Biography
Early life
The Master grew up on Gallifrey in the House of Oakdown, (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) though he would later comment to Wilfred Mott that growing up on Gallifrey was not something one could call childhood, but "more a life of duty". (TV: The End of Time)
Sharing the same heritage and upbringing, (AUDIO: UNIT: Dominion) the Master had a friendship with the First Doctor (GAME: Destiny of the Doctors; TV: The Sound of Drums) and his family, (AUDIO: The Toy) with UNIT scientist Osgood even describing the Master as the Doctor's "childhood friend". (TV: Death in Heaven) The Second Doctor recalled that he and the Master had everything in common, except that the Master enjoyed being scared of the dark "a little too much". (PROSE: The Menagerie)
The two youths would play in the fields near the Master's father's estates, with pastures of red grass near Mount Perdition. (TV: The End of Time) They would also sneak out of the Capitol and drink with the Shobogans, (PROSE: The Eight Doctors) with the young Master picking a fight with six drunken Shobogans one of these outings. (PROSE: UNIT Christmas Parties: Christmas Truce) The Master also taught his friend hypnotism. (PROSE: The Dark Path)
During their childhood, the young Master and the Doctor had been mercilessly and viciously bullied by a boy called Torvic; the young Doctor was eventually forced to kill the bully to save his friend's life. He was later confronted by the personification of Death, who insisted he become her disciple, but the Doctor refused and suggested Death make the Master her champion instead. Death agreed, and the Doctor subsequently forgot about their deal. (AUDIO: Master)
Like all Time Lords, the Master was taken for his initiation at the age of eight. During the ceremony in which he gazed into the Time Vortex through the Untempered Schism, he went mad, (TV: The Sound of Drums) as the result of a rhythm of four beats being implanted into his head. (TV: The End of Time) This malady manifested itself as the constant drumming he heard ever after, worsening with time. (TV: Utopia, The Sound of Drums, Last of the Time Lords)
Academic career
The Doctor, the Master and the War Chief were friends from their first day at the Academy, (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) with both the Doctor and the Master tutored by Borusa. (AUDIO: Masterplan) While at the Academy, the Master went by the name "Koschei", (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) and was also in charge of organising end of term parties, but the Eighth Doctor later noted that they "weren't very good". (COMIC: The Glorious Dead)
At the Academy, the Master belonged to a clique of ten young Time Lords with the collective name of the Deca, (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) and was also part of the "Gallifrey Academy Hot Five" band, in which he played the drums. (PROSE: Deadly Reunion) He and the Doctor also enjoyed building "time flow analogues" to disrupt each other's experiments. (TV: The Time Monsters)
The Master would often hypnotise people as a joke, (PROSE: The Dark Path) and would go unpunished for it, as well as other misdemeanors, always finding a way to avoid his comeuppance. (PROSE: First Frontier)
Whilst at the Academy, the Doctor and the Master travelled into Gallifrey's past in search of Valdemar. They found nothing of the Old Ones except for warnings. The Master was fascinated by the power that Valdemar represented, while the Doctor was horrified. (PROSE: Tomb of Valdemar) The Master also showed a fascination with the Necronomicon. (PROSE: The Nameless City)
When the Time Lords created the Consolidator to conceal various dangerous historical secrets from the rest of the universe, unwilling to destroy the items or races in the ship in case they proved useful later, the Doctor and the Master were assigned to come up with a solution where their peers failed. The Master had the idea of using a black hole to tear a rift in time and send the Consolidator into the distant future, where the future Time Lords could deal with it. However, when the experiment was actually attempted, the Consolidator was apparently destroyed by a mistake in the calculations when it struck the edge of the black hole, leaving the Time Lords to hush the matter up. (PROSE: Harvest of Time)
The Master ultimately did not perform well at the Academy. (AUDIO: Masterplan) Although he did earn a higher degree in cosmic science than the Doctor, (TV: Terror of the Autons) the Doctor's grades were overall better. Because of this, the Doctor received the prizes and praise that the Master so desperately wanted. The Seventh Doctor theorised that this may have been the cause of his hatred towards the Doctor. (PROSE: Survival)
Family life
Missy claimed she had a daughter and that, while still on Gallifrey, the Doctor gifted the Master a brooch made of dark star alloy, after an event which involved his daughter occurred. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
The Master attended a ritual in Arcadia where he gave Susan Foreman a communication node disguised as a toy, with the Master intending to use the node to locate the Doctor if he ever left Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Toy)
Fleeing Gallifrey
According to one source, during a period of civil unrest on Gallifrey, he led many students of the Time Lord Academy in a revolt against the corrupt Lord President, Pundat the Third, and attempted to recruit the Doctor and convince him to take the position as President, but he decided not to interfere with the current constitution. When Pundat died of stress soon after the revolt, his chosen successor was the evil Chancellor Slann. The students had found the last of Lord Rassilon's descendants, Lady Larn, a seven-year old child adopted by Councillor Brolin, who was being groomed as a future president. They decided on a second coup. Yet in trying to convert the Doctor, the students were overheard. Bloody reprisals against the students followed. The Doctor and Larn escaped from Gallifrey after this. Believing the students ready for the second coup, the Master assassinated Lord President Slann. However, the students weren't ready and he took this opportunity to steal a TARDIS and flee Gallifrey as a renegade. (PROSE: Birth of a Renegade)
Dealings with the Second Doctor
After the Doctor fled Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS, the Master left Gallifrey on the same day (COMIC: The Glorious Dead) in a Type-45 TARDIS, (PROSE: The Dark Path) that he had also stolen. (COMIC: The Glorious Dead) However, his unstable obsession with order prompted the Time Lords to plant the Time Lady Ailla as a spy to monitor his actions. She posed as a human so Koschei (as the Master had now started calling himself) would take her on as his companion during a stopover in the 28th century.
Koschei caught up with the Second Doctor at the Darkheart colony in the early years of the Galactic Federation. The temptation posed by the Darkheart device proved too much for Koschei, and the revelation that Ailla was a spy killed the last traces of good in him, and he became the Master. After the Doctor trapped him in a black hole, the Master swore that he would take revenge. (PROSE: The Dark Path)
Escaping the black hole, the Master penetrated Gallifrey, and gained access to the Matrix via a console in the old Capitol. This gave him a back door into the Matrix, which he used to collect classified information for his many devious schemes, (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) including the Time Lords' files on the Doomsday Weapon. (TV: Colony in Space) According to one account, the Master learnt about the Silurians through information stolen from the Time Lords' files. (TV: The Sea Devils) Another account stated he learnt about the Silurians from Liz Shaw while on Earth. (PROSE: Reconnaissance)
The Master then put his TARDIS in orbit of the homeworld of the Archons and made a deal with them that would result in the Archons acquiring the Doctor's TARDIS for themselves. Posing as a Professor Thascalos, the Master gave the Necronomicon to the Doctor's companion Jamie McCrimmon, so that Jamie would give the book to the Doctor and lure the TARDIS to the Archon homeworld. (PROSE: The Nameless City)
Nemesis of the Third Doctor
Early times on Earth
When the Doctor was exiled to Earth, the Master was imprisoned on Shada by the Time Lords. However, the Time Lords decided to keep the Doctor busy whilst he was trapped on Earth by releasing the Master. (PROSE: Prisoners of the Sun)
The Master was present at the first Auton invasion of Earth, and heard about Channing's attempt to capture the Third Doctor. He contacted journalist James Stevens by phone, whose article he had read in the Daily Chronicle, and told him about the near-kidnapping. He called Stevens again during the Silurian attacks on Wenley Moor, informing Stevens that Edward Masters had been the first to die from the plague sweeping London. (PROSE: Who Killed Kenney)
Under the alias "Emil Keller", the Master captured a psychic parasite and trapped it within the Keller Machine, and spent many months establishing "Keller" and the machine's credentials. (TV: The Mind of Evil)
Shortly after the Inferno Project incident, the Master once more contacted James Stevens, this time to check up on his work on his UNIT article. He promptly hung up when Stevens mentioned C19 and the Glasshouse. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
According to one account, the Master first infiltrated the headquarters of UNIT while the Brigadier and the Doctor had gone to meet with government officials. He hypnotised the Doctor's assistant, Liz Shaw, and, through her, learnt of the failed Nestene invasion and the awakening of the Silurians. This inspired him to ally himself with the Nestene and to locate more Silurian colonies. (PROSE: Reconnaissance) Another account stated he learnt about the Silurians from the Time Lords' files. (TV: The Sea Devils)
Becoming a threat
The Master appeared at the International Circus, his TARDIS in the form of a horse box. He hypnotised the circus troupe and plastic factory manager Rex Farrel to obey his orders as part of his plan to assist the Nestenes in their latest bid to conquer Earth. A Time Lord emissary alerted the Doctor to his rival's presence on the planet, and before the radio telescope could be used to bring the Nestene invasion force to Earth, the Doctor convinced the Master that the Nestenes would not distinguish between the Master and anyone else in their takeover, and the two worked together to fling the Nestenes back into space by "chang[ing] the polarity" whilst the radio telescope's transfer shift was still open. Afterwards, the Master fled. The Doctor, however, had already taken his dematerialisation circuit, preventing the Master from leaving Earth in his TARDIS. (TV: Terror of the Autons)
The Master returned again, posing as the scientist who had "developed" the Keller Machine. He used prisoners as a plan to hijack the Thunderbolt, a missile containing nerve gas and use it to destroy the world peace conference, which would trigger a nuclear war. The Doctor stopped him and destroyed the missile, but later discovered he had lost the Master's dematerialisation circuit. Shortly after, the Master telephoned to let it be known that he had found the circuit and was free now to come and go as he pleased, while the Doctor had to remain in exile. (TV: The Mind of Evil)
Shortly after the Master regained control over his TARDIS, he tried to gain control of a cult so he could harness the power of the Immortals. He convinced the real cult leader, Hadley, that he could serve the cult loyally, by supplying them with sarg. Unfortunately for the Master, Hadley only intended to keep the Master alive while he was still useful. With no other options, the Master formed a temporary truce with the Doctor to stop Hades' plan. After the crisis was resolved, the Doctor allowed the Master to depart unmolested in the name of their temporary truce. (PROSE: Deadly Reunion)
The Master brought Axos to Earth, hoping to ally himself with them. Instead, he became the prisoner of Axos, and only escaped by saying that he would help it. The Doctor tricked the Master into thinking he was going to betray Earth. Instead, he trapped the Master with Axos in a time loop. (TV: The Claws of Axos)
