The Master (Terror of the Autons)
The Master was a renegade Time Lord, seen by his own people as one of their worst members. (TV: Terror of the Autons) For much of his life, he opposed the Third Doctor and UNIT, mainly in the late 20th century in England, though occasionally in other times and places. (TV: The Mind of Evil, The Sea Devils) As this was his thirteenth incarantion, the Master began to decay as his body fell into ruin. He devoted his time to finding a means by which he could rejuvenate himself, and eventually did so. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, The Keeper of Traken)
Biography
Vendetta Against the Doctor
The Master's thirteenth incarnation appeared after the Master was trapped in a black hole. The Master had caught up with the Second Doctor at the Darkheart colony in the early years of the Federation. The temptation posed by the Darkheart device proved too much for him, and the revelation that his companion Ailla was a spy killed the last traces of good in him. After the Doctor trapped him in a black hole, he swore to take revenge but burned through his remaining regenerations to somehow escape. (PROSE: The Dark Path).
Encounters with the Third Doctor
After he escaped the black hole, the Master was imprisoned on Shada, by the Time Lords. However, the Time Lords decided to keep the Doctor busy by releasing the Master. This would happen just before the Third Doctor's first confrontation with him. (PROSE: Prisoners of the Sun)
Unbeknownst to the Third Doctor, the Master had in fact been on Earth for some time before they had once again reunited.
The Master was present at the first Auton invasion of Earth. He had apparently seen or heard about Channing 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. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
He later called Stevens again, during the Silurian attacks on Wenley Moor. He informed Stevens that Frederick Masters had been the first to have died from the plague sweeping London. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
Shorty after the Inferno Project incident, the Master once more contacted James Stevens, this time to check up on his work on his U.N.I.T. article. He promptly hang up when Stevens mentioned C19 and Glasshouse. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
He 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, learned of recent events, including the recent failed Nestene invasion and the awakening of the Silurians. This inspired him to ally himself with them and to locate any more Silurian colonies. (PROSE: Reconnaissance)
Encounters with the Third Doctor
The Master appeared at a circus, his TARDIS in the form of a circus trailer or horse box. He hypnotised the circus troupe 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. After the failure of his plan, the Master fled. The Doctor had already taken his dematerialisation circuit however, 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, in reality a living alien entity. He used prisoners as a plan to hijack a missile containing nerve gas and use it cause a conflict that would trigger a nuclear war. The Doctor was able to stop the Master's plan, by destroying the missile, as well as the Keller Machine. However, the Doctor was forced to return the Master's dematerialisation circuit to achieve it, giving the Master his freedom again. (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 still has his use. 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 recovered the functioning of his TARDIS and brought Axos to Earth, hoping to ally himself with them. Instead, he became the prisoner of Axos and only escaped with the aid of CIA agent Bill Filer. 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 then visited a human colony on the planet Uxarieus in the year 2472. The stolen Time Lords' records had informed him that here he would find the Doomsday Weapon created by a near-extinct native species. The Doctor once more defeated him. (TV: Colony in Space)
The imprisonment of the Master
In the Wiltshire village of Devil's End, the Master summoned the Dæmon Azal. At the conclusion of this event, UNIT captured him. (TV: The Dæmons) Following a trial by human authorities, the Master was sentenced to life-long imprisonment in a prison on an island designed especially to hold him. (TV: The Sea Devils) The government used him as a scapegoat for all the alien attacks that had occurred. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
Before his trial, the Master was sent to Stangmoor Prison, but during his captivity, an army of hypnotised salespeople stormed the prison. This was an attempt to rescue him, but the attempt 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 uses time-travel technology to regress the Earth backwards in time. However, with help from the Time Lord, the Doctor was freed and was able to stop the Master's plan, and restore everything to normal. (PROSE: Freedom)
Before he was sent to Fortress Island, the Master was sent to Aylesbury Grange Detention Centre. The Doctor visited the Master who insisted he had changed, only to reveal he had escaped. The Doctor was speaking to a hologram. The Master nearly escaped, but was stopped by soldiers. The Doctor revealed he had been a hologram as well. (COMIC: The Man in the Ion Mask)
While in custody, with the Doctor gone to Peladon (TV: The Curse of Peladon), the Master collaborated with UNIT to prevent an invasion by a fascist version of Earth. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy) In a later encounter, 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 unpilotable by the Doctor. Before returning to the TARDIS, the Master asked the Brigadier to move him to a new holding facility with a good view and told Mike Yates to ask Jo Grant out on a date. (PROSE: The Switching)
When he was finally sent to Fortress Island, the Master quickly gained control over his jailer, George Trenchard. He nearly caused a war between humans and Sea Devils, an aquatic species related to the Silurians. He later escaped in the confusion. (TV: The Sea Devils)
Events following the Master's escape
Some time during his obvious actions against the Doctor and UNIT, the Master infiltrated the government's Department C19 to a shocking degree. He took control of the Glasshouse, a facility for traumatised UNIT soldiers, and in particular Private Francis Cleary. He also tried to undermine UNIT in the short term. In the long term, 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)
The Master travelled to ancient Atlantis and, confronting the Doctor there, brought forth Kronos, king of the Chronovores. Kronos captured him but allowed him to go free. (TV: The Time Monster) Returning to 1970s Earth, he 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)
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He forged a short-lived 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 Draconion, thus provoking the other side. When the Doctor revealed the true perpetrators, the plot was abandoned. (TV: Frontier in Space)
For a short while the Master adopted the identity of Duke Dominus, a gangster on early 20th century Earth, but his plan on this occasion was halted by the Fourth Doctor without the Master even knowing it. (PROSE: The Duke of Dominoes)
The Master finally 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 degenerated when exposed to a lethal blast from a Dalek artefact, caused by Susan Foreman. (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks)
When the Time Lord Chancellor Goth came to Tersurus to investigate the materialisation of an unauthorised TARDIS, (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks) he found the Master in a wasted condition, that of a decaying animated corpse. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
On Gallifrey
The Master made Goth, in line for the position of Lord President of the High Council of Time Lords, into his slave. He also took over the mind of Solis, one of the Chancellory Guard. With a telepathic summons and a vision of the future created by the Matrix, the Master lured the Fourth Doctor to Gallifrey to prevent the murder of the then-serving Lord President. The Doctor failed, and ended up on trial for the President's murder. In the meantime, the Master casually killed a guard with his Tissue Compression Eliminator and left it for the Doctor to find, like a grisly calling card.
