Missy
Missy, the self-proclaimed "Queen of Evil", was the first female incarnation of the renegade Time Lord known as the Master, her new name being an abbreviation of the word "Mistress". She embarked on a scheme to rekindle her friendship with the Doctor, believing she could convince him they were the same by offering him the power to end tyranny with an army of Cybermen, but the Doctor refused to submit to the temptation.
Eventually, Missy would be captured and imprisoned within a Quantum Fold Chamber that was moved into a vault at St Luke's University by the Twelfth Doctor and Nardole, with the Doctor taking this opportunity to try and rehabilitate Missy and rekindle their friendship on his terms. Just as she was about to make a breakthrough, however, Missy joined with her previous incarnation. Ultimately, Missy decided to join the Doctor but was killed by her former self before she could. Thus, she died redeemed but without hope, without witness, and without reward.
Biography
A day to come
Following the Year That Never Was, the Saxon Master was shot by Lucy Saxon and, despite the urging of the Tenth Doctor, refused to regenerate, choosing to die rather than live with the Doctor. The Doctor then cremated the Master's body on a pyre, (TV: Last of the Time Lords) but was unaware that the Master had made arrangements for his resurrection by the Disciples of Saxon. (TV: The End of Time)
When he briefly transformed humanity into the Master Race, the Saxon Master observed in his Masterplan Journal that living as all the female Masters in women's clothing felt "strangely liberating", suggesting to himself that he should get in touch with his feminine side. (PROSE: The Secret Diary of the Master)
Eventually, aboard a Mondasian colony ship, the Saxon Master returned to his TARDIS and regenerated into a new incarnation, (PROSE: Girl Power!) the same one that had fatally wounded him, (TV: The Doctor Falls) and who referred to herself, in a list of her incarnations, as "the Best One". (PROSE: Meet Missy!)
Due to the presence of her older self during the events surrounding their regeneration, the Master was left unable to recall the exact specifics of it due to their timelines being out of sync, (TV: The Doctor Falls) recalling only that she woke up in a female body, (AUDIO: The Bekdel Test) and also lost all knowledge of her former time on the Mondasian colony ship, (TV: World Enough and Time) save only that a "very scary lady" had advised to always carry a spare dematerialisation circuit. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Early endeavours
- Main article: Saxon Master's regeneration
As with her previous incarnations, the Master went to the Scoundrels Club to recover from the regeneration. After she was ousted from the Club by Harrison Mandeville for being a woman, she went on to systematically kill specific members for her revenge, and recruited an 18th century slave at the Mandeville sugar plantation named Saffron, who coined the name "Missy" for the Master's current incarnation.
While Saffron infiltrated the Club through the kitchens, (PROSE: Dismemberment) Missy was brought to the Bekdel Institute, where she encountered River Song. After Missy taunted her, and killed a few of the other prisoners, River realised she could help her escape. To throw off the Director, she created two sets of solidograms, similar to him, one to be placed in the detention cells, while the other set to be caught in the sewers. It was around this time they figured out that the prisoners were in fact solidograms, generated by the main computer. While Missy and River meddled with the systems, they figured out that they were brought to the prison to check if the Eleventh Doctor was really dead after his assassination. They finally escaped after Missy tricked the computer into thinking that the inside was the outside and vice versa. Missy and River were transported to a planet, where Missy got back to her TARDIS. She told River that she knew something about her future, but that she couldn't tell. Missy also explained that she couldn't kill River because she was a complicated space-time event. Missy then teleported River back to Stormcage, just for the fun of it. (AUDIO: The Bekdel Test)
While searching for a replacement power source for her TARDIS's Eye of Harmony, Missy was forced into working for the High Council by the General, with Yayani being assigned her "companion" in her mission to investigate time experiments at the Kyme Institute. At the Kyme Institute, Missy and Yayani found that Doctor Kalub was keeping a pregnant creature confined in a bubble of time energy, constantly shifting between life and death. Having paralysed Kalub with her sonic umbrella, Missy goaded Yayani into killing him, and then killed Yayani with the Tissue Compression Eliminator, sending her remains back to the General with a warning not to bother her again, as she had jettisoned her Eye of Harmony, replacing it with Kalub's creature. (PROSE: Lords and Masters)
Shenanigans with the Master TARDIS
Missy was captured by the Wardens, who punished her for a crime she had yet to commit. Under the supervision of Mr Cosmo, she was exiled to 19th Century London and forbidden from harming anyone or using anachronistic technology. Following Cosmo's suggestion to get a job, Missy took a role as the governess of Oliver and Lucy Davis. Under the guise of field trips with the children, she investigated places of old power, awakening a Sphinx and stealing an ancient genie from the British Museum. Lucy became suspicious of her, but Oliver remained enthralled and helped Missy gain access to the opening of the Circle Line which their father had been working on. Missy used the circular shape and terror of the passengers on the out of control train, being accelerated by the genie, to charge up a ruby from the Sphinx with ancient power. She then turned on the children, attracting Cosmo's attention. The ruby interfered with his transmat, transporting him into the genie's vase. Stripped of his power, Cosmo was unable to stop Missy using her vortex manipulator to escape. (AUDIO: A Spoonful of Mayhem)
