Talk:The War Chief

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War Games novelisation

I'm not seeing any reference by the War Chief to him and the Doctor being the only ones to have stolen TARDISes. The only comment on the subject I can see is a section near the beginning of Chapter 10 where the Doctor exclaims "It's my TARDIS that you want. But surely you have one of your own?", to which the War Chief replies "No more mine than yours is really yours! We are both thieves, Doctor. Yes, I do have a TARDIS hidden away." Skteosk ☎ 08:04, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

The reference to there only being two time lords that have stolen a TARDIS is in a different novel. Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon, I think. LauraBatham ☎ 09:21, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

I acknowledge that one's there. I removed a reference to a similar comment in Doctor Who and the War Games last night, only for someone to restore it. I removed it again this morning. Skteosk ☎ 10:16, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

War Games also references this fact. The quotes (both, remember, by the same man in the same book range) are these, with the relevant passages bolded — User:Skteosk, you cut your quote above off too early! Though it's quite an understandable oversight.

"There have been two stolen, you know."
The younger Time Lord didn't know. "By our enemies?"
"No. By Time Lords. They both became bored with this place. It was too peaceful for them, not enough happening." The old Keeper smiled to himself, as though remembering with some glee all the fuss when two TARDISes were stolen. "One of them nowadays calls himself 'the Doctor'. The other says he is 'the Master'."'Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon

"Now I understand," said the Doctor. "It's my TARDIS that you want. But surely you have one of your own?"
The War Chief smiled. "No more mine than yours is really yours. We are both thieves, Doctor. Yes, I do have a TARDIS hidden away. But are not two better than one? While I rest and enjoy the spoils of victory, you can patrol our empire. And I shall do the same for you."
"Our empire?"
"We shall rule the galaxy without fear of oppoisition," the War Chief said confidently. "For we shall be the only two who can travel through both space and time."'Doctor Who and the War Games

Note that the latter extract actually alters what the TV story said on this point: the TV script seems to suggest that the War Chief doesn't have a TARDIS of his own. It has room to assume that he had one when he ran away but later lost access to it, but it certainly doesn't highlight it. So this passage was a very deliberate addition Hulke made to the story when retelling it for the Target format.

DOCTOR: Now I understand. It's my Tardis that you're after, isn't it?
WAR CHIEF: Exactly! When we are in control, the machines I have brought with me will have expired. If we hold the only space time travel machine, we can rule our galaxy without fear of opposition.'The War Games

In any case, setting aside the tone issue in your previous message, I do want to thank you for your recent diligent work here, @Skteosk. This and previous talk page discussions have established that the idea that the War Chief became the Master does exist in valid sources, in the same way that such as ideas as the Doctor being a 49th century human does; but it's easy to get tunnel vision when one is defending a view that goes against the grain. The older, non-chronological version of the overview of the evidence for against really wasn't balanced enough, and while your edits in turn went too far in the other direction, I think the synthesis I tried to produce in my further edits last night is clearly superior to what was there before. [[User:Scrooge

MacDuck|Scrooge MacDuck]] ⊕ 10:23, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I kind of get what you're going for here, but I still think it's a lot more ambiguous than "the Doctor and the War Chief are the only ones to have stolen TARDIses". Okay, the War Chief says "we shall be the only two who can travel through both space and time". But that means...what exactly? They're obviously not the only two Time Lords in existence, because the climax of the story involves a visit to a planet which is full of other Time Lords who can also travel through space and time. You could interpret it as meaning they're the only Time Lords to have left Gallifrey, but you could equally interpret it as simply meaning that they'll have an advantage over the War Lords which means they can easily take over from them. I think it leaves plenty of room for other Renegade Time Lords to exist in other galaxies or whatever. (Incidentally, I had another problem with half your signature not being present when I started editing. I've tried to put it back as I found it, apologies if I didn't succeed.) I see you've now edited it to reflect that, so fair enough. Skteosk ☎ 11:26, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Terror of the Autons

There's a huge glaring problem with saying the War Chief/Master situation is solved, especially when using Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons as supporting evidence. The War Chief did not escape from justice in The War Games. The War Lord *had him killed* (even if later stories retcon this or revive him, this doesn't change the shooting and order beforehand). The quote "Already he had been behind several Interplanetary Wars, always disappearing from the scene before he could be brought to justice. If ever he were caught, his fate would I be far worse than the Doctor’s exile." has NOTHING to do with that plot point.