Posing as an Adjudicator, the Master travelled to a human colony on the planet Uxarieus in the year 2472. There, the Time Lord records indicated he would find the Doomsday Weapon created by a near-extinct native species. Once again the Doctor defeated his plans and the weapon was destroyed. (TV: Colony in Space)
In the Wiltshire village of Devil's End, the Master summoned the ancient Dæmon Azal, but he failed to understand the power and control that was necessary following summoning him. Following Azal's confrontation with Jo Grant's selflessness, he was captured by UNIT following a failed attempt to escape in the Doctor's car, Bessie. (TV: The Dæmons)
In custody
Prior to his trial, the Master was sent to Stangmoor Prison. During his captivity, an army of hypnotised salespeople stormed the facility and attempted to rescue him, but the ploy failed and the Master was sent to another secure holding facility. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Jo were trapped in an extra-universal prison by the Freedom Corporation, so the Brigadier was forced to strike a deal with the Master to save them. But the Master double-crossed him and used time travel technology to regress the Earth backwards in time. However, with help from the Time Lords, the Doctor was freed and was able to stop the Master's plan and restore everything to normal. (PROSE: Freedom)
The government used the Master as a scapegoat for all the alien attacks which had recently occurred. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
The Master was held at Aylesbury Grange Detention Centre. Demanding the Doctor visit him, he engaged the Doctor in conversation, insisting he had changed. However, the Doctor refused to believe him, and the Master reluctantly revealed that he had drawn the Doctor to the facility as part of an escape attempt, and that the Doctor was speaking to a hologram. The Master nearly escaped, but was stopped by UNIT soldiers accompanying the Doctor, who revealed he had been a hologram as well. (COMIC: The Man in the Ion Mask)
In another escape attempt, the Master created a device that switched his mind with the Doctor's. He went to the Doctor's TARDIS, where he learned that the Time Lords had made the TARDIS ineffective to the Doctor's piloting. Before returning to his own body, the Master, as the Doctor, asked the Brigadier to move the Master to a new holding facility with a good view, and also encouraged Mike Yates to ask Jo Grant out on a date. (PROSE: The Switching)
While in custody, with the Doctor on Peladon, (TV: The Curse of Peladon) the Master collaborated with UNIT to prevent an invasion by a fascist version of Earth, travelling with the Brigadier, Ian and Barbara Chesterton to the alternate universe and encountering an Koschei, the alternate version of himself. Koschei was imprisoned and tortured by order of the Leader of the Republic of Great Britain, the alternate version of the Doctor. The Master killed his other self, claiming it was an act of mercy. Before he was imprisoned by UNIT again, the Master hid his TARDIS back in the church crypt in Devil's End. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy)
The Master was imprisoned inside a castle prison on Fortress Island as the only prisoner. The Doctor believed he would be in this prison "forever". The Master convinced his jailer, Colonel George Trenchard, to help him steal electronic parts from HMS Seaspite, telling Trenchard that this was intended as a lure for enemy agents. With these parts, the Master instead made contact with the reptilian Sea Devils, an aquatic species similar to the land-dwelling Silurians, and planned to cause a war between humans and Sea Devils, making the Sea Devils rulers of Earth again. Because the reactivation machinery of the Sea Devils' hibernation units deterirorated during millions of years of hibernation, the Master saw it necessary to construct a sonar device to awaken the remaining reptiles. The Master captured the Doctor, and forced him to help create this device, but to prevent the device from reactivating further Sea Devil bases and stop the war, the Doctor blew up the Sea Devil base by reversing the device's polarity, creating a massive reverse feedback. The Master escaped in a hovercraft when the officer guarding him, CPO Myers, was hypnotised and framed as the Master's corpse, (TV: The Sea Devils) and the Master returned to the church crypt in Devil's End to retrieve his TARDIS. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
At large again
Some time after his escape, the Master took control of the Glasshouse, a facility for traumatised UNIT soldiers, and in particular Private Francis Cleary. He planned to use a time ring to have Cleary go to 1963 to prevent the Kennedy assassination, thereby altering Earth's history to make it more vulnerable to invasion. The plan failed. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
Posing as "Professor Carl Thascalos", the Master constructed a machine known as TOMTIT at Cambridge's Newton Institute to summon the ancient chronovore Kronos, whom he wished to control. He hypnotised the institute's director, Dr Charles Percival, but accidentally killed him by releasing Kronos from the Crystal of Kronos. The Master summoned the Atlantean priest Krasis for instructions on how to control Kronos, while meddling with the flow of time to obstruct the Doctor from getting in his way.
After knocking out Sergeant Benton, the Master retreated to his TARDIS, but the Doctor tried to trap him in a time lock using his own TARDIS, accidentally creating a space loop when both TARDISes were materialised within the other. When the TARDISes were separated during their negotiations, the Master ejected the Doctor into space, but the Doctor survived by using the telepathic circuit of his TARDIS to help Jo return him to safety.
The Master travelled to ancient Atlantis and failed to hypnotise King Dalios, who easily resisted his influence. Confronting the Doctor there, the Master tried to manipulate Queen Galleia into betraying her husband, since she had taken a romantic liking in his charm compared to Dalios' often dull personality. Galleia, however, was enraged when the Master caused Dalios to die in the coup they staged in Atlantis. Before he was arrested, the Master commanded Krasis to use the Crystal of Kronos housed in Atlantis, and brought forth Kronos, who destroyed the entire civilisation.
Fleeing Atlantis with Jo as his hostage, and with Kronos under his control, the Master was in a position to cast destruction unto the entire cosmos, however, the Doctor threatened to time ram the Master's TARDIS with his own, which would take everyone's lives in the process if he did not give up his plans for chaos. The Master did not believe the Doctor would earnestly carry out his warning, because he knew endangering Jo's life was not an option for him. In response to the Doctor's hesitation, Jo tried to complete the time ram before the Master could release Kronos again. Instead, Kronos spared everyone from death, and captured the Master for the crime of trying to control it, but allowed him to go free at the request of the Doctor. (TV: The Time Monster)
Having had enough of Earth, and other plans to set in motion on Skaro, the Master employed the assistance of a being called Verdigris to impersonate him. (PROSE: Verdigris) On Skaro, the Master forged an alliance with the Daleks, acting as their agent to provoke warfare between the Earth Empire and the Draconian Empire in the 26th century. To achieve this, he employed a force of Ogrons who, through the use of hypnosound, made themselves appear human or Draconian, thus provoking the other side. When the Doctor revealed the true perpetrators, the plot was abandoned. (TV: Frontier in Space)
Returning to Earth, the Master set up a talent show called Make a Star, based on the anagram AKA Master, which he used to disrupt the timeline by making the contestants cover songs that weren't yet written. He intended to use the relatively minor disruption caused to allow him to take control of Earth, but this plan was foiled by the Doctor. (PROSE: Hidden Talent)
On another occasion, the Master made a deal with the Odobenidans to help them invade Earth, but accidentally trapped both them and himself in a time loop whilst undertaking some temporal mechanics on their behalf. He was trapped in the time loop beneath Greece for months. The Doctor, sent to Greece by the Time Lords to deal with the time loop, released the Master and foiled his plan again. (PROSE: The Seismologist's Story)
The Master planned to release a fog in Tadcaster by using Sarkan mist-flowers to generate a fog that would spread engulf the Earth in a dense fog. Attempting to catch up with the Master, the Doctor commandeered a pier train that crashed into the Master and the mist-flowers, sending all of them into the ocean, where the flowers were destroyed and the Master disappeared. (COMIC: Fogbound)
Reappearing again, the Master took control of the Brigadier's mind, and instructed him to kill the Doctor. However, the Brigadier attacked the Master, but he escaped, restoring the Brigadier to his senses. (PROSE: Smash Hit)
The Master travelled to the Land of Fiction, where he intended to steal an advanced piece of technology from the Land, and defeated Professor Moriarty. (COMIC: Character Assassin)
The Master used time-displaced Scottish warriors to seize a nuclear submarine and threaten Britain with obliteration if he wasn't given the Doctor's TARDIS; he ended up temporarily trapped in the 18th century. (COMIC: The Glen of Sleeping) He also worked with the Gaderene race to conquer Earth. (PROSE: Last of the Gaderene)
For a short while, the Master adopted the identity of "Duke Dominus", a gangster on early 20th century Earth, but his plan on was foiled by the Fourth Doctor without either the Doctor or the Master realising the others' involvement. (PROSE: The Duke of Dominoes)
He attended Bonjaxx's birthday party at Maruthea. When a fight broke out, Ria threw a chair at him. (COMIC: Party Animals)
A body in decay
Path to decay
One account stated that the Master, in the same form he had often battled the Third Doctor with, went under cover on Earth following the 22nd century Dalek invasion and killed David Campbell, the husband of the Doctor's granddaughter Susan. After being defeated by the Eighth Doctor, he fled in his TARDIS, taking Susan with him as a hostage, unaware of her Gallifreyan heritage. As his TARDIS materialised on Tersurus, she used his TARDIS's telepathic circuits to attack him, forcing him out onto the planet's surface. She used his own Tissue Compression Eliminator against him while he was holding the Dalek's matter transmuter. The blast severely deformed and nearly killed him. Susan departed in his TARDIS; this brief materialisation, however, alerted the Time Lords to the Master's presence on Tersurus. (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks)
Another account indicated that a new Master, now in his final incarnation, arrived on a Time Lord base on Tersurus with the intention of infiltrating their database. There he encountered a future version of himself, who burned his body, leaving him a fraction above death. The future Master then signalled Gallifrey for Goth to arrive. (AUDIO: The Two Masters)
Investigating the materialisation of an unauthorised TARDIS, the Time Lord Chancellor Goth arrived on Tersurus, where he found the Master in a wasted condition — that of a decaying animated corpse. The Master sensed that Goth wished for power and offered it to him, whilst Goth, seeing the Master as a dying "creature", thought he could control the Master for his own means. (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks)
Revenge on Gallifrey
The Master made Goth, in line for the position of Lord President of the High Council of Time Lords, into his slave, continuing to promise him power, until Goth could no longer fight his mental dominance. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
Whilst on Gallifrey, the Master also took over the Matrix, and realised that the Eye of Harmony resided beneath the Panopticon. He believed he could use the Sash of Rassilon to protect himself from the raw power of the Eye and channel that energy to renew himself.
