know, The Missing Link) the War Master began using a laser screwdriver, of his own design, in lieu of the Tissue Compression Eliminator. His next incarnation would likewise continue to use the laser screwdriver as his weapon of choice instead of the TCE. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
The TCE was, on the other hand, used by the parasitic being Es'Cartrss of the Tactire through a simulated reality in the Matrix of the Doctor's TARDIS; Es'Cartrss wielded the weapon while confronting the Tenth Doctor, posing as a Meta-Crisis duplicate of himself claiming to have become the Valeyard, and similarity adopted the Master's beard and demeanour in the process. The Doctor pointed out the Master had abandoned the TCE by this point. (COMIC: The Forgotten)
As Missy, the renegade began using a new device that worked as a vaporising energy weapon, a camera, or even a time stop, (TV: Dark Water) although she also kept a TCE device disguised as her onix hat pin, retaining the four petals over a glowing sphere. (PROSE: Lords and Masters) She used the TCE to miniaturise the board of a boarding school in Scotland, so she could "have them in [her] pocket" to keep her position as headmistress. (AUDIO: Brimstone and Terror)
By the time she met her final end on a Mondasian colony ship, Missy's go-to gizmo was a sonic umbrella. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
A return to the "classics"
At some point, Missy acquired a new and improved Tissue Compression Eliminator, (AUDIO: The Lumiat) which now resembled an antique lighter. (TV: Spyfall) It was pre-programmed not to harm its owner (AUDIO: The Lumiat) and could also work as a communication device. (TV: The Timeless Children) However, Missy did not use it much, deeming it "old school" and "antiquated technology". During their first encounter, Missy's next incarnation, the Lumiat, stole the TCE from her "while she wasn't looking" moments before Missy shot the Lumiat to death, forcing her to regenerate into a new incarnation. (AUDIO: The Lumiat)
Feeling that tissue compression was "a classic", the Spy Master returned to making regular use of the TCE. In order to steal his identity, the Master turned this TCE onto O, an athlete on his way to his first day to work as a spy for MI6. Deciding that it was good to "keep a backup of one's work," the Master kept what appeared to be the original O's corpse in a matchbox for years while impersonating him, eventually showing his body to the Thirteenth Doctor when revealing himself. Later on, after pursuing the Doctor to 1834, he shrunk three people with the TCE, which he mockingly introduced to the audience of a science fair as "the Incredible Shrinking Device". (TV: Spyfall)
After reuniting with the Doctor on the Planet of the Boundary, the Master threatened the Doctor's friends with the device to force her to return to Gallifrey with him, and later threatened the Doctor with the TCE when she argued with him. After Ashad stated that the Cyberium would never leave him while he was still alive, the Master used the TCE to kill the Lone Cyberman, releasing the Cyberium. However, the death particle was not detonated by Ashad's death as the Master had hoped and was instead shrunk with him. (TV: The Timeless Children)
As part of the Master's Dalek Plan, the Master shrunk a dozen of the Earth's leading seismologists in 2022 whilst his Dalek allies worked on activating the planet's volcanos, gathering the bodies for the Doctor to find at what he called the International Seismology Memorial Conference. After the plan was foiled, the weakened Master used his TCE to redirect the Qurunx's destructive power towards the Doctor, mortally wounding her and causing her regeneration into the Fourteenth Doctor. (TV: The Power of the Doctor)
Undated events
The Master told the Sixth Doctor that he had used his Tissue Compression Eliminator to kill the original Sentinel of Quan before impersonating him. (PROSE: The Fellowship of Quan)
Behind the scenes
According to the short story TARDIS Stolen!, which dealt with the First Doctor's departure from Gallifrey in a comedic register and is not considered a valid source on this Wiki, the Master was, at the time of the Doctor's flight, selling "extremely lifelike dolls" in the Capitol for a tidy profit, suggesting that he had already invented the TCE before his departure from Gallifrey and officially becoming a renegade.
