The death of the Master's first incarnation was acknowledged by Missy, herself a product of the Master's eighteenth death, on her Spacebook profile. (PROSE: Girl Power!)
Nature[[edit] | [edit source]]
By their nature as a Time Lord, the Master was born with an initial life cycle of 13 lives, which the Eighth Doctor knew had all been used by the time of the Old Master's trial on Skaro. (TV: Doctor Who) Missy acknowledged that she had first died thirteen times before before taking over "some bloke's body". (PROSE: Girl Power!) In fact, the Decayed Master, who claimed to be nearing the end of his "twelfth regeneration", had acquired "a new body" in the Trakenite Tremas. (TV: The Keeper of Traken) Surviving his execution on Skaro as a Deathworm Morphant, the Old Master took the body of Bruce, a human. (TV: Doctor Who)
The Bruce Master claimed to Chang Lee that the Doctor had taken most of his regenerations whilst the Doctor told Grace Holloway that the Master was both "on his last life" and had "[ran] out of all his lives". In their ensuing confrontation, the Master claimed that it was because of the Doctor that he had "wasted all [his] lives". The Doctor challenged this, reminding Lee that the Master claimed that he had stolen those lives when the reality was that the Master sought the Doctor's remaining lives after having "used all his lives", noting that the Master himself had just admitted to wasting "all of them". (TV: Doctor Who) In any case, the bodily theft was followed by the Master's fourteenth death. (PROSE: Girl Power!)
Childhood[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Master grew up on Gallifrey in the House of Oakdown. (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) The name he was born with consisted of thirty-two letters; (PROSE: Lords and Masters) it was "mellifluous" and, as per the Gallifreyan custom, could never be revealed to a non-Time Lord. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons) He had a father and mother. (AUDIO: I am The Master) 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)
Like all Time Lords, the Master was taken from his family at the age of eight for the selection process. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) During the ceremony in which he gazed into the Time Vortex through the Untempered Schism, he went mad, (TV: The Sound of Drums) due to 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)
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Fate[[edit] | [edit source]]
Ultimately, the Master's first incarnation died and naturally regenerated into his second incarnation. (PROSE: Girl Power!)
Post-mortem[[edit] | [edit source]]
When the "Tremas" Master was stripped of his Trakenite body by the Time Lords, and after his plot to steal the Fifth Doctor's regenerations failed, he found himself confronting mental projections of all his past incarnations, and was able to steal a bit of life energy from each of them, allowing him to regenerate back into his Trakenite body. (PROSE: The Velvet Dark)
Parallel universes[[edit] | [edit source]]
The first incarnation of the Unbound Master was friends with the First Doctor during their schooling. (AUDIO: Sympathy for the Devil)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
Invalid sources[[edit] | [edit source]]
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The Doctor Who Role Playing Game by FASA, which admits to taking liberties with the source material in its opening pages, gives a rundown of the Master's first thirteen incarnations in "The Master" supplement book, which was similar to (but not entirely consistent with) the in-universe biography given for the Master in FASA's own CIA File Extracts.
According to the book, the Master could control the form of his incarnations, and frequently used the same face. His first to fourth incarnations lived on Gallifrey, working as a scientist and temporal researcher which entailed a great deal of field work in which he encountered more than his fair share of accidents and dangers, forcing him into regeneration far more frequently than most Time Lords.
This constant form was described as a handsome, apparently middle-aged man distinguished by his tall and slim build with square-cut features, greying hair, piercing grey eyes, his aristocratic bearing and aloof manner. The Fifth Master kept the same face as his predecessors, but lasted over four-hundred-years due to his retirement, showing signs of age as the years went by. He eventually regenerated, aged over 700-years-old, when his rebellion on Gallifrey failed and forced him to become a renegade, with the War Chief among his followers. His next two incarnations appeared as a clean-shaven Monk, whilst the next six returned to a bearded appearance.
James Dreyfus[[edit] | [edit source]]
James Dreyfus was initially promoted by Big Finish Productions as portraying the "first incarnation" of the Master beginning in The Destination Wars.[1] However, this was never stated in the narrative; though The Destination Wars does establish that he was the Master who originally left Gallifrey, Blood of the Time Lords had the Fourth Doctor recall that he was either the third or fourth incarnation.