With a telepathic summons and a vision of the future created by the Matrix, the Master lured the Fourth Doctor to Gallifrey, seemingly to prevent the murder of the then-serving Lord President. The Doctor failed and ended up on trial for the President's murder.
After Goth died, the Doctor defeated the Master in physical combat and, as a result, the Master fell into a crevice created by a localised earthquake. He gained access to his TARDIS in the confusion and escaped, (TV: The Deadly Assassin) having been able to convert the energy from the Eye of Harmony and partially heal himself. (AUDIO: Trail of the White Worm)
Fighting the Fourth Doctor
The Master followed the Doctor's TARDIS from Gallifrey, but was knocked off course passing through the transduction barrier and landed in London during the 1890s. (AUDIO: Masterpiece) He asked the locals if he could speak to someone in authority. Inspector Quick was the first on the scene. The Master wasted no time in hypnotising Quick for his goals, (AUDIO: The Museum of Curiosities) giving him several tasks to carry out on his behalf. (AUDIO: Jago & Son)
The Master walked the streets of London, concealing himself with a mask and walking with a cane. He spoke to Maurice Ravel, interested in a watch he carried with the Prydonian Seal on it. The Master later learned that Jago and Litefoot were the Doctor's contacts in the time period, and intended to visit them. (AUDIO: Maurice) The Master had Quick bring him a sample of Jago and Litefoot's DNA, planning to poison them so that they would summon the Doctor to help them. (AUDIO: The Woman in White)
The Master became frail, barely able to stand. He planned to use the Doctor's artron energy in order to heal his form. He travelled to the Red Tavern and spoke to Ellie Higson, hypnotising her so that he could learn of Jago and Litefoot. Jago and Litefoot learned of the location of the Master's lair with the help of Madame Sosostris, and encountered the Master there. Sosostris' assistant revealed himself to be the Sixth Doctor. The Master activated a machine to drain the life energy of Jago and Litefoot, before absorbing the Doctor's artron energy. The Doctor reversed the flow of the machine and the Master's life began to be drained. After the Doctor smashed his equipment, the Master slipped into his TARDIS and escaped. However, he left behind some trouble for Jago and Litefoot to deal with; he reverted Ellie Higson's metabolism to its natural state, causing her to lose control of her vampiric hunger. (AUDIO: Masterpiece)
With his TARDIS still in the form of a clock, the Master attempted to steal Iris Wildthyme's body, (PROSE: The Scarlet Shadow) and was captured by the Sild. (PROSE: Harvest of Time)
Still looking a little "putrescent", (COMIC: The Abominable Showmen) the Master was greeted by a female incarnation of himself known as "Missy", who had developed a plan to form a band to hypnotise viewers of The Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars. His next incarnation, an incarnation possessing the body of a man named Bruce and an incarnation going by the name "Saxon" all joined in the plan, and the team spent "decades" practising. (COMIC: The Five Masters) After unveiling their presence to the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald, (COMIC: The Abominable Showmen) the Masters prepared for their performance. However, the "Tremas" Master began to fight with Missy over the control of her device, believing that he alone could hold the universe in his grasp. The decaying Master joined in the struggle, declaring that his future selves were idiots. The five were quickly disqualified, seemingly destroying them. (COMIC: The Five Masters)
The Master plotted to capture the Z-battery that the Doctor left on Earth to repair his TARDIS during his exile. The Master's plan was to use the Z-radiation within the battery, combined with the O-radiation which permeated Oseidon, to create powerful ZO-radiation which the Master could use to renew himself. For his plot, the Master entered into an alliance with the Kraals, and created two robot duplicates; one to pose as Kraal Chief Scientist Tyngworg, (AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure) and a second to search for genetically engineered alien worm in Derbyshire. (AUDIO: Trail of the White Worm) The Doctor defeated the Master by using a Master android duplicate he had constructed to kidnap the real Master, and take him away in his own TARDIS, before his plan could be fulfilled. (AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure)
Discovering that the Celestial Intervention Agency were gathering illegal Vess weapons, the Master blackmailed their agent, Straxus, into handing over a conceptual bomb. The Master then visited Bob Dovie and, after killing his family, planned the device into his head. When Dovie saw the inside of the Doctor's TARDIS, his refusal to believe in it caused the Doctor's TARDIS to explode, causing its timeline to begin to collapse. With the Doctor's timeline collapsing along with the TARDIS's, the Doctor's first eight incarnations joined forces to avert the detonation of the bomb, before the First Doctor erased the events from history. (AUDIO: The Light at the End)
The Master then posed as Inspector Efendi of the Intergalactic insurance agency so that he could find spaceships full of gold bullion. He then employed the Salonu to steal this gold, which attracted the attention of the Doctor and Leela to investigate. The Master then used the telepathic abilities of the Salonu to influence Leela into thinking that she was the Master's assassin, and that he was the great Xoanon who desired the death of the Doctor. The Salonu Prime, with the help of the Doctor, noticed the Master's influence and undid the conditioning. (AUDIO: The Evil One)
Shandar of the Rocket Men invited the Master on his ship the Asteroid, where the Master saw the Doctor was Shandar's prisioner. When he confronted the Doctor, the Master used his Tissue Compression Eliminator on him, and apparently killed him, but he realised he had only destroyed a duplicate. The real Doctor was in fact pretending to be Oskin, and used that guise to bring down the force field around the ship, and used K9 Mark I to stall the Master's TARDIS once it had passed the force field so that the slaves on board the Asteroid could be freed. The Master overrode K9's tampering and kidnapped Leela after she had left the Doctor. (AUDIO: Requiem for the Rocket Men) The Master then used Leela to be his champion at the death match, where she used her skills to win. The Doctor tracked her down to the death match and managed to destroy it. (AUDIO: Death Match)
The Master attempted to rend asunder the constellation of Mandus using a segment of the Key to Time, but was defeated by the Doctor. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)
On Kendrax, the Master attempted to ally himself with the Daleks and the Cybermen, but his plan was foiled by Romana II. (PROSE: The Not-So-Sinister Sponge) He also entered a pact with the Embodiment of Gris, but found himself again bested by the Doctor. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)
The Master was drawn to and became stranded on the planet Traken, the centre of the Traken Union, in a TARDIS configured into the sculpture-shaped Melkur. He plotted to take over the Source also located on the planet Traken, the power behind the Traken Union, and use it to restore himself. To this end, over a period of years, he won over Kassia, who later married Tremas and became a stepmother to Nyssa. His plans were thwarted by the Doctor and Adric when the Keeper of Traken summoned them, having sensed something of his machinations. With the help of Tremas and Nyssa, the Doctor removed the Master from the Source.
However, with some of the Keeper's powers lingering, the Master merged with Tremas, stealing his body. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
In Tremas' body
Besting the Fourth Doctor
In his new body, the Master went to Earth, where he trapped the Doctor's TARDIS in a gravity bubble. He killed Tegan Jovanka's aunt Vanessa and a police constable with his Tissue Compression Eliminator. He then went to Logopolis, where he pretended to be Tremas to gain Nyssa's cooperation, giving her a bracelet that allowed him to control her arm. Using her as a hostage, he perverted the Block Transfer Computations and held the planet for ransom until its secret was revealed. This made the causal nexus unravel and also broke the Logopolitans' blockade of entropy, allowing it to swallow several galaxies, including the entire Traken Union.