Plotting to obtain control of the Master TARDIS, Missy sought the necessary components to reactivate it. (AUDIO: The Belly of the Beast) She travelled to 15th Century England to find a time traveller who was causing distortions by posing as Henry VIII, discovering they were actually the Monk, who had hidden from the Time War there and was now creating distortions in hopes of attracting the Time Lords' attention for rescue. Her plans were thrown into chaos by the arrival of the Gramoryans, who had been attracted by the Monk's meddling. She was forced to expose the Monk as an impostor to divert them, by revealing the real Henry. She and the Monk were sentenced to execution for treason, however she managed to hypnotise the executioner and they retreated back to the Monk's TARDIS. There Missy stole the component she needed and escaped by vortex manipulator, leaving the stranded Monk swearing vengeance against her. (AUDIO: Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated) Missy then tracked down her Time War TARDIS, which had hidden from her in 2014 Manhattan. She accompanied Dick Zodiac in his investigation of deaths where the victims had seemingly aged to death. Dick found her TARDIS, which was traumatised from the War and now communicating by an avatar called Mark. Mark let her and Dick in, however a future version of Dick who had been relieving the events in simulations intervened and revealed her true identity to Mark, giving young Dick her vortex manipulator. Refusing to be her tool again, the TARDIS attempted to throw itself into a sun but Missy found the factory reset and regained control. (AUDIO: The Broken Clock) Locating the Master TARDIS in the belly of a dead space creature, Missy used processed clones as a slave army to excavate it. Growing bored, Missy and her own future self played a game where the future Missy attempted to cause a rebellion, to keep her occupied. When the TARDIS was found, Missy used a vortex manipulator to travel back in time to be the rebel leader whilst the older Missy claimed the TARDIS. She used the Monk's component to open its Eye of Harmony and threw her old TARDIS into it as fuel, activating the Master TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Belly of the Beast)
Finding the Master TARDIS wasn't working properly, Missy embarked on a series of plots to attract the Doctor's attention, including kidnapping Bertram to be her companion. Instead she attracted the attention of the Lumiat, who she initially mistook for the Doctor. Eventually the Lumiat revealed her true identity as Missy's next incarnation, a distillation of goodness created by an Elysian field. Missy and the Lumiat went on a series of adventures together, during which Missy killed Bertram out of boredom. After Missy threatened to destroy a rare egg that was causing a truce in a civil war, the Lumiat snapped and threatened to kill her with her TCE. She missed and Missy shot her whilst throwing her the egg, smashing it and mortally wounding the Lumiat. Having grown bored of her, Missy dumped the Lumiat on a random planet mid-regeneration. (AUDIO: The Lumiat)
Still wanting the Doctor's attention, Missy went to Earth and took over a boarding school in Scotland. Oliver Davis arrived at the school and managed to send word to his sister, who arrived with Strax. Fending off their interference, Missy decided to have the boys dig up an ancient mound in search of ancient power. However she was foiled by the arrival of Cosmo, who had been freed by Strax's comrades on the Davis' instruction. Missy escaped by vortex manipulator, (AUDIO: Brimstone and Terror) to 1605, however it was drained of power. Missy decided to meddle in the Gunpowder Plot to attract the attention of a time traveller and came into conflict with a rookie Time Agent. However Missy's meddling was undone and she was captured by the culprit - the Monk. (AUDIO: Treason and Plot) Before the Monk could exact his revenge, they were captured by the Ogrons who were seeking payment from the Master, and assumed the Monk was him. Missy eventually helped the Monk escaped, however revealed she'd programmed his TARDIS to only operate with both of them aboard. As he despaired, she proclaimed this to be the beginning of a "horrible friendship". (AUDIO: Too Many Masters)
Adventures with the Monk
After reaching the conclusion that she could fly the Monk's TARDIS with only the Monk's brain, she removed it from his body. Missy and the Monk ended up in a war between the VAD and the Kalvor. Knowing it would end up in VAD hands, Missy threw the Monk's brain off a cliff as part of her scheme. The Prime VAD and his army located the Monk's TARDIS and inhabited his body. Missy used this as the perfect opportunity to use regeneration energy to destroy all VAD from the body and win the war for the Kalvor. Missy was surprised when the Kalvor treated her as a hero, causing her to momentarily question herself. Missy, seemingly in a kind mood, then returned the Monk's body to him. (AUDIO: Body and Soulless)
Apparently bent on proving the Monk she could be nice, Missy travelled to Earth, where a millionaire, Richard Morris Temple, was selling regeneration energy to mankind dispersed in different products. This was due to him exploiting a War Seed, a being created by the War Master during the Time War to turn the people of entire planets into a warrior race, the Cheetel, faithful to the Time Lords. Missy then lured Temple to the planet of the Cheetel promising to give him a personal army, and then left him there to die. The War Seed asked to be decomissioned, but Missy refused and left him on an unknown planet, revealing to the Monk that she actually wanted to retrieve her creation. (AUDIO: War Seed)
Missy was contacted by the Nun, a future female incarnation of the Monk, to 16th century Italy, to strike a deal: she would give her the coordinates of her Master TARDIS, in exchange for the deliverance of his past self. The two couples met at the villa of Alfredo Borgia in Tuscany, where the Nun repeatedly try and eventually succeeded to inform his past self of who she was. Together, the two Monks were eventually able to escape together in the Nun's TARDIS, but the Monk still unwillingly gave Missy the coordinates of the Master TARDIS. (AUDIO: Two Monks, One Mistress)
Reclaiming her friend
Missy decided to manoeuvre Clara Oswald into becoming the Doctor's companion, believing that Clara was just the right companion to attract the Doctor's interest and make it easier for Missy to emotionally manipulate him, (TV: Death in Heaven) showing him "the friend inside the enemy, [and] the enemy inside the friend." (TV: The Witch's Familiar) Ashildr believed that Missy placed the two together so that that the Doctor and Clara in tandem would become the Hybrid of Gallifreyan myth. (TV: Hell Bent) In 2013, Missy gave Clara the Doctor's phone number, claiming that it was a tech support line, leading Clara to meet the Eleventh Doctor. (TV: The Bells of Saint John, Death in Heaven) She then kept the Doctor and Clara together into the Doctor's twelfth incarnation by placing an ad in a newspaper for Mancini's Family Restaurant. (TV: Deep Breath, Death in Heaven)
After killing Clara's boyfriend, Danny Pink, by running him over with a milk float, Missy returned to the Scoundrels Club to finalise her revenge by having Saffron poison the last remaining members with a temporary paralysing agent. After stranding the majority of the members in the past to act as slave labour, Missy taunted Mandeville a final time by permanently paralysing him and propping him up as furniture, while she made plans for Dr Skarosa. (PROSE: Dismemberment)
