Unbound Master
Template:The Master counterparts A version of the Master from the Unbound Universe was a Time Lord exiled on Earth.
Biography
Exiled on Earth
On Earth since at least the 1970s, the Master lost his TARDIS, describing it as having been placed "beyond [his] reach". Unable to leave, he tried to attract the Doctor's attenion, hoping to procure his TARDIS. The Master eventually found work with the United Nations who sent him to assist in the World Peace Conference when Chairman Mao's actions had caused the Chinese to lose control of psychic parasites. Seeing great potential in the parasites, the Master received funding from the Communists for his experiments on them before fully defecting to China. Changing his alias of Emil Keller to "Ke Le", the Master developed machines that harnassed the power of the parasites to brainwash political prisoners into zombie-like soldiers organised into Ke Le Divisions. (AUDIO: Sympathy for the Devil)
Fleeing to Hong Kong
In 1997 however, shortly before the handover of Hong Kong, the machines had been rendered inert when the parasites were fully sated. Seeing no further use for the parasites, the Chinese government prepared to destroy them via a nuclear weapon while looking for the Master. Knowing that the Divisions would go insane when the parasites were destroyed and that one still existed in a Hong Kong temple, the Master forced a pilot to fly him to the temple in a cloaked jet, the previaling theory from the East and West being that he sought to defect back to England. When the plane made its approach however, its jump jets failed and it crashed. Mortally wounded by the crash, the Master regenerated before the stunned eyes of Adam whom he then proceeded to kill and steal his garments, including a Union Jack tie.
Keeping to the shadows, the Master observed the UNIT taskforce before he hyponotised one for access to the temple. Holding the abbott at gunpoint, the Master opened the jar containing the last parasite, shooting the abbott and another monk, both too old to be affected by the parasite, and used it to take command of UNIT, the monks and Ling. Discovering the Doctor among the group, the Master had him, Ross Brimmicombe-Wood and Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart imprisoned.
Speaking to the Doctor in private, the Master revealed his peaceful intentions before the two devolved into an argument about their approaches to intervention which led to the Master listing off that he had had to live through the hellish three decades that the Doctor had missed and the atrocities that he failed to stop before accidentally revealing that he had lost his TARDIS. The two struck a deal, the Master agreeing to aid in the disposal and destruction of the last parasite - allowing them to believe nothing bad would happen - in return for being taken off Earth in the Doctor's TARDIS, whose inhibitor he promised to override, while secretly planning to betray everyone. When the group reached the waterfront, the Master held the Brigadier hostage for the Doctor's TARDIS key, the Doctor handing it over and pointing him to the Little England pub. Entering, the Master discovered it to be a genuine pub, running out in time to see the Doctor and the Brigadier take off.
In a desperate attempt to be evacuated from the city, he admitted to Brimmicombe-Wood that the Ke Le Divisions would go insane once the last parasite was destroyed, only for his delay to cause them all to miss the evacuation boats. When midnight struck, Ke Le helicopters decloaked who began looking for the Master. When the parasites were destroyed, the Divisions went mad and opened fire on Hong Kong as the Master laughed. (AUDIO: Sympathy for the Devil)
The War
Having escaped Earth, the Master fought alongside the Doctor in a great war against some other enemy, with the natives of the planet Tramatz being a key player in one side of the conflict. Towards the end of the war, the Master had acquired a weapon that would destroy the enemy at the cost of essentially destroying the universe as well, with the Doctor fleeing the conflict in the hope that the Master would be unable to activate the weapon without him. However, the Master used the weapon, leaving the universe faced with near-imminent collapse, requiring the Doctor to sell most of his memories (including the ones involving the Master) to try and power a means of delaying this collapse. (AUDIO: The Emporium At The End)
Post-War
The Doctor heard his voice when he was captured by the Library. (AUDIO: The Library in the Body)
He posed as the Manager of the shop at the Gateway to the universe; in this position, he created a lottery which had a prize to get out of this universe. People could pay for partecipation either with their goods, or with their memories. When the Doctor showed up with a group of survivors and Bernice Summerfield, the Master immediately saw that she didn't belong to his universe and paid attention to her. He arrested her for shoplifting, and took the chance to invite her to dinner. He told her he found a way to save everyone, which included sending Benny back to her universe in order to create a permanent bridge between the two universes, while he would stay on this side to keep the bridge stable from both sides. Benny was persuaded and agreed to do it, but before she could do it, the amnesiac Doctor regained enough of his memory to suspect the Master of a trap and shut down the portal. He explained to Benny and everyone else that, in fact, the Master was using the energy of the people in the universe to create the illusion that the universe was dying ahead of schedule so that he could guarantee his own escape, and that his alleged portal just disintegrated those who used it to act as a power source for the Master's planned escape later on. Benny believed the Doctor, and asked the Master to pass first through the portal; his refusal to do so proved the truth of the Doctor's words. The Master was then subsequently grabbed by the people present, thrown into the portal himself and apparently killed. (AUDIO: The Emporium At The End)