The entropy wave was so threatening that the Master agreed to work with the Doctor to stop it. They travelled to the Pharos Project on Earth to do so, using the last theorem of Logopolis to reopen Charged Vacuum Emboitments. His true plan was revealed however, when he sent a message to the peoples of the universe that he would stop the entropy only if they submitted to his rule. While the Doctor stopped the Master's signal to shut down the CVE that would halt the entropy wave, the Master caused him to fall off the Pharos Project's radio telescope and regenerate, allowing the Master to escape. (TV: Logopolis)
Battling the Fifth Doctor
As the Fifth Doctor made his leave in the TARDIS, the Master reappeared and kidnapped Adric and held him in a hadron web to make him a part of his TARDIS. Using a projection of Adric on board the TARDIS, the Master sent the Doctor's TARDIS hurtling to destruction at Event One, but the Doctor saved his TARDIS through the Architectural Configuration. The Master used Adric's block transfer computations to create Castrovalva in the Andromeda Galaxy, where the Doctor would recover from his regeneration. He escaped from the recursion trap and tried to kill the Doctor, but was attacked by the enraged citizens with the city itself due to collapse. (TV: Castrovalva)
The Master remained trapped Castrovalva for some time, but was able to find a way to project himself in England in the 1920s. In an attempt to capture and kill the Doctor and his companions and escape Castrovalva, thee Master manipulated Harry Houdini to send a psionic distress call to his old friend. When the Doctor answered the call, Houdini claimed that he needed help to stop a fortune teller. However, when the Master's plan was uncovered, the Doctor managed to stop his enemy's revenge plan. (AUDIO: Smoke and Mirrors)
The Master eventually escaped from Castrovalva, (TV: Time-Flight) but in the attempt, it caused damage to the dynamorphic generators, making it difficult to continue piloting his TARDIS. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) He travelled to Earth in 140,000,000 BC, where he disguised himself as the magician Kalid, hoping to use the Xeraphin gestalt to replace his dynamorphic generators. He brought two Concordes to his Citadel via a time contour. The second held the Doctor, his TARDIS and companions. He originally planned to use the captured passengers to break into the Sanctum and take control of the Xeraphin and add him to his TARDIS, but then he acquired the Doctor's TARDIS in a trade with him for a part the Doctor needed for his own TARDIS. The Xeraphin contacted Nyssa and let Tegan and her enter the Citadel, where the Master revealed his true form. The Master held the passengers hostage for parts from the Doctor's TARDIS. The second Concorde was returned to its own time and the Master ended up on Xeriphas with the freed and angry Xeraphin. (TV: Time-Flight)
On Xeriphas, the Master found and acquired Kamelion, a shape-changing android that could be easily controlled by a strong mind. Managing to elude Xeraphin, the Master escaped to England in 1215. He disguised himself as the French knight "Sir Giles Estram" and made Kamelion impersonate John of England to prevent the signing of Magna Carta. However, the arrival of the Doctor caused interference with his plans. After the Doctor defeated him in a joust, the Master fled in his TARDIS after the still-disguised Kamelion offered the Doctor the choice of saving him or another captive. (TV: The King's Demons)
When the High Council of the Time Lords discovered that various incarnations of the Doctor had been taken into the Death Zone on Gallifrey, they asked the Master for help and offered him a new cycle of regenerations as a bargaining tool. He agreed and was given a copy of the Seal of the High Council by the Castellan to prove his credentials. However, the Third Doctor did not believe the Master and took the seal from him on the pretense that he would return the "stolen property" to the High Council.
When the Fifth Doctor also disbelieved the Master, he made a temporary alliance with the Cybermen to guide them to the Dark Tower. After he let the Towers traps slaughter the Cybermen, he informed the First Doctor how to get past security, but then grew power-hungry at the mention of immortality. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart knocked him unconscious and Sarah Jane Smith and Tegan Jovanka bound him with rope. After Borusa was encased in Rassilon's tomb, Rassilon sent the Master back to his own time. (TV: The Five Doctors)
As an attempt to trap the Doctor, and steal his remaining regenerations, the Master faked his own death, ensuring the Doctor would attend the funeral at the nursing home where he supposedly spent his final days. But the Doctor was saved by Turlough, and the Master's plan was foiled yet again. (PROSE: The Velvet Dark)
The Master arrived in Camelot just after the coronation of King Arthur, and became the new Merlin after the old one died. He planned to make Arthur believe Mordred was dead so Mordred would grow up to kill Arthur at the battle of Camlan. When the Master saw that the Doctor and Tegan had arrived, he left the court and hurried to his TARDIS to retreat, while the Doctor suggested Arthur create the Knights of the Round Table to prepare for when Mordred came. (PROSE: The Creation of Camelot)
The Master developed a more powerful version of the Tissue Compression Eliminator and accidentally shrank himself and his lab, without the ill effect of death. Using a device to boast his telepathy, the Master made contact with Kamelion once more, directing him to use the Doctor's TARDIS to land on Sarn. With Kamelion acting as his physical proxy, the Master had him pretend to be the locals' god and order the Doctor's death. When this failed, he had Kamelion take the small box his lab had become and take it to the lab on Sarn that used Numismaton Gas, hoping it could restore him.
As the Master stood in a gas vent and returned to normal size, the Doctor used the gas to apparently burn him to death. (TV: Planet of Fire) However, the Numismaton Gas increased the power of the Source of Traken still remaining in the Master's body, enabling the Master to survive. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) Horrifically burned, the Master went in search of the Fountain of Youth to restore himself. (PROSE: A Town Called Eternity)
Using his link to Kamelion, the Master attempted to psychically interfere with the Doctor's fifth regeneration, (AUDIO: Winter) urging the Doctor to die from the spectrox toxaemia poisoning in the TARDIS, (TV: The Caves of Androzani) but was foiled by Nyssa. (AUDIO: Winter)
Encountering the Sixth Doctor
The Master allied with his old Academy pupil the Rani in Killingworth against the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown; the Master hoped to hasten the advancement of Earth's technology for his own nefarious reasons, while the Rani wanted the brain chemical that induced sleep in humans. The Doctor trapped the Master and the Rani in the Rani's TARDIS, which the Doctor had sabotaged, with the time spillage putting them in danger of being eaten by a tyrannosaurus rex. (TV: The Mark of the Rani) The Master separated the Rani's console room from the rest of her TARDIS, freeing himself while leaving the Rani to drift aimlessly through the vortex. (PROSE: State of Change)
Recovering his own TARDIS and learning of the Valeyard, the Master materialised in the Matrix and observed the Doctor's trial on Space Station Zenobia while examining the Matrix footage himself to see what was tampered with. Learning that the Valeyard was an "amalgamation of the darker side of the Doctor's nature", the Master decided that the Valeyard a threat to himself and rescued the Doctor by supplying the Doctor with witnesses in the form of Melanie Bush and Sabalom Glitz, and revealing himself to the court as a surprise witness. Using Glitz as a tool, the Master tried to steal secrets from the Matrix, but was beaten by the Valeyard, and imprisoned in the Matrix with a limbo atrophier. (TV: The Ultimate Foe) The Time Lords released the Master from the Matrix, whereupon the Master killed the technicians and fled in his TARDIS. (PROSE: Mission: Impractical) After escaping, the Master could regenerate his body because the Source of Traken still existed within him. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
After escaping from an unsuccessful alliance with the Krotons, the Master was attacked by the Chronovores looking for revenge for his torture of Kronos, and discovered that the last remnants of the Source of Traken were fading, reducing him to his previous cadaverous form would return. The Master devised a plan to destroy the Chronovores and achieve omnipotence by trying to access the Lux Aeterna using the son of TOMTIT, the TITAN Array. He stole the equipment and used it upon a woman he hypnotised, Anjeliqua Whitefriar, expecting it to destroy her before he used it. However, she absorbed the Lux Aeterna, achieved omnipotence and became the Quantum Archangel.
Using her power, she filled the universe with too many alternate timelines, leading the Chronovores to feast upon them, eventually leading to the end of the universe. The Master and the Doctor teamed up to rectify the Master's mistake by defeating the Quantum Archangel. They discovered that the Quantum Archangel had allied itself with the Mad Mind of Bophemeral so it could have infinite knowledge of the Universe. The Doctor and the Master encountered Kronos, who claimed to have been the one who attacked the Master's TARDIS, so he would come up with his plan, and would eventually lead to the Master's destruction as well as allowing Anjeliqua to survive, causing Kronos' plan for revenge to go wrong. They succeeded by draining the Lux Aeterna out of her, although not before the Master escaped using the TITAN equipment to harness the Lux Aeterna to restore his Trakenite body. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
At some point he discovered the Parallel Sect, where he discovered the Valeyard. He possessed the body of Keith Potter. He encountered the Sixth Doctor and Constance Clarke. He wanted to use the dimensional nexus to dominate them all. After the Doctor defeated him, the Master was confronted by the Valeyard, who threatened him, forcing the Master to both leave the nexus and never return and to leave the Doctor alone, as the Valeyard had a plan to deal with him. (AUDIO: The End of the Line)
Further exploits
The Master was greeted by a female incarnation of himself known as "Missy," who had developed a plan to form a band to hypnotise viewers of The Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars. His previous incarnation, an incarnation possessing the body of a man known as Bruce and an incarnation who went by the name "Saxon" all joined in the plan, and the team spent "decades" practising. (COMIC: The Five Masters) After unveiling their presence to the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald, (COMIC: The Abominable Showmen) the Masters prepared for their performance. However, this Master began to fight with Missy over the possession of her device, believing that he alone could hold the universe in his grasp. The other incarnations joined in the fight, and the five were eventually disqualified, seemingly destroying them. (COMIC: The Five Masters)
Confronting multiple Doctors
The Master captured the first seven of the Doctor's incarnations and put them into a void called the Determinant. However, the Graak successfully freed the Doctors and the Master was captured and imprisoned by one of the races involved in his game. (GAME: Destiny of the Doctors)
After meeting Adam Mitchell, a companion who had betrayed the Ninth Doctor, the Master began working to help him take revenge on their common enemy. Together, they set up an asylum in 7214 with Autons as staff as a trap for the Sixth Doctor, Peri and Frobisher. The Doctor broke out of his cell thanks to Peri and Frobisher and melted the Autons. The Master escaped by tripping up the Doctor, leaving Adam to capture Frobisher, who was disguised as Peri.
Using a group of Aeroliths to further his alliance, the Master syphoned their life force, to transmit to Adam, using a Gulwort. However, when they were freed by the Seventh Doctor, they chased after him. After being tortured by the Aeroliths, the Master escaped, and, reunited with Adam, encountered the Eleventh Doctor. Preventing Adam from listening to the Doctor, the Master elected to kill the captured companions, but was prevented when the Doctor summoned his earlier incarnations.