To create a new army of the Cybermen, (TV: Dark Water) whom she called her "Cyberdears", (PROSE: Meet Missy!) Missy founded the 3W Institute, in order to create a Cyberman army of the dead. (TV: Dark Water) Needing to collect matrix slices that she had acquired in her previous incarnation, Missy travelled to London to meet her former wife, Lucy Saxon, who had been sent to sell three matrix data slices to another incarnation of the Master. Missy spoke to Lucy about her husband and told her that one day she would have to kill him with a gun. Lucy listened to her story about what would happen to her, and how it would all work out, though she did not tell Lucy that these events would also result in her death. Lucy agreed to the terms and gave Missy the three matrix slices. (PROSE: The Unwanted Gift of Prophecy) Missy used the matrix data slices to create the Nethersphere, where she uploaded dying minds to. This reality changed and rewrote the minds, removing their emotions before re-downloading them into their Cyber-converted bodies. (TV: Dark Water)
Missy went along the Doctor's timeline and greeted people who died in connection with him, (TV: Death in Heaven) such as the Half-Face Man (TV: Deep Breath) and Gretchen Carlisle. (TV: Into the Dalek) Finding this made her "a bit busy", (TV: The Caretaker) Missy began to secretly monitor the Twelfth Doctor and Clara, (TV: Flatline) as she did when Earth was saved from a solar flare by a forest that grew overnight. (TV: In the Forest of the Night)
Missy finally met the Twelfth Doctor and Clara at one of 3W's mausoleums, which was hidden inside St Paul's Cathedral (TV: Dark Water) with dimensional engineering. (TV: Death in Heaven) Initially posing as an android, Missy revealed her true identity to him as the Cybermen marched out onto the streets of London. (TV: Dark Water) Missy was quickly captured by UNIT, having anonymously tipped them off on the Cybermen's presence. She watched as Cybermen flew into the sky and exploded above major population centres, creating clouds that rained Cyber-pollen, turning the dead into Cybermen. Taken onto Boat One along with the Doctor, she sent out a signal to the Cybermen, to attack the plane before freeing herself, (TV: Death in Heaven) and disintegrating the Zygon Osgood. (AUDIO: Narcissus) Missy then ordered the Cybermen to remove a piece of the fuselage, causing Kate Stewart and the Doctor to be sucked out before ordering the Cybermen to destroy the plane, and teleporting away. In the Nethersphere, Missy and Seb watched the Doctor free falling and saving himself by using his key to summon the TARDIS. When Seb got overexcited at this dramatic turn of events, Missy casually disintegrated him.
After the Doctor found out from the Cyber-converted Danny Pink that she planned to have the Cyber-pollen fall again so that humanity would be reborn as Cybermen, Missy then arrived to give the Doctor control of the Cybermen, wanting him to use them as his army, in the hopes of proving the similarities between them. However, after pondering the idea, the Doctor proclaimed himself to be simply an "idiot with a box" rather than a general or any sort of leader. He turned control over to Danny, who ordered the army into the sky to destroy themselves, dispersing the threatening rain clouds.
After the threat of the Cybermen had ended, Missy gave the Doctor coordinates to the current location of Gallifrey, lying to the Doctor that the planet had returned to its original location and that she and the Doctor could travel there together. However, Clara, using Missy's own weapon, decided to kill her. The Doctor wouldn't let Clara kill Missy, and decided to kill his old friend himself to "save [Clara's] soul". Before he could fire the weapon, however, Missy was shot by the late Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who had been resurrected by the Cyber-pollen, (TV: Death in Heaven) but Missy used the energy from the blaster to recharge her vortex manipulator and escape undetected. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Further schemes
Despite the Celestial Intervention Agency protocols attempting to stop her, Missy was able to hack and corrupt her file in the TARDIS databanks, adding in mocking remarks and ending with a veiled promise to kill whoever viewed the video file. (WC: Who Is The Master?)
Enslaving a reality changing bear by the name of Teddy Sparkles, Missy arranged for herself to become governess at Queen Square, and used the innocence of the children to manipulate them and Teddy Sparkles into wishing for a future where they became influential entrepreneurs. When the time was right, Missy tried to threaten the children, having grown up to be very well connected, into handing her the means to dominate the Earth, but Teddy Sparkles was able to reverse the timeline to stop Missy, though he had to sacrifice his life to completely to fix the timeline afterwards. However, he was able to change reality enough to have Missy known throughout the world of 1925 as the nicest governess of all time, forcing her to leave in humiliation. (PROSE: Teddy Sparkles Must Die!)
Missy went to face the tests to gain the power of Iarbus, but the wizard refused because she was a woman and drained her life essence into her power source. Missy was able to resist destruction and keep her identity, and used the power to send mental messages to five of the most evil and cruel conquerors in the universe. She didn't mind-secure them, though, and because of that, Daphne Nollis, housekeeper to one of the five warlords summoned, was instead brought there in his place. Missy led the men through Iarbus' trials, which only Daphne and another man, Dib the Magnificent, survived. When Iarbus came to give the winner his prize, Missy used the power of the source to regain physical form and killed Iarbus and Dib by absorbing them into the power. As she was gloating for her victory, Daphne took advantage and grabbed the power for herself, snatching it from Missy's hands. Realising Daphne had become too powerful for her to defeat, Missy withdrew. (PROSE: Missy's Magical Mystery Mission)
Trapped on Skaro
After she was given the Doctor's confession dial from Ohila, Missy tried to find the Doctor to get answers, but was unable to locate him. Needing assistance, Missy got the attention of both Clara and UNIT by freezing all the airborne planes on Earth in time. Managing to arrange a treaty with Clara, Missy helped UNIT deduce that the Doctor was hiding in 1138 Essex, and used her vortex manipulator to transfer herself and Clara to the location, where the Doctor was throwing a party.