Secretly, the Master had access to the Matrix. He also had guessed the secret of the Eye of Harmony and various artefacts left behind by Rassilon. He realised that the Eye of Harmony, a black hole, resided beneath the Panopticon and, realising that it had immense power, believed he could use the Sash of Rassilon to protect himself from the raw power of the Eye and the destruction that unleashing it would cause. He thought that it could channel that energy to renew himself.
The Doctor defeated the Master in physical combat and he appeared to have fallen into a crevice created by a localised earthquake. In fact, he was observed a short time later accessing his TARDIS, disguised as a grandfather clock, and escaped. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
Although he failed to obtain a new cycle of regenerations, the energy from the Eye of Harmony did allow him to partially regenerate his body, taking on a far less 'putrescent' appearance as the Fourth Doctor would observe on their next encounter. (AUDIO: Trail of the White Worm)
An Unsteady Alliance
After escaping from Gallifrey, the Master had entered into an alliance with the Kraals, and claimed to help them invade the Earth in 1979. (AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure) He tried to achieve this by looking for a genetically engineered alien worm, whose purpose was to generate wormholes in space. The worm had been living in Derbyshire for centuries and had passed into folklore, however, it had taken the form of a women called Demesne Furze. While he was looking for the worm, he allied himself with Colonel Spindleton, where they both met the Doctor and Leela. However, the Master generated a storm, using a lightning bolt from it to activate the worm's ability to create wormholes, in turn, generating a wormhole to Oseidon, but also killing the worm. (AUDIO: Trail of the White Worm)
Upon arrival on Earth, the Kraals, led by Marshal Grinmal, double-crossed the Master and imprisoned him with Leela, while they sent the Doctor to Oseidon to be interrogated by Chief Scientist Tyngworg. However, the Master and Leela escaped through the wormhole, and infiltrated the Kraal bunker. However, while he was in the bunker, the Master discovered he was an android duplicate, ever since he arrived in Derbyshire, and the Master had been on Oseidon all along, impersonating Tyngworg. During this, the Doctor escaped and reprogrammed the androids to destroy the invasion force. But, as the Master tried to deactivate all the androids, he discovered he was susceptible to the signal, and therefore, he had also been an android all along as well. The Doctor and Leela constructed another Master duplicate, to help them discover the real Master's plan, which was to capture the Z-battery, the Doctor left on Earth to repair his TARDIS during his exile. His plan was to use the Z-radiation within the battery, combined with the O-radiation that was on Oseidon, to create ZO-radiation, which had an immense amount of power, which the Master could use to renew himself. The Doctor defeated the Master, by using the Master's android duplicate he had constructed to kidnap the Master and take him away in his own TARDIS, before his plan could be fulfilled. (AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure)
With his TARDIS still in the form of a clock, the Master tried to steal Iris Wildthyme's body. (IW: The Scarlet Shadow)
On Traken
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 set about a plan to steal the Source 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. After being defeated once more by the Fourth Doctor and Adric, he took over the body of Tremas. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
Influence
Later, the Master's final non-regenerative incarnation tells the Eighth Doctor that it was because of him that he had wasted all of his lives. (TV: Doctor Who, PROSE: The Dark Path)
When the Master's human persona discovers his fob watch, the first voice he hears is the Master's thirteenth incarnation, asking Azal for power. (TV: Utopia)
Personality
This incarnation of the Master was suave and debonair with a sardonic sense of humour. A haughty sociopath, he regarded most beings as his inferiors, but had a mutual respect for the Third Doctor as a worthy opponent and his (almost) intellectual equal. (TV: The Sea Devils) While in Atlantis, the Master formed something of a relationship with Queen Galleia, remarking that she was beautiful, and promising her power. Both she and Lakis commented that he had "the bearing of a God". (TV: The Time Monster)
Following the degeneration of the Master, his vengeful, vindictive psychopath side was at its most apparent while he was in this state, shown in killing a guard like a calling card. At this point he became fixated on finding a way to regenerate. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, The Keeper of Traken, AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure)
Behind the scenes
- Although they played antagonists onscreen, in real life Roger Delgado (the Master) and Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor) were actually close friends. In interviews and convention Q&A sessions, Pertwee often cited the death of Delgado as one of the factors which led him to give up the role.
Footnotes
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