The Master and Adam released an Auton army, but the Doctors defeated them and released their companions. However, unbeknownst to Adam, the Master planned to destroy reality itself, using the merged TARDIS that brought the Doctors there. Convinced by the Doctors, Adam stunned him, but the Master stabbed him with a hidden knife. The injured Adam managed to foil the Master's plan, but died in the attempt. The Master, still pleased by his role within all the chaos, teleported away. (COMIC: Prisoners of Time)
Facing the Seventh Doctor
After trying to start a war between Antari Two and Antari Three, (PROSE: First Frontier) the Master went to the Cheetah World, where he took control of the Cheetah People and the kitlings. He sent them to Ace's home in the London suburb of Perivale and hunted for human recruits. At the same time, exposure to the planet was changing the Master himself into a Cheetah Person. He found a pliable young man called Midge and used him to escape.
Using Midge as his "hunting dog", the Master recruited a gang of Perivale youths to defeat the Seventh Doctor and Ace. The Master killed Midge and teleported the Doctor to the Cheetah World, which had begun to break up. The Doctor escaped, but the Master was trapped on the dying world. (TV: Survival)
After Cheetah World
- How exactly the Master escaped the Cheetah World and what occurred next was a matter of debate.
Many accounts held that the Master, still in Tremas's body, somehow escaped the Cheetah World, and that he either remained infected by the Cheetah Virus for quite some time, (PROSE: Stop the Pigeon, Prime Time) or was cured by Tzun nanites, which restored his Gallifreyan physiognomy. (PROSE: First Frontier)
No longer infected by the virus, the Master either lost Tremas's body and reverted to his previous cadaverous form, (AUDIO: Dust Breeding) or regenerated into a new body. (PROSE: First Frontier) Ultimately, however, he was once again in a stolen body by the time of his execution on Skaro. (PROSE: Omegamorphosis, The Eight Doctors)
Tremas persists
One account had it that, having somehow escaped Cheetah World, the Master spent a short time on Earth attempting to cure the virus by extracting nutrients from dying humans, but was once again defeated by the Doctor. (PROSE: Stop the Pigeon) Now attempting to gain a new body from the legendary race known as the Fleshsmiths, his plan was yet again stopped by the Doctor, who ejected the new body from the Fleshsmith vessel into space. (PROSE: Prime Time)
Tremas lost
The Master learned of a device known as the Warp Core, a sentient powerhouse of mental energy designed as a weapon to safeguard the planet Duchamp 331. He tracked the Warp Core to Earth, intending to use it to power his TARDIS. Unprepared for its power and underestimating its outside awareness, he was attacked by the Warp Core, having the body he stole from Tremas stripped from him and reducing him to his previous decaying form. He then collected four Krill eggs with the intention of awakening the Warp Core from its slumber and exhausting it, so that he could draw it into his TARDIS to be his slave. The Master then used a mask to disguise his deformity and followed the Warp Core as it arrived on Duchamp 331. Under the alias Mr Seta, the Master funded Madame Salvadori's trip to Duchamp 331.
There, he unleashed the Krill upon the passengers, hypnotising Salvadori's aide, Klemp, in the process. Revealing his true identity, the Master kept Salvadori alive, before encountering the Doctor. When the Core arrived, the Master tried to ally with it, but it dismissed him, leading his to ordering Klemp to kill Salvadori, but Klemp's loyalty was too strong, so the Master killed him. The Doctor escaped to his TARDIS, and attempted to gain control of the Warp Core through his TARDIS's telepathic circuits, while the Master used his own to fight of the Doctor's influence, and gain control of it. After it and the planet was destroyed, the Master was flung through time and space. (AUDIO: Dust Breeding)
The Doctor later made a deal with Death whereby the Master would have ten years of peace and sanity, at the end of which the Doctor had to kill him.
During his ten years, the Master had become a physician on the colony world of Perfugium with no memory of his past, and took the name John Smith. He was taken in by Wolstonecroft, and inherited his house when Wolstonecroft died. During his time as John Smith, the Master had become emotionally involved with Jacqueline Schaeffer.
At the end of the allotted time, the Doctor 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 while restored to John Smith, Smith forgave the Doctor for it, understanding that the adult couldn't be blamed for the actions of a child who didn't understand what was being offered. Death herself was present at these events, disguised as the Master's maid, and manipulated events so that the John Smith persona would crumble and the true Master would become dominant once more. (AUDIO: Master)
Finding a new regenerative cycle in the past
Another account claimed that, escaping from Cheetah World with the aid of a Kitling just as the planet exploded, the Master was flung back in time to Earth in 1957.
Trapped on Earth at the dawn of the Space Age, the Master interrupted the first Soviet satellite launch and sent a distress signal to the Tzun Canton on Zeta Reticuli Four. He offered to help assimilate Earth into the Tzun Confederacy. In return, the Master asked for passage off Earth and the use of the Tzun's genetic engineering to cure his Cheetah Virus infection. The Tzun accepted and prepared nanites for him that broke down the corrupted Trakenite DNA in his cells and restructured it. This restored the Master to being a "full" Time Lord, which gave him a new regenerative cycle. While assisting the Tzun, the Master used the alias "Major Kreer". Shortly after being restored to his full Time Lord heritage he was shot in the back by Ace, causing him to regenerate.
Following the regeneration he was able to make his escape, summoning his TARDIS using a Stattenheim remote control built from Tzun technology. After leaving a booby-trap for the Doctor in a nuclear warhead, the Master fled. (PROSE: First Frontier)
Later, the Master laid a trap for the Doctor in one of the Doctor's homes using a device which would release the energy from a time fissure once the Doctor's TARDIS materialised, destroying it. The plan failed when Sarah Jane Smith, Mike Yates and K9 destroyed the device, causing the Master to flee. (PROSE: Housewarming)
The nanites the Tzun gave the Master eventually began to fail, causing him to seek the Loom of Rassilon's Mouse in order to make himself a new body. His plan failed when a Fortean Flicker caused Bernice Summerfield's wedding to occur in the same place, exposing his scheme to her guests. However, the Master managed to escape by hypnotising Kitai into posing as a decoy. (PROSE: Happy Endings)
A new body again
Once again in a stolen body, the Master tried to steal the body of a boy named Callum, but his plan was foiled by the Doctor. (PROSE: Omegamorphosis) Following this, he travelled to the planet of the Morgs in search of a way to cheat death, and obtained the form of a Deathworm. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
Fighting the Eighth Doctor
Now in his "final incarnation", (TV: Doctor Who) the Master arrived in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and was captured by the Daleks to be placed on trial, his TARDIS left behind in the tomb. (AUDIO: Mastermind) After he was tried and executed by the Daleks on Skaro as part of a Time Lord-Dalek treaty, (PROSE: Lungbarrow) he made a final request: for the Doctor to transport his remains back to Gallifrey. However, his essence survived in the fluid-like form (TV: Doctor Who) of a Deathworm Morphant. (AUDIO: Mastermind)
The Doctor stored the ashes in a casket and set his TARDIS on course for Gallifrey. En route, the Master, whose consciousness had survived the death of his physical body, escaped from the casket and interfered with the TARDIS, causing a timing malfunction. The ship materialised in San Francisco during the final days of 1999.
On exiting the TARDIS, the Doctor was caught in a crossfire of a gang war and was picked up by an ambulance. As the Doctor lay wounded, the Master exited the TARDIS via its keyhole, and hid inside a bag belonging to Bruce, the ambulance driver attending to the Doctor. After Bruce had gone to home and bed, the Master forced his way into Bruce's body through his mouth, killing him and taking over his body. The next morning, the Master awoke, now inhabiting Bruce's body, but realised that the American's body had started decaying and would not last long and launched his scheme to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations. His first act was to kill Bruce's wife.
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The Master befriended Chang Lee, a young gang member who had been present when the Doctor was shot, and who had stolen the TARDIS key. Having entered the TARDIS already, the Master regaled Lee with stories of the Doctor's supposed villainy, claiming that the Doctor had stolen the Master's regenerations. As part of his plan to take the Doctor's lives, he intended to open the Eye of Harmony, destroying the Earth in the process. With Lee's help, he was able to open the Eye. He discovered that the Doctor had regenerated into a new form, and that the Doctor was half-human.
The Master tracked the Doctor down, pretending to be Bruce, and agreed to take the Doctor and Dr. Grace Holloway to Professor Wagg's atomic clock at the Institute for Technological Advancement and Research, to which Grace was a member of the board of trustees, and repair the timing malfunction the Master caused with the clock's beryllium chip, when he was really planning to bring the Doctor back to the TARDIS. Realising the Master's true identity, the Doctor escaped, but before he could do so, the Master secretly possessed Grace's mind. When the Doctor got back to the TARDIS to fix the timing malfunction, the Master had Grace knock the Doctor out and put him in restraints. (TV: Doctor Who)
Still wearing Bruce's clothes, (COMIC: The Abominable Showmen) the Master was greeted by a female incarnation of himself known as "Missy," who had developed a plan to form a band to hypnotise viewers of The Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars. His decaying thirteenth incarnation, an incarnation possessing the body of Tremas and an incarnation going by the name "Saxon" all joined in the plan, and the team spent "decades" practising. (COMIC: The Five Masters) After unveiling their presence to the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald, (COMIC: The Abominable Showmen) the Masters prepared for their performance. However, the "Tremas" Master began to fight with Missy over the control of her device, believing that he alone could hold the universe in his grasp. The decaying Master joined in the struggle, followed rapidly by the "Bruce" Master, and the group soon became involved in a full on brawl. The five were quickly disqualified, seemingly destroying them. (COMIC: The Five Masters)
Having donned more traditional Gallifreyan robes, the Master boasted his plans to the retrained Doctor, accidentally letting it slip that he had lost his lives trying to destroy the Doctor, exposing his earlier lies to Lee. After killing Lee for refusing to follow his orders, the Master forcibly opened the Eye using Grace's retina so that he could steal the Doctor's regenerations.