When Colony Sarff arrived to capture the Doctor, having been led there by following Missy and Clara, Clara volunteered herself and Missy as prisoners, and were taken to Skaro. While the Doctor was taken to Davros, Missy and Clara escaped their cell, but were soon captured by a Dalek. They were taken to the other Daleks and seemingly exterminated. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) However, Missy and Clara had survived by using the Dalek blasts to recharge Missy's vortex manipulator and the one she gave Clara, and teleporting from the Dalek city, burning them out in the process.
Missy and Clara entered the Dalek sewers, composed of rotting Daleks, with Missy using Clara to lure a Dalek there. She cut through its case using her dwarf star alloy brooch, enabling the rotting Daleks to kill it. She put Clara inside the case and pretended to be her prisoner, enabling her to re-enter the Dalek control room and propose an alliance with them. When the Daleks began to gain Time Lord regeneration energy, Missy used their incapacitation to find the Doctor. She used a Dalek gun to shoot Colony Sarff, saving the Doctor. She then watched as the Doctor toyed with Davros about the revived Daleks in the sewers and even tapped Davros' Dalek eye as they made their escape.
With the city being destroyed by the regenerated sewer Daleks, Missy tried to trick the Doctor into killing Clara inside the Dalek. However, the Doctor realised the deception and told Missy to run. Trying to escape, she was surrounded by Daleks when the city crumbled in on itself, but purported that she had "a really clever idea". (TV: The Witch's Familiar) Missy spent some time on Skaro, even adopting a Slyther, which she named "Doctor," and writing a postcard to the Doctor, promising she would see him soon. (PROSE: Postcards from the Universe) One Gallifreyan believed that, after she escaped the Daleks on Skaro, Missy went back to Gallifrey and told Rassilon that the Doctor knew about the Hybrid. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
After Skaro
Information from Missy Loves Ghostie and The Wonderful Doctor of Oz needs to be added
After eluding the Daleks, Missy was forced into the Time Vortex, where her TARDIS collided with a Gryphon time ship. Caught in a temporal embrace, the Gryphons attacked Missy's TARDIS, and Missy was forced to land in St Mark's Square in Venice. With her dematerialisation circuit damaged from the attack, Missy walked through the market to get her bearings, and had the circuit stolen by pickpockets Mario and Antonia. Pursuing Mario, Missy saw him being absorbed by a temporal shift with her circuit, and later found it in a museum.
Knowing she would need to venture into the temporal shift to retrieve her circuit, Missy met with a local museum curator to find out where the circuit was located, and then travelled through the temporal shift to 14th century Venice with Antonia, where they found the Gryphons attacking. Separating from Antonia, Missy found Mario's deceased body and retrieved her dematerialisation circuit. Telling Antonia that Mario had been sent back, Missy and Antonia returned to modern Venice, where Missy reverted the damages of the temporal shift by flooding Venice. (PROSE: The Liar, the Glitch and the War Zone)
Hearing that the Doctor and Clara had been forced to enter Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars, Missy came up with a new plan for universal domination. Travelling through her time stream, she recruited her decaying thirteenth incarnation, the Master in the stolen body of Tremas, the Master in the stolen body of Bruce and the "Harold Saxon" Master, and formed a band to compete on the show. The group planned to use the popularity of the program to hypnotise the audiences across the galaxy. According to Missy, the five spent "decades" preparing for the performance. (COMIC: The Five Masters)
The group went on before Clara and the Doctor due to a shift in the program's schedule, and the five revealed themselves to the pair. (COMIC: The Abominable Showmen) Missy expected the Doctor to attempt to stop the five of them, or to at least inquire on their plans, but the Doctor refused to intervene or question their scheme. After much prying, the Doctor correctly predicted the group's plan, but still refused to intervene as they started their song. As she prepared to hypnotise her audience, her previous incarnations began to fight with her over her device, as each wanted to control the universe without the others. During the fight, viewers began to turn off their sets and the group were soon all disqualified and were thus blown up, although neither Clara nor the Doctor believed that they had truly been killed. (COMIC: The Five Masters)
Missy became a headteacher for the school Saxon Heights after she had done away with the previous one. She implemented new and strange rules, such as a school uniform that was almost identical to her own clothing, and getting rid of everyone's mobile communication devices, with her excuse being that they were used too often. However, the real reason was because that she wanted to summon a Dæmon by hooking up her newly acquired devices to a transmitter. The Osgoods found this out and had UNIT stop her, although Missy managed to escape. (PROSE: Yes, Missy)
Missy goaded the Doctor into following her through various time periods while she stole valuable items. The Doctor was too late to stop her each time. Finally catching up with her in the Stone Age, the Doctor revealed to her that he had discovered her true plan: to leave Cybermats behind where she stole each item. Missy expressed her desire to further reveal her plan to him. The Doctor instead refused to listen and boarded the TARDIS in search of some lunch. (PROSE: Dr. Twelfth)
At some point, Missy had a child. She gleefully presented the baby to an assembly of three of her previous incarnations, the Master, the Tremas Master and the Saxon Master, all of whom reacted with shock. (PROSE: Winning)
In 1963, Missy filled in as Coal Hill School's supply room teacher. She added a ladder to the supply room which allowed the First Doctor and Shivani Bajwa to escape a pack of alien wolves. Shivani later described the incident to Missy and thanked her for the ladder. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Horror of Coal Hill)
Responding to a distress call from her secret base, Missy found that the "War" Master had had his TARDIS stolen by Liv Chenka. Working with her "War" and their "Deathworm" incarnations in a plan to use the Crucible of Souls to counter the plot of the Ravenous, Missy kidnapped Helen Sinclair to translate the Prophecy of Artron in the future of Earth. After taunting Helen in Artron's tower, Missy took Artron back to the "War" Master, and broadcasted a message to the Eleven for him to return to the Crucible, planning to use Artron as a bargaining chip.