And the source Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons (not talking about either version of The War Games) absolutely nowhere "established that the Doctor and the Master were the only two renegades ever to have run away from Gallifrey". At all. It is adding misinformation to readd that. It's false. It's made up. There's no establishment irrespective of the War Chief link.

If we want to split hairs about well, Time Lord monickers only came about later and that's why the War Chief has a different name. Then it would probably be worth pointing out the Master escaping a clear death scene wouldn't really be a thing until probably Ainley's time. Maybe there's isolated points in the 70s, but as a defining moment? Tybort ☎ 18:23, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

And it's really weird that Talk:The Master/Archive_7#Adding a section for the War Chief in the biography's conclusion appears to stem from this error. Why can I not identify the statement "the Doctor and the Master were the only two Time Lords ever to steal a TARDIS while summarising the events of The War Games in the same breath" anywhere in Terror of the Autons (originally attributed to Doomsday Weapon)? Not even in the interplanetary war part on pages 25 and 26. Tybort ☎ 18:37, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

The "only two" thing was a misattribution of a plot point from Doomsday Weapon to Terror of the Autons, yes. Thank you for correcting remaining instances of it in the main namespace.

I do not, on the other hand, follow what your issue with the "the War Chief was killed" thing is. You needn't invoke the stuff about Ainley's miraculous escapes — the addition to Time Lord lore which occurred after War Games is simple enough: the idea that Time Lords regenerate when they are killed. (As documented at First Doctor's renewal and Second Doctor's change of appearance, what had happened in the Hartnell-Troughton and Troughton-Pertwee transitions was a little more ambiguous; it took until the Pertwee era for the idea that regeneration might follow violent injury to take root.) The idea, then, in the War Chief=Master accounts, is quite plainly that the Brayshaw War Chief regenerated after the War Lord had him shot, and then made his escape, having now adopted a new face — presumably Delgado's, but there could be interim incarnations. This is in fact what both Timewyrm: Exodus and The Legions of Death say happened, all Master lore aside; it is what you would expect to happen to the War Chief after the camera cuts away from him, in view of the Pertwee-onwards lore about how regeneration works. The War Chief survived with a new face; of course he did. That's what his kind do.

Whether the Terror of the Autons novelisation in particular was intended to support the Master=War Chief claim is something I've grown more unsure about the more I've investigated the topic; in that it does seem like Hulke was the big proponent of the idea, not Dicks. (This is also Dave Rudden's understanding; he refers to War-Chief=Master belief as being "of the House of Hulke".) But it's certainly a valid reading of the text. The key quote is not the "interplanetary wars" business, but the Doctor going "he was luckier than I" when he hears that the Master escaped the Time Lords with his TARDIS still operational. Could be that he's drawing a parallel between his own capture, and a near-capture of the Master in entirely different circumstances, but it's not exactly incongruous with the text to link it to Hulke's accounts, and take it that he's referring to their shared presence at the War Games, from which the Master (newly-regenerated) slipped away, while the Doctor didn't.

(Terrance Dicks does make the claim that the Master was the only other Renegade the Doctor had ever fought by the time of Three Doctors, in, well, the Three Doctors novelisation; and of course, a literal reading of that claim would conflate the Master with the Monk and the War Chief. I think this is where the mistaken claim that "only two ever to run away" came from Dicks originated.) --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 20:39, 28 April 2024 (UTC)