Although the Master was able to initiate the transfer process that would give him access to the Doctor's remaining regenerations, Grace was able to prevent this by rerouting the TARDIS' power and sending the ship into a temporal orbit. Grace released the Doctor from his restraints, but the Master threw Grace off of a balcony inside the Cloister Room, killing her. With the Master's body dying as the Doctor's regenerations were returned to him, the two Time Lords fought near the Eye of Harmony, culminating in the Master falling into it when he leapt at the Doctor and misjudged the angle. (TV: Doctor Who)
Imprisonment
Shortly after his defeat, the Master laid a final trap for the Doctor, leaving a crystalline structure on the Eye that would give the Doctor amnesia. However, the Doctor was subconsciously guided by Rassilon to recover his memories by visiting his previous seven selves. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
While his essence was left wandering the Time Vortex, (COMIC: The Glorious Dead) an "echo" of the Master remained imprisoned inside the Doctor's TARDIS. In the singularity of the Eye of Harmony, the Master commanded infinite power, but could only wield it from within the confines of the Eye. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) Whilst exploring the Eighth Doctor's TARDIS, River Song thought she heard an American screaming from within the walls. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)
During his imprisonment the Doctor came to speak to the Master where he dwelled in a room with his face on a screen. The Master spoke to the Doctor in the room on several occassions, telling him that he was an "old friend". After the defeat of the Council of Eight, the Doctor spoke to him about the death of Miranda Dawkins and if it was the cost of him saving the universe. (PROSE: Sometime Never...) The Master later appeared to the Doctor within a mirror in the TARDIS, where he asked the Doctor what was going on inside his head. The Doctor was unable to answer the question before the image in the mirror returned to that of the Doctor's reflection. (PROSE: The Deadstone Memorial) The Master had a longer conversation with the Doctor from within the Eye of Harmony. The Master showed the Doctor a vision of Marnal's investigation of the Shoal. When the Doctor pressed him about what happened to Gallifrey, the Master teased him with offers to bring it back, and to return his memories. The Master then became angry over the circumstances of his imprisonment. He threatened to use all of his power to detonate a fusion device and have his revenge. The Doctor sealed up the Eye of Harmony before he had the chance to carry out his plan. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
Beyond the Eye of Harmony
Fight for the Glory
One account claimed that after the Master passed through the Eye of Harmony, his essence was left wandering the Time Vortex. Nearing his ultimate destruction, he was rescued from the Vortex by a being named Esterath, the controller of the Glory, the focal point of the Omniverse. The Master was told that it was time for the Glory to gain another controller, but the power had to be fought for. The Master assumed that the battle would be between himself and his greatest foe, the Doctor.
After gliding over the many realities throughout the Omniversal Spectrum for what he described as seeming like centuries, the Master was resurrected into the body of a recently-deceased vagrant on the streets of 2001 Brixton. Some weeks afterwards, due to a symbiotic link he had formed with the Doctor's TARDIS when it consumed part of his essence after he passed through the Eye of Harmony, the Master was transported onto the Moon during one of the Doctor's adventures. The Master subsequently used this link to trail the Doctor for some time without his enemy suspecting. (COMIC: The Glorious Dead)
He was present in London during the crisis resulting from Grace Holloway's attempt to merge human and Time Lord DNA, but was using the alien DNA of a Morphant by mistake. He killed Duncan, an M16 agent, with his TCE. (COMIC: 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, a planet now renamed "Dhakan".
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The symbiotic link between the Doctor's TARDIS and the Master had also given the latter 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.
After revealing his plot to the Doctor, the Master won a swordfight with the Doctor by stabbing him, but then learned that the true battle for the Glory was between his companion, Sato, and the Doctor's, the Cyberman Kroton, of which Kroton was the victor. Amongst his first acts as controller of the Glory were to cleanse the TARDIS of the Master's influence and to place the Master somewhere that he could not escape. The Master declared he would survive and return. (COMIC: The Glorious Dead)
Edward Grainger's dreams
Another account had it that the Master eventually escaped through the Eye of Harmony by influencing the dreams of Edward Grainger to unravel the Doctor's timeline, by killing Edward Grainger whilst he was an infant in 1906. (PROSE: Forgotten) However, the Master, in the body of Sir George Steer, was stopped by an older Edward Grainger from 2006 and Violet after being hit with a rolling pin and being removed from the body he possessed. (PROSE: Prologue) The Master then managed to evade the Eighth Doctor's detection, and possessed the body of a human native named Richard. (PROSE: Forgotten)
Wandering the Earth
After possessing Richard, the Master killed Violet out of revenge. However, the Master discovered his possession had caused the host body to decay at an accelerated rate, so he was forced to steal more bodies to prolong his survival. Realising that the First World War was rapidly approaching, the Master decided to migrate to America to avoid the conflict, and boarded a ship to go there in 1912. Unfortunately, he had boarded the RMS Titanic, unaware of its eventual fate, and escaped in a lifeboat when it sank.
Arriving in New York City, the Master took possession of a member of the Hudson Dusters, quickly becoming the leader of the gang and calling himself "Don Maestro". After twenty years of living in his current body, he occupied the body of his host's son, Michael, and moved to Las Vegas where he owned a casino. He accumulated money to fund experiments towards the elongation of the lifespan of his host body. Fearing the eventual decay of his body, the Master used his money to buy a penthouse to isolate himself from infection. After years living in isolation, his host's son confronted him with the knowledge that he had possessed both his father and his grandfather in some way. He then trapped the Master in the penthouse.
After UNIT were alerted to the presence of penthouse, they discovered the Master in a comatose state. He was imprisoned in the UNIT Vault, awakening every five years for one hour, before returning to a coma. After fifteen years living in the Vault, the Master awoke for a third time, and was interrogated by UNIT officers Ruth Matheson and Charlie Sato. However, he managed to hypnotise both of them and escape his imprisonment. Discovering that UNIT had recovered his TARDIS from a sealed tomb in the Valley of the Kings, he used it to escape from the Vault. (AUDIO: Mastermind)
Preparing for War
The Master regenerated from his decayed incarnation, noting immediately the lack of pain and new features. (AUDIO: The Two Masters) He further noticed that he had gaps in his memory, and proceeded to return to a site of former imprisonment to construct a plan to regain his memories. The Master returned to a prison in the south of England, where his former self had lured a mind leech. He set up the Dominus Institute in order to lure the Doctor to him, planning to absorb his intellect.
The Sixth Doctor made a deal with the mind leech, one which had the leech only take the Doctor's short term memory. This was enough to sustain the Master, but ruined his overall plans. The Master fled from the prison in his TARDIS. (AUDIO: Vampire of the Mind)
Impersonating the Doctor
The Master infiltrated a Time Lord base which contained two dimensional nodes, products of technology developed by "the Dimensioneers", Time Lords of old who had travelled across dimensions, and stole them. Attempting to control the dimensional energies of the entire universe, the Master planted one on the planet of the Tolians, allowing it to drain all the energy that was available before giving the Tolians a communicator as a way of drawing the Doctor to their planet, enabling the Master to steal the only node activator still intact from the Doctor's TARDIS. Having successfully tricked the Doctor into restoring the Tolians' source of dimensional energy for them using his Node by manipulating him and using a form of reverse psychology, he allowed the Tolians to force him to open a dimensional rift, causing a catastrophic imbalance to the flow of dimensional energy in the process so great that it threatened the structure of reality itself.
Aiming to infiltrate UNIT, the Master assumed the guise of the Doctor, modelling his TARDIS' exterior on the form of a police box. Successful in his deceit, he began to work alongside UNIT's current scientific advisor, Elizabeth Klein, under the command of Colonel Lafayette and later Major Wyland-Jones. He assisted UNIT in defeating a number of interdimensional alien incursions, including attacks by Mind Leeches, Lava Spiders, Skyheads and the Nexus.
Rescuing the Doctor and his companion Raine Creevy from becoming trapped on the other side of a dimensional rift caused by the dimensional instability, the Master stole the Doctor's node activator and sent all the alien invaders back to their own dimensions, fleeing Earth with the Doctor in his TARDIS. Revealing his true identity to the Doctor, he detailed his plan: he intended to use the activator in conjunction with the two nodes to add even more dimensional energy to the Tolians so he could use them to conquer the Earth and other planet and dimensions beyond. However, the Doctor managed to convince the the Tolian leader Arunzell that the Master would betray the Tolians, giving him the opportunity to capture the Master in return for recalling the rest of the Tolians. However, the Master revealed that he had locked the dimensional doorway, prompting him to abandon him to Arunzell. However, the restoration of the dimensional energies reduced Arunzell to his regular size, enabling the Master to kill him with his TCE and escape, intending to try his scheme all over again. (AUDIO: UNIT: Dominion)
Working with the CIA
The Master was rescued from "a predicament" and given a new lease of life (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) by Coordinator Narvin. (AUDIO: The Death of Hope)
Originally intending for him to fight against the Daleks to "soften him up", the Time Lords discovered that the Eminence posed a greater threat, and instructed the Master to use them to fight the Daleks. The Celestial Intervention Agency gave the Master all the information he needed for his mission, (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) such as an update on the Doctor's activities. (AUDIO: Masterplan)
The Eminence experiments
The Master travelled to the Nixyce system and stole a teleportation casket of the Eminence, integrating it into his TARDIS console. He then tried to use the casket to gain influence over the Eminence, and take control of its infinite warriors, calling them his "finite warriors". (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) After saving Sally Armstrong from being hit by a taxi, he recruited her and began to work for the Ides Scientific Institute in the 1970s. (AUDIO: Time's Horizon) He tried to discover why some humans were immune to the Eminence's influence, experimenting on them in an attempt to eliminate it so that the Daleks could not exploit it.