With the Eleven distracted by the Eighth Doctor, Missy helped to remove the regeneration ability from the citizens of the universe, and called in the fleet of Battle TARDISes in orbit around the Crucible to destroy it. Escaping in the "War" Master's TARDIS, Missy joined her past incarnations in shooting the Eleven and left her vortex manipulator with the Twelve. Although the Time Lords requested Artron's Matrix print to give them the ability to grant new regeneration cycles to Time Lords, the Masters first used it to restore a past version of themselves to life with a new regeneration cycle. (AUDIO: Day of the Master)
Bored whilst the Doctor was enjoying life on Darillium, Missy stole the Scottish crown jewels in 1909 and then toyed with a detective fired for failing to guard them, Habitas Frond, in the hopes of some excitement. After manipulating Frond into nearly killing his former superintendent, Missy killed the superintendent herself and then turned on Frond, having become bored of him due to how easily he'd given in to her. (PROSE: Missing Habitas Frond)
Trial and execution
After she was captured by an unnamed species on an unnamed planet, (TV: Extremis) Missy was put on trial for her "crimes against the universe throughout all [her] lives". However, she talked her way out of being sentenced for the events of The Year That Never Was by pointing out the Tenth Doctor's undoing of those events, and for the murder of Petronella Osgood by pointing out that two Osgoods were still working for UNIT. She then pointed out she had already been punished for her actions at Devil's End, and cleared up confusion about her involvement in the Death Zone by reminding everyone that Borusa was the culprit on that occasion. She was, however, eventually sentenced to death for pushing a girl into a volcano on Riga-Priam. (PROSE: Missy on Trial)
In accordance with their Fatality Index, the Doctor was chosen to carry out Missy's sentence. However, he sabotaged the execution machine so that she was knocked unconscious instead of being killed. After swearing an oath to guard Missy's "body" for a thousand years, the Doctor scared the executioners away and had Nardole place her inside a Quantum Fold Chamber. (TV: Extremis) The Doctor and Nardole transported the vault to St Luke's University, where they continued to guard it for several decades. (TV: The Pilot) Missy would occasionally ask Nardole to order items for her, and the Doctor would have to approve her requests. (PROSE: Girl Power!)
Imprisoned in the Vault
Information from The Great Shopping Bill, Pain Management, & A Confusion of Angels needs to be added
While inside the Vault, Missy began reading up on how women were treated by history, and decided to help inspire a select group of women to rise against their male oppressors with a Spacebook group chat. However, the Doctor, thinking Missy was plotting an elaborate escape by messing with history, infiltrated the chat with the username "Circe" and dismantled Missy's leadership of the women. Missy then swore off ever trying to help the human race, and instead began a new campaign for the rats of Earth. (PROSE: Girl Power!)
In 2017, (TV: Knock Knock) after the Doctor began travelling with Bill Potts, (TV: The Pilot) Missy began banging on the doors of the vault, only for Nardole to assert that he would stand guard and prevent her escape. (TV: Thin Ice) When he later double-checked the locks, she started playing Für Elise on a piano the Doctor had given her. Once Nardole was dismissed by the Doctor, Missy started playing Pop Goes The Weasel when the Doctor told her about his adventure at 11 Cardinal Road. (TV: Knock Knock)
After he received an email from a simulation of himself warning of an upcoming invasion, the Doctor became tempted to release Missy from the vault. (TV: Extremis) When the Monks later occupied the Earth, the Doctor was kept prisoner for six months. After Bill helped him escape, he decided to consult Missy on how to defeat the Monks. Missy revealed she had dealt with them before, and that the only way to weaken their grip on power was to kill the psychic lynchpin being beamed to the whole planet. After the Monks had been driven off-world, the Doctor visited Missy in the vault again. This time, she claimed to be in deep regret of all the people she had killed throughout her lifetimes. The Doctor assured her she was making good progress on her redemption. (TV: The Lie of the Land)
Nardole later released Missy from the vault so that she could help him return the TARDIS to 1881 Mars after it unexpectedly departed and Nardole couldn't get it to return. After the Doctor and Bill entered the TARDIS, the Doctor was shocked to see Missy at the controls and reminded her that it was against their agreement and that he would have to return Missy to the Vault. To the Doctor's surprise, Missy easily agreed to return, and even questioned if he was alright with obvious concern. (TV: Empress of Mars)
Final endeavours
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Deciding Missy was worth trusting, the Doctor released her from the Vault to perform maintenance work on the TARDIS while he took Bill and Nardole to find the lost Roman legion. Missy finished the work, and then took to watching the Doctor until he returned some days later. Nardole was frustrated that the Doctor had freed her, but he brushed him off, preferring to see if Missy had learned anything. Missy later cried as the Doctor watched on, both wondering if it was possible for them to be friends again and whether Missy was finally becoming the person the Doctor had desired to make her. (TV: The Eaters of Light)
The Mondasian colony ship
To test Missy's goodness, the Doctor recruited Bill and Nardole to be her "companions" and followed a distress call to a colony ship while the Doctor monitored Missy's progress from the TARDIS. However, Missy was ill-prepared to handle a frightened crewmember, Jorj, who subsequently shot Bill; she was carried off by passengers from Floor 1056. Missy accompanied the Doctor and Nardole in the lift to Floor 1056, (TV: World Enough and Time) where a time portal appeared. A humanoid hand reached out of the portal, and a voice asked to "grab on", before it disappeared. (COMIC: The Road To...) After reaching Floor 1056, the Doctor left Missy in charge of gleaning information from the computers. She discovered that the colony ship originated from Mondas while being pestered by a man called "Razor", who, upon confrontation, revealed himself to be her past self, who Missy appeared to join forces with for the "Genesis of the Cybermen". (TV: World Enough and Time)