The Master escaped death once again, and began to plot to replace the Doctor as President of the Universe. This played into the Doctor's hands, as he too planned for the Master to take over from him, sabotaging his own leadership to make the change seem natural. Using the equations the Doctor had devised from the Apocalypse Clock to save the universe, the Master triggered these calculations in the belief that he would awaken the Great Old Ones who had originally created the equations to act as his servants, but as they prepared to feed on everyone in the safe zone created by the equations, the Doctor used the energy channeled by the equations to power his own attempt to take Benny back to her universe and send the Old Ones back to their world. The Doctor believed that the Master would make a good president, as he would be kept in check by the Mother Superior. He also recognised that the Master wouldn't like the bureaucracy of the position, as the Master inherited the Parliament the Doctor had created which he had previously admitted was not the kind of government he would have liked. (AUDIO: The True Saviour of the Universe)
Combatting the entropy wave
Whilst ruling his small universe, the Master became aware of an entropy wave that been unleashed in N-Space which threatened his universe. He travelled to N-Space to stop it, encountering Missy. She let him borrow her butler, Kamelion, and space yacht. He observed the entropy wave spreading across the universe. After witnessing a CVE opening in front of it, he realised that the Time Lords were trying to divert it to another universe. (AUDIO: Masterful) He decided to invade Gallifrey, whilst Kamelion left to follow his mistress' orders. (WC: Masterful social media-only exclusive scene) The Master quickly took over Gallifrey and ordered all of the Battle TARDISes to defend against the entropy wave. As it approached he detonated the TARDISes, destroying all of them and Gallifrey itself, however the wave wasn't stopped. The Master decided to try the Daleks, however their efforts against the entropy wave proved futile too. He reunited with Missy and decided to withdraw back to his universe whilst he still could. These events were later undone when all the Masters died, unravelling the timeline and undoing the entropy wave's unleashing. (AUDIO: Masterful)
Escape into N-Space
After some time, the Master became the last being alive in the universe, at which point he sent out an inter-dimensional distress call. After around 10000 years, the call was answered by the Dalek Time Strategist from N-Space, who sought his assistance in stopping the War Master from their universe from interfering with their history. In N-Space, the Master helped the Daleks in their plan to stop his counterpart, visiting many iterations of Gallifrey created by temporal shockwaves in an attempt to find the progenitor of the time disturbances. He thought it was Narvin however his extermination failed to rectify the timeline, and the Dalek timeship had insufficient power to try again. (AUDIO: Shockwave)
The Master and the Time Strategist began communicating with the War Master in the new timeline to sow discontent between him and his Daleks, eventually succeeding in persuading him to consider restoring the original timeline. The Master told his alternate self that in order to restore the original timeline, they had to come back to a point in time when they could forbid this timeline from happening. As his Daleks turned on him, the War Master agreed to help, and brought them to the time when he connected with a telepathic circuit his TARDIS to Crazlus, a Gallifreyan scientist, before sending him to enter the Celestial Intervention Agency and raise in a position of power where he could help him in his plan.
The War Master contacted his past self, and tricked him into bringing Crazlus to them, so that the Dalek Time Strategist could kill him, thus reverting the timeline to its original course. As a result of this, though, the artron energy connecting the alternate Master to this reality began to falter, threatening to send him back to his universe. The War Master saved him by bringing him into his TARDIS, while the Daleks were trying to capture them, and the alternate Master managed to stabilize himself enough to escape into a wormhole when the Daleks hit the War Master's TARDIS, thus escaping capture. (AUDIO: He Who Wins)
Behind the scenes
- The character is called "Ke Le" on the Sympathy for the Devil CD case.
- This version of the Master was played by Mark Gatiss, using the anagrammatic pseudonym "Sam Kisgart". This was a reference to the use of anagrams to hide Anthony Ainley's appearances in several stories in the 1980s.
- Mark Gatiss also portrayed an incarnation of the Doctor who appears in the comedy sketch The Web of Caves. Along with Derek Jacobi and Paul McGann, this makes Gatiss one of only three actors to have portrayed both the Master and the Doctor in licensed appearances.
- Jonathan Clements, author of Sympathy for the Devil, voiced the dying previous incarnation of the "Exiled" Master, who was intended to be Roger Delgado's Master.[1]
Footnotes
- ↑ Interview with writer Jonathan Clements