Encountering the Eighth Doctor in London, the Doctor managed to defeat him by reopening the link to the Eminence located in his mind, teaching it how to pilot a TARDIS. The Eminence then used the teleportation casket located in the Master's TARDIS to pilot it, taking the Master and Sally with it. The Master managed to isolate the Eminence inside his TARDIS through the telepathic circuits, enabling Sally to expel it into the Time Vortex.
The Master and Sally then kidnapped Molly O'Sullivan from her home in 107 Baker Street, (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) and took her to a world on the edge of humanity's war with the Eminence. There, the Master ran an experiment, using the retro-genitor particles in Molly to fight the Eminence's breath of forever. (AUDIO: The Death of Hope) The Master then destroyed Ramosa, kidnapping all of the planet's human colonists on board his TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Reviled) The Master infected the human colonists of Ramosa with retro-genitor particles, planning to expose them to the Eminence, and gain control of all of them using the fragment of the Eminence contained in his mind. (AUDIO: Masterplan)
The Master unleashed his plans for humanity on Earth. He allied himself with the Eminence and allowed them to conquer Earth. He subsequently activated the retro-genitor particles in the humans and asserted his psychic influence over them. The Doctor escaped the Master's clutches and helped a group of humans overcome the Master's influence and stop his plans. Whilst the Celestial Intervention Agency erased his work from history, the Master escaped in his TARDIS, which was disguised as a palm tree. (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence)
Creating a new Dalek army
Forming an alliance with the Dalek Time Controller, the Master aided him in creating a new Dalek army in return for control over a number of conquered worlds. Setting the Controller up in Montmartre within the Red Padoga, he returned to the future and aided the Daleks in their occupation of Earth. (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks)
When the Doctor absconded in time, the Master returned to the Pagoda to help repair it. (AUDIO: The Monster of Montmartre) With the amount of convertible humans still available dwindling, he decided to start converting Sontarans into Daleks. Liv stole his Tissue Compression Eliminator, and then travelled with him to Moscow. He created a mutiny with the Daleks, knowing that the Time Controller would betray him. The Doctor stole his TARDIS, leaving him stranded in the midst of a Dalek-Sontaran war. (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks)
Last Great Time War
The Master was resurrected to fight in the Last Great Time War, due to the Time Lords' belief that he would be to the perfect warrior due to his savagery. (TV: The Sound of Drums) He was able to write out most of his involvement in the conflict. (COMIC: The Judas Goatee) He operated on the brain of his TARDIS during the War, which resulted in a chronal tumour portruding from one side of the console, (COMIC: The One) though he never activated the tumour for use. (COMIC: Running to Stay Still)
After Alice Obiefune saw the Master's TARDIS in a vision of the War, the Eleventh Doctor speculated that the Master was behind the plot to frame him for some of the atrocities caused in the Time War, namely the destruction of the Cyclors, resulting in the creation of the Malignant. (COMIC: Outrun) He discovered that the Master was present when the War Doctor planned to neutralise the Cyclors, but deemed his plan too insane and fled the event horizon before the Doctor's plans were carried out. (COMIC: The One)
The Master fought the Supreme Dalek on the slopes of the Never Vault, (TV: The Witch's Familiar) and was present when the Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform. Frightened by the horror of the Time War, he ran away as far as he could, to the end of the universe, (TV: The Sound of Drums) where the Time Lords were forbidden to look. There, he used a chameleon arch to hide himself as a human named Yana. (TV: Utopia) Rassilon sent the War Doctor to find the Master, but he was unable to do so. (PROSE: Engines of War)
Under the chameleon arch
Physically human, Yana recalled that he was found on the coast of the Silver Devastation with only an "heirloom" fob watch. His memory of his past was that the watch could never keep time and that he was always late for things as a result. He believed that he spent his life moving from one refugee ship to another and all his life he heard the sound of drums every waking hour as if they were getting closer.
Yana retained the Master's brilliant intellect and ultimately became involved in the attempt to send the remnants of humanity to Utopia. He eventually became friends with another scientist, Chantho, who was thought to be the last of the Malmooth race. Together, they worked on the Utopia Project to convey the surviving humans from the planet Malcassairo to Utopia.
Yana met the Tenth Doctor, Jack Harkness and Martha Jones when they were rescued from the Futurekind. Overhearing conversation between the Doctor and Jack about things such as time travel, Daleks, and regeneration, Yana became visibly upset. Martha drew Yana's attention to the watch in his possession and, hearing voices that commanded and entreated him, Yana opened the watch and returned to his true identity.
The Master then locked the Doctor out of Yana's lab, and opened the gate keeping the Futurekind at bay, saying to a shocked Chanto that "as one door closes, another must open". After Chanto threatened him with a gun, the Master electrocuted her with a loose set of power cables, angered that she was never curious of the fob watch during their decades of working together, and left her for dead. However, Chantho used the last of her strength to pull a laser gun on the Master while his back was turned, and shot him in the chest before she died.
Fatally wounded, the Master slithered into the Doctor's TARDIS while the Doctor watched on, deadlock sealed the door shut to keep the Doctor out, and regenerated into a younger body. (TV: Utopia)
As Harold Saxon
Post-regeneration
With his new body, the Master left the Doctor, Martha and Jack on the planet Malcassairo with Futurekind about to burst in the laboratory door. The Master now had the TARDIS and the Doctor's DNA template via the Doctor's hand, which Jack Harkness had taken with him to Malcassairo. (TV: Utopia)
Because of the Doctor's last-minute intervention, the TARDIS would only take the Master to Earth in the 2000s. He took on the alias "Harold Saxon" and set about fabricating Saxon's past to gain political support. He made his first public appearance shortly after the downfall of Harriet Jones. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
Life on Earth
"Harold Saxon" released his autobiography, Kiss Me, Kill Me, and, while writing the book, met the Honourable Lucy Cole, who was working in publishing; they were married in 2007. He also cannibalised and converted the Doctor's TARDIS into a paradox machine to change history, and took Lucy to see the Universe. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
Travelling back to the end of the universe, the Master contacted the Toclafane, the child-like, vicious cyborg remnants of the humans who had never found Utopia. He made an agreement to allow the Toclafane to escape extinction and live anew in the past, with the paradox machine preventing them from changing their own history. (TV: The Sound of Drums, Last of the Time Lords)
The Master designed the Valiant, UNIT's air carrier, and a laser screwdriver, which he reserved for his own use. The Master then started the Archangel Network, which was hailed as a telecommunications breakthrough. This telecommunications network, tied to mobile phones, carried a mind control signal which made humans trust him. The network affected the Doctor so he had no suspicions as to the Master's presence as "Harold Saxon", as he would have normally noticed the presence of another Time Lord. To those few humans conscious of it, the signal was a persistent drumbeat, the constant drumbeat the Master always heard, that only they could hear. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
Political career
By 2007, "Saxon" had become Minister of Defence of Great Britain, (TV: The Sound of Drums) and campaigned for the general election as Prime Minister of Great Britain (TV: Love & Monsters) with the slogan "Vote Saxon". (TV: Captain Jack Harkness) On Christmas Eve, he gave orders for British Army tanks to destroy the Empress of the Racnoss's webstar. (TV: The Runaway Bride)
The Master visited "Saxon's" old high school during the campaign, using the Archangel Network to brainwash the staff into having false memories of "Saxon" to gain political support. One teacher, James Curtis, was resistant to the Network, so the Master used his laser screwdriver to implant the appropriate memories into his mind. (PROSE: Speech Day)
"Saxon" asserted that extraterrestrial life did exist and Britain must do something about it. This made him popular in early 2008, after the Judoon had taken the Royal Hope Hospital to the Moon. (TV: Smith and Jones)
"Saxon" also funded the rejuvenation experiments of Richard Lazarus, presumably revealing at least in part the biological processes involved in a Time Lord's physical regeneration; its similarities were noted by the Doctor on observing the process. (TV: The Lazarus Experiment) With the results from this and the Doctor's DNA, the Master could use the laser screwdriver to age the Doctor. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
After Martha had left with the Doctor, "Saxon" had a mysterious man meet with Martha's mother, Francine, (TV: The Lazarus Experiment) and then had an agent tap into a conversation between Francine and Martha through the superphone. (TV: 42)
Before the Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack arrived back from the end of the universe, the Master had sent Torchwood Three on a wild-goose chase to the Himalayas, (TV: The Sound of Drums) and, along with all other incarnations of the Master, was kidnapped by the Sild. (PROSE: Harvest of Time)
With his election a sure thing, politicians from other parties flocked to his side. Harold Saxon was elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in May 2008, and visited Buckingham Palace soon after to give a victory speech. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
Prime Minister Saxon
He gathered his Cabinet for a meeting in the re-built 10 Downing Street, and accused them of being traitors for abandoning their political parties to jump on his political ticket. He rigged the desk phone speakers on the Cabinet Room table to release a lethal gas that killed the Cabinet ministers, while using a gas mask to protect himself and mock his victims. He later unleashed the Toclafane on Sunday Mirror reporter Vivien Rook, who threatened to expose his fabricated past to the public.
"Saxon" told the public that the Cabinet had gone into seclusion, and soon afterward announced first contact with the "friendly" Toclafane who could protect Earth against alien threats. The Master then had Francine, Tish and Clive Jones arrested and taken to the Valiant; Leo Jones, however, had received a warning from Martha and gotten away in time. After a telephone conversation with the Doctor, the Master had the Doctor, Martha and Jack framed as terrorists responsible for the Cabinet's murder and forced them into hiding.