However, when the Cybermen turned on them, Missy knocked the Master down and claimed to have been playing him while still on the Doctor's side, but then admitted to being unsure of her allegiance. Just as Nardole arrived with a stolen shuttlecraft, the Doctor was attacked by one of the Cybermen. Missy entered the shuttle after the Master, as her younger self attempted to convince Nardole to leave without him. However, their shuttle was stopped by the Cyber-converted Bill, who still retained her humanity. Crashing through the floors, the shuttlecraft gave out at one of the solar farms on Floor 0507. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
That night, while the Doctor recovered from their escape, Missy accompanied the Master in venturing to Floor 0508 to revert the Doctor's edits to the Cybermen back on Floor 1056 and regain control of the Cybermen, though they were followed by Alit and a patient that Missy named "Topknot". However, after an encounter with a patrol of CyberNeomorphs, Missy prevented them from attacking Floor 0507 with a swarm of Cybermats, before rescuing her previous self with Alit and assisting the Master in destroying the Cyberman patrol; the two Masters then returned to Floor 0507 and abandoned their plans to control the Cybermen. On their journey back to the farmhouse, Missy, still conflicted over whether to side with the Doctor or her previous self, hypothesised that the only way to finish her internal conflict would be to kill the Master. (PROSE: Alit in Underland)
After two weeks of searching, the Master and Missy found disguised lifts, but Missy accidentally summoned the Cybermen in her attempt to escape. Unable to return to the Doctor's TARDIS due to how quickly time was moving on the floor of the Cybermen, the Doctor insisted that they had to prepare for a confrontation.
As the Doctor prepared to fight, the Master explained to Missy how he had blown the dematerialisation circuit in his TARDIS, which was surrounded by Cybermen on the bottom floor. Missy, recalling an instance where a very scary woman had pushed him up against a wall and insisted that he always keep a spare dematerialisation circuit, pushed the Master against the wall and insisted that he always keep a spare dematerialisation circuit, revealing the spare dematerialisation circuit she kept on her person. Before departing, however, the pair asked what the Doctor's plan was, knowing that he wouldn't be able to save everyone on the ship. As the Doctor explained that he wanted to save these people simply because it was the right thing to do and then implored the Master to stand with him, something the Master rejected, but Missy, speaking with the Doctor in private, admitted that she too wanted to stand with the Doctor as an ally, but still left with the Master. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Death
- Main article: Missy's regeneration
As they prepared to depart, Missy offered to hug the Master and, after stating her enjoyment for being him, she stabbed the Master in the back, mortally wounding him in order to force his regeneration into her, but made the wound precise so that he would have time to reach his TARDIS before the regeneration occurred. Missy then helped the Master into the lift, explaining that she planned to stand with the Doctor and that it was the inevitable end that they had been leading towards their entire lives. However, the Master, declaring that he would never stand with the Doctor, shot Missy in the back with his laser screwdriver at full blast, claiming that he was mortally wounding her beyond the point of regeneration. With both of them laughing, the Master declared that their perfect ending was always going to be "shoot[ing] [them]selves in the back." As the Master departed for his TARDIS, Missy collapsed to the ground and seemingly died, (TV: The Doctor Falls) but she managed to regenerate by creating an Elysian field to "kick start a new regeneration cycle". The process of cryogenetic extraction destroyed her body but retained a copy of her consciousness before regeneration, creating a new incarnation. (AUDIO: The Lumiat)
Psychological profile
Though he had previously preferred a male form, (PROSE: The Novel of the Film) the Master was indifferent when he learnt he would regenerate into a woman, (TV: The Doctor Falls) and, fully embracing her new gender, the Master changed her title to "Mistress", shortening it to "Missy". Considering herself to be "old fashioned", she insisted on being addressed as a Time Lady, (TV: Dark Water, The Witch's Familiar) while nicknaming herself the "Queen of Evil". (TV: Death in Heaven) She also adopted a Scottish accent, claiming she would keep it after taking a liking to the Twelfth Doctor's accent, (TV: Deep Breath) occasionally utilising other accents when she felt the need. (TV: Death in Heaven, The Witch's Familiar)
While she claimed that she had the "body of a weak and feeble woman", she maintained that she still possessed "the heart, and stomach, of a homicidal maniac" (AUDIO: The Bekdel Test) with "absolutely zero morals", (PROSE: Dismemberment) openly described herself as "bananas", but took offence when Danny Pink called her a "lunatic". (TV: Death in Heaven) She also displayed tendencies of being a show-off, such as when vastly enlarging her face on a UNIT monitor in a comical manner to show UNIT that she could, (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) and enjoyed having information that others did not, such as having knowledge of the Doctor's past that others could not argue with. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice, World Enough and Time) She was also something of a thrill-seeker, sometimes putting herself in danger simply for "fun". (PROSE: Lords and Masters)
Though she adopted a bubblier personality with a welcoming and sociable façade, (TV: Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, Dark Water, Death in Heaven) and more choreographic movements, (TV: Deep Breath, Dark Water, Death in Heaven, The Witch's Familiar, World Enough and Time) Missy was more open about her loneliness, and willing to show when she was afraid and remorseful, (TV: Death in Heaven, The Magician's Apprentice, The Lie of the Land, The Eaters of Light) and would abandon all sense of showmanship when her safety was at risk. (PROSE: Lords and Masters)
