The Master's TARDIS
The Master's TARDIS was the TARDIS used by the renegade Time Lord known as the Master. He owned more than one TARDIS throughout his many engagements with the Doctor, all of them models more advanced than the Doctor's. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
According to the Doctor, the Master wasn't capable of driving his TARDIS properly. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
History
Pre-Time War
Like the First Doctor, the first incarnation of the Master had stolen his TARDIS. However, as he did so before it could be rehauled by the Quadriggers, it was broken and fell apart around him almost instantly, stranding the Master on the furthest arm of a galaxy in the "earliest Segments of Time". (AUDIO: The Destination Wars)
The Master's first known TARDIS was a Type 45, a comparatively more advanced TARDIS compared to the Doctor's TARDIS. At the time he was travelling with Ailla, and when he felt he was betrayed by her, he simply jettisoned her room into the Time Vortex. He tried to connect the TARDIS to the Darkheart, so then he could manipulate and control space/time, but he was stopped by the Second Doctor. (PROSE: The Dark Path)
During his Earth-based vendetta against the Third Doctor and UNIT, the Master used a TARDIS with a Mark II dematerialisation circuit, which the Doctor stole to replace his own, though the attempt failed. Unlike the Doctor's TARDIS, the Master's had a fully functioning chameleon circuit. (TV: Terror of the Autons)
When he was trapped in the far future, the Master found an old Type 40 TARDIS with a faulty chameleon circuit, which he was able to repair. He used the TARDIS to return to the 20th century, but he was captured by UNIT after he met the Third Doctor and Jo Grant when he tried to escape again. (PROSE: Harvest of Time)
After failing to use the Eye of Harmony to give himself new life, the Decayed Master escaped Gallifrey in his TARDIS, disguised as a grandfather clock. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
On Traken, the Master used a second TARDIS, disguised as a Melkur. Although this one was destroyed, he kept his grandfather clock TARDIS inside, and used it to escape after he stole the body of Tremas. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
The Master sent his TARDIS to wait for him in the Time Vortex when he prepared to steal the Doctor's body. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
The Master's TARDIS was held in the Vault after being found in the Valley of the Kings. The Master escaped the Vault in this TARDIS. (AUDIO: Mastermind)
Goth's TARDIS
The Reborn Master went back in time to the point at which he killed Chancellor Goth and stole his TARDIS, then used it to break into Tersurus. (AUDIO: Dominion)
Last Great Time War
The Master used his TARDIS during the Last Great Time War. After the War, the Eleventh Doctor set out to find it with the help of River Song, believing it to contain records of what he did during the conflict. (COMIC: The Judas Goatee) The search took him to Shada, where it was found. (COMIC: The One) River used the TARDIS to escape from Shada, materialising it inside the Doctor's own TARDIS. (COMIC: Downtime) The Doctor kept the TARDIS in the console room. Alice Obiefune stole the TARDIS, activating the chronal tumour on the console with a Rassilonian Timefly and piloting it back into the Time War. (COMIC: Running to Stay Still)
After deciding to become human via the use of a Chameleon