The Master moved to the Valiant, which the governments of Earth considered neutral territory and therefore fitting for formal first contact with alien life. The Master had the Toclafane murder the American President Arthur Coleman Winters, and captured the Doctor, Martha and Jack, who had come to the Valiant earlier that day. Using the results from Professor Lazarus's experiment, along with the DNA in the Doctor's hand, the Master used his laser screwdriver to age the Doctor into an old man, and then ordered the Toclafane to kill one tenth of humanity and commence their invasion as Martha escaped. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
Master of all
While ruling the world for a year, the Master discovered that the Drast had secretly invaded before he arrived. Furious, he ordered the Toclafane to burn Japan, where the Drast were situated. (PROSE: The Story of Martha) By 2009, the Master had converted Earth into a slave camp which he ruled from the Valiant. The Master aged the Doctor even further and planned to expand his New Time Lord Empire into space. He built an army of warships to take his war across the universe.
Martha used the legend of the Doctor, which she had spread, and the thoughts of Earth thinking "Doctor" at the same time. Their psychic energy was channelled through the Archangel Network, which the Doctor had spent the year infiltrating telepathically. The psychic energy restored the Doctor and gave him telekinetic powers. After cowering from the Doctor's forgiveness, the Master used Jack's vortex manipulator to teleport him and the Doctor to Earth, where he threatened to use the Black hole converter to detonate the rockets, but was foiled by the Doctor's knowledge that the Master could not kill himself.
Jack destroyed the Paradox Machine and reversed time one year, although this did not affect anyone aboard the Valiant. Lucy shot the Master. Defeated, he refused to regenerate to spite the Doctor, and died in his arms. The Doctor burned the Master's body on a pyre, (TV: Last of the Time Lords) but, long after he had left, Miss Trefusis, one of the warders of Broadfell Prison, (TV: The End of Time) retrieved the Master's ring from his funeral pyre. (TV: Last of the Time Lords)
As far as the general public were aware, Harold Saxon "went mad" and disappeared, along with President Winters. (TV: The End of Time) Among all ex-Prime Ministers, Saxon was on file by UNIT, who noted him as one of the Master's incarnations. This was revealed to the Twelfth Doctor by Osgood when the Master returned as "Missy", commenting that "she wasn't even the worst." (TV: Death in Heaven) By the year 2119, Saxon was well-remembered enough that Alice O'Donnell, though admittedly a follower of the Doctor's exploits, referred to 1980 as "pre-Harold Saxon" when brought back to that year by the Twelfth Doctor. (TV: Before the Flood)
Resurrection
On Christmas Eve 2009, the prison governor of Broadfell Prison brought Lucy Saxon to a chamber where most of the staff were members of the Disciples of Saxon, who had been working ever since his apparent death to bring about his resurrection.
With the help of the ring and a biometric imprint taken from Lucy, the nude Master reappeared in a swirl of energy, but Lucy and one other warder had prepared for this. To stop his resurrection, Lucy hurled a Potion of Death at the Master. His followers and Lucy were killed in the resulting explosion, but the Master survived. (TV: The End of Time)
Survival
Info from The End of Time needs to be added
These omissions are so great that the article's factual accuracy has been compromised. Check out the discussion page and revision history for further clues about what needs to be updated in this article.
The Master survived the blast, but his physical form was flawed: his once brown hair was now bleached blond, and he was unshaven and unkempt. Also, his life force was left in a state of constant depletion. He consumed huge quantities of food and drained the vitality of humans to stay alive. As a side effect of the failed resurrection, he could expend his life force for enhanced agility and send bolts of energy from his hands. The Master's body would even fluctuate between a fleshy form and a half-skeletal state.
The Master led the Doctor on a wild goose chase after banging the beat of the drums in his mind to lure the Doctor to him and escaped when Wilfred Mott interrupted the chase. (TV: The End of Time)
At some point after his resurrection, the Master was greeted by a female incarnation of himself known as "Missy," who had developed a plan to form a band to hypnotise viewers of The Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars. His decaying thirteenth incarnation, the incarnation possessing the body of Tremas and the incarnation possessing the body of "Bruce" all joined in the plan, and the team spent "decades" practising. (COMIC: The Five Masters) Much to this Master's appreciation, he was allowed to play the drums. After unveiling their presence to the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald, (COMIC: The Abominable Showmen) the Masters prepared for their performance. However, the "Tremas" Master began to fight with Missy over the control of her device, believing that he alone could hold the universe in his grasp. The other Masters soon joined in the fight for power as well, while the "Saxon" Master joined seemingly for the fun of it. The five were quickly disqualified, seemingly destroying them. (COMIC: The Five Masters)
Encountering the Tenth Doctor soon after, the Master and the Doctor discovered the drumming in the Master's head was real, not just a symptom of insanity. Billionaire Joshua Naismith then captured the Master and enlisted his assistance to mend the malfunctioning Vinvocci medical machine, which he had christened the "Immortality Gate". The Master co-operated for his own purposes. He broke out of a straitjacket and flew into the gateway, which he had working a billion fold on the human template. The gateway sent out an energy pulse that transformed every human on Earth, except Wilf and his granddaughter, Donna Noble, into the Master Race — identical copies of the Master subservient to him. (TV: The End of Time)
Rassilon's Final Solution
After the Doctor and Wilf were rescued from the Master by two Vinvocci, the Master used the combined mental powers of the Master Race and a White-Point Star that had fallen on Earth to trace the origin of the drum beat in his head. Receiving contact from the Time Lord High Council on the last day of the Time War, the Master tore open the time lock on the war, bringing back the Time Lords.
As the Lord President Rassilon and his council arrived through the Immortality Gate, the Master announced he intended to transplant himself into the entire Time Lord race, just as he had done to the human race. Rassilon, using his gauntlet, reversed the effects of the Master's transplantation, and watched as Gallifrey returned to the universe on a collision course with Earth.
Rassilon revealed his plans for the Ultimate Sanction, but the Doctor stepped in with Wilfred's pistol. After some hesitation on whether to shoot Rassilon or the Master, he shot the White-Point Star, destroying the link. Enraged, Rassilon prepared to kill the Doctor, but the Master unleashed his bio-electric blasts at the President, roaring that the Time Lords had manipulated him and made him the monster he had become, counting the beat of the rhythm that had resounded in his head and tormenting him all his life. The Time Lords, Gallifrey, and the Master then vanished in a burst of white light, and were sent "back into [the] hell" of the final day of the Time War. (TV: The End of Time)
As Missy
A female body
At some point after his failed resurrection, the Master regenerated into a woman. As such, she adapted her name of "the Master" into "Missy", short for "Mistress". (TV: Dark Water) Evidently through precautions she herself would recommend to UNIT, she had regained the ability to regenerate. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
She managed to escape from the pocket universe in which Gallifrey existed. (TV: Death in Heaven) She also managed to acquire a vortex manipulator, which she used for time travel. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
3W Institute
Working with the Cybermen, Missy founded the 3W Institute, in order to create a Cyberman army of the dead. She uploaded dying minds to the Nethersphere; a virtual reality housed within a matrix data slice. This reality changed and rewrote the minds, removing their emotions before re-downloading them into their Cyber-converted bodies. (TV: Dark Water)
Stalking the Doctor
Missy decided to maneuver 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)
At some point before 2013, Missy gave Clara the Doctor's phone number, claiming that it was a tech support line, leading to 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)
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 "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)
Reclaiming her friend
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 and sharing a kiss with a very confused Doctor, she 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 exploded above major population centres, creating clouds that rained Cyber-pollen that turned the dead into Cybermen. She was taken onto Boat One along with the Doctor. She then sent out a signal to the Cybermen, who attacked the plane. Missy freed herself and disintegrated Osgood. Missy ordered the Cybermen to remove a piece of the fuselage, causing Kate Stewart and the Doctor to be sucked out. She then ordered the Cybermen to destroy the plane, and teleported away. In the Nethersphere, Missy and Seb watched the Doctor free falling. The Doctor saved himself by using his key to summon the TARDIS. When Seb got overexcited at this dramatic turn of events, Missy casually disintegrated him. The Doctor found out from the Cyber-converted Danny Pink that she planned to have the Cyber-pollen fall again, killing humanity, who would be reborn as Cybermen. She teleported into the graveyard to which the Doctor had piloted his TARDIS. Missy then unexpectedly gave the Doctor control of the Cybermen, wanting him to use them as his army, in the hopes of proving the similarities between the two Time Lords. 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 instead turned control over to the Cyber-converted Danny, who ordered the army into the sky to destroy themselves, dispersing the threatening rainclouds.
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, decided to kill his old friend himself — not out of vengeance, he told her, but to save Clara's soul. Before he could fire the weapon, Missy was shot by a rogue Cyberman, who was revealed to be the Doctor's old friend, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, (TV: Death in Heaven) but used the blast from the blaster to recharge her vortex manipulator and escape undetected. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Trapped on Skaro
Some time later, Missy re-emerged and got the attention of both Clara and UNIT by freezing all the airborne planes on Earth in time. Summoning Clara, she showed her the Doctor's confession dial, the Time Lord equivalent of a will. Together, she and Clara tracked the Doctor down to Essex in 1138.
Unbeknownst to them, they led Colony Sarff right to the Doctor. Sarff then took the three to Skaro, although they were led to believe that they were still in deep space. 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 before they were both seemingly exterminated. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) However, Missy and Clara had survived by using the Dalek blasts to recharge her vortex manipulator and teleporting from the Dalek city.
Missy and Clara entered the Dalek sewers, composed of rotting Daleks. Missy used Clara to lure a Dalek there, then cut through its case using a brooch given to her by the Doctor made of dwarf star alloy, enabling the rotting Daleks to kill it. She then put Clara inside the case and pretended to be her prisoner, enabling her to re-enter the Dalek control room. When the Daleks began to gain Time Lord regeneration energy, Missy used their incapitation 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.
When the city was 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. She was surrounded by Daleks when the city crumbled in on itself, but had "a really clever idea". (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Uniting with past selves
Hearing that the Twelfth 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 post-resurrection "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 esquire 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)