In her own words, Missy was "especially spiteful", and proved her word when she began murdering some of the Scoundrels Club's members and enslaving the others after they refused to allow her to remain a member. (PROSE: Dismemberment) Though she would admit that some retribution for her actions was justified, Missy still viewed the extremes of such action to be unfair towards her. (PROSE: Lords and Masters) She identified herself as a Slytherin, claiming to "see a lot of Severus Snape in [herself]". (PROSE: The Liar, the Glitch and the War Zone)
Believing that the Doctor's saving of Gallifrey was meant to rescue only her, (TV: Death in Heaven) Missy's affection for the Doctor became more conspicuous, telling the Half-Face Man that, while the Doctor could be mean to others, he would not be with her because he "loved [her] so much". She openly referred to him as her "boyfriend", (TV: Deep Breath) tracked his movements across time and space, (TV: Flatline, In the Forest of the Night, Death in Heaven) and mockingly professed that her hearts "belonged to [the Doctor]" after passionately kissing him. (TV: Dark Water) Despite these implications of their relationship being romantic, Missy adamantly denied that she loved the Doctor, even showing disgust at the thought, insisting it to be a complicated friendship, though expressed jealous irritation when the Doctor called Davros his "arch-enemy", (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) and would become upset and querulous when he did not show interest in her plans. (COMIC: The Five Masters; PROSE: Dr. Twelfth)
Viewing everything as being born to die, Missy held no regrets when it came to murder, describing her urge to kill as akin to a child wanting to pop a balloon, (TV: Death in Heaven) and having a preference for killing "clever-clogs" because they "[made] the best faces". (TV: The Witch's Familiar) When instructed not to kill, Missy would grow uninterested in the task given, (PROSE: Lords and Masters) and once killed a bird for no reason other than she was feeling annoyed. (PROSE: Teddy Sparkles Must Die!) When building up to a murder, Missy would insist that her victim "say something nice" to her, and would wait patiently for them to reply. (TV: Dark Water, Death in Heaven, The Magician's Apprentice) She also insisted that anyone aiming to kill her do the same with her, (TV: Death in Heaven) and would take offence if a threat to kill her was not carried out. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Missy retained her predecessors' sadistic tendencies, demonstrating cruel pleasure at taunting her victims before she killed them, such as telling Dr Chang she would miss him and promising to always keep a picture of him "looking so sweet" before she murdered him. (TV: Dark Water) She also encouraged Osgood to have more self-confidence, while counting down to her death to torment her. However, she atomised Seb without a second glance for no reason other than that the AI was annoying her. (TV: Death in Heaven) Missy also held no respect for the dead, using dead human bodies to create a Cyberman army, (TV: Dark Water) as well as crushing Osgood's glasses under her heel while posthumously thanking her for being "yummy". (TV: Death in Heaven)
Missy could be needlessly cruel in her interactions with others, such as taunting Clara Oswald about her dead boyfriend, (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) and pushing Clara down a hole to test its depth. (TV: The Witch's Familiar) She let Jo hang off a cliff for sometime before rescuing her and later let her be caught by the entropy wave. (AUDIO: Masterful) She also ordered the death of Belgians for no reason, (TV: Death in Heaven) vaporised UNIT personnel to prove she had "not gone good," (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) and was believed by Ashildr to have united Clara and the Doctor together just to see what chaos would result from their clashing personalities. (TV: Hell Bent) She would sometimes act childish or ignorant so that others around her would drop their guard. (PROSE: Dismemberment) However, when Missy learnt that the Doctor had departed Darillium to leave River Song to her fate, she offered her sincere condolences for his loss. (TV: Extremis)
Missy liked apricot jam, (PROSE: Dismemberment) but disliked birds and children. (PROSE: Teddy Sparkles Must Die!)
During her imprisonment in the vault, Missy went "cold turkey" on being evil as the Doctor tried to rehabilitate her, which first worked to the extent that Missy offered information on how to defeat the Monks because she did want to change and save the Earth, though her immediate solution involved burning out Bill Potts' brain as it was the only way she knew of to stop the Monks, effectively sacrificing one to save the many. After he repelled the invasion without resorting to killing Bill, the Doctor found that Missy had secretly grown remorseful for all her past murders. (TV: The Lie of the Land) Nardole later trusted her to retrieve the Doctor and Bill from Mars, (TV: Empress of Mars) which in turn resulted in the Doctor trusting Missy enough to do "maintenance" on his TARDIS. (TV: The Eaters of Light)
Though she continued to show progress with her rehabilitation and made an effort to do good on the Mondasian colony ship, when she was approached by her past incarnation, she relapsed back to being evil by allying with him, (TV: World Enough and Time) but continued to be conflicted with her allegiance, admitting to the Doctor that she was "in two minds" about what she wanted. (TV: The Doctor Falls) After a brief adventure with the Master and Alit, Missy kept her past self from regaining control of the Cybermen and speculated that she would have to kill him to end the danger. (PROSE: Alit in Underland) After being moved by the Doctor's speech on kindness and request for her help, Missy stabbed her past incarnation so that he would regenerate into her and she could stand with the Doctor, only for the Master to shoot her beyond regeneration, leading to her death, though she shared the amusement in her "perfect ending" being shot in the back by her past incarnation. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Missy showed a liking for singing, substituting her name in the song "Mickey" while in UNIT custody, and singing a verse from "Happy Birthday, Mr President" when giving the Doctor control of a Cyberman army. (TV: Death in Heaven) She pulled a similar stunt involving "Mickey" lyrics via text communication when she announced her presence to UNIT by halting all aeroplane traffic, and, when imprisoned by Colony Sarff, she passed the time by partaking in opera singing. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) Missy was also good at playing the piano, and passed her time in the vault playing Für Elise, Pop Goes The Weasel, (TV: Knock Knock) and The Entertainer. (TV: The Lie of the Land)
She would regularly threaten to bring pain to individuals by threatening their internal organs, (TV: World Enough and Time; PROSE: Dismemberment, Lords and Masters, Girl Power!; COMIC: The Road To...) even once considering eating Clara Oswald if she had to. (TV: The Witch's Familiar) She occasionally fantasised about breaking the necks of those who annoyed her. (PROSE: The Liar, the Glitch and the War Zone)
Missy was a devious planner and skilled manipulator, able to manoeuvre others into place with ease by exploiting their desires. (TV: Death in Heaven) While trapped on Skaro with Clara Oswald, Missy demonstrated fluid planning as her desires changed from wanting to ally with the Daleks, (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) to wanting to help the Doctor, to then wanting the Doctor to unintentionally kill Clara, (TV: The Witch's Familiar) and she was capable of long-term planning, as she worked out a long plan to gain entry into the Monk's TARDIS and steal a component after her Vortex Manipulator was damaged and she discovered the Monk was disguised as Henry VIII. (AUDIO: Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated) She was also a convincing liar, especially when using her talent for manipulative reasons. (TV: Dark Water, Death in Heaven) However, Missy would often opt for one solitary scheme with virtually no contingencies or back-up plans in place to help steer events back towards her favour like her previous incarnations employed, instead opting to give the Doctor false hope of reaching Gallifrey after she was beaten, (TV: Death in Heaven) and walking away with nothing but taunts to say when the Doctor didn't kill Clara. (TV: The Witch's Familiar) After her past self unleashed an entropy wave on the universe, Missy manipulated her own past incarnations in an attempt to have them stop it or otherwise salvage something from the catastrophe, with three incarnations attempting to do as she had intended. (AUDIO: Masterful)
Sharing the Doctor's observational skills, Missy could tell a man she had killed was a married father by the ring on his finger and the detection of "baby leakage" on his jacket, (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) and pick up on people's personalities by the infliction of their voice. (PROSE: Lords and Masters)
Appearance
Missy looked like a mature woman with pronounced cheek bones, and light blue eyes. Her black hair was wild and free, but held in place in an up-do. She also adopted a Scottish accent similar to the Twelfth Doctor's. (TV: Deep Breath)
Fashioning herself in Victorian-styled garb, Missy wore a wingtip collar blouse (TV: Deep Breath) with a cameo brooch made of Dark star alloy under her throat, (TV: The Witch's Familiar) along with a high-waisted skirt that cut to ankle length, and a croak lengthen jacket which puffed up at the shoulders and dark lapels, with a blouse in ivory (TV: Deep Breath) or olive green. (TV: The Lie of the Land) She also wore black ankle boots with a sharp toe and tapered heels. Completing the ensemble was a black boater cap worn at a rakish angle, with an arrangement of black and crimson berries on the brim and a black veil over the top, held at the back with an Onyx black hatpin (TV: Dark Water) which was a TCE with four petals over a glowing sphere design. (PROSE: Lords and Masters) For further accessories, Missy wore a spiked bracelet on her left wrist, carried around a black sonic umbrella, and wore a bar ring on her right middle finger, and a 3 coils ring on her left middle finger. (TV: Deep Breath) She later adopted a vortex manipulator on her left wrist instead of her spiked bracelet and replaced her rings with a black signet ring on her left middle finger and a silver one on her right one. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
Missy varied the colours of her clothes, with her usual outfit coming in ebony black, (TV: Deep Breath) bottle green, (TV: Into the Dalek) burnt orange, (TV: The Caretaker) plum purple, (TV: Flatline) or violet purple. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
Before she was imprisoned in the Vault, Missy's up-do hair had grown in length, she had began wearing leather clothes, and she had replaced her brooch with a rust orange cravat tie. (TV: Extremis) After spending a number of years in the Vault, her hair grew out into a messier style. (TV: The Lie of the Land)
Saffron believed Missy had a "cruel look to her", (PROSE: Dismemberment) while Missy thought herself as being attractive, openly admitting to admiring her reflection on occasion. (AUDIO: Day of the Master) The Thirteenth Doctor compared Missy's look to Mary Poppins. (PROSE: The Doctor vs the Master)
Other references
Prior to her and Team TARDIS' encounter with the Spy Master, (TV: Spyfall) the Thirteenth Doctor became aware that the Gem of Niag was stolen by a Time Lord who she assumed to be Missy, but turned out to be the Sixth Corsair. Openly speaking of her to her companions, the Doctor noted that Missy was the name she had most recently gone by and glumly cited that she was doing "so much better" the last time she saw her. (COMIC: Old Friends)
While the Thirteenth Doctor was mentally communicating with the Spy Master, she mentioned Missy and her attempt to turn good. The Master dismissed his time as her as a mistake which he refused to repeat. (PROSE: The Doctor vs the Master) After being trapped in the Matrix by the Master, the Doctor remembered, amongst many others, Missy in order to break out of the computer system. (TV: The Timeless Children, TV: Empress of Mars)
Behind the scenes
- 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 TV: 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.
- Missy is among the incarnations of the Master who appear in Doctor Who: Legacy. She's also the only incarnation of the Master to also be an ally/playable character.
- Missy also featured in the video game LEGO Dimensions, with Michelle Gomez reprising her role.
External links
- The Master / Missy at the Doctor Who Legacy wiki
- Missy at the Doctor Who Legacy wiki
- Missy at the LEGO Dimensions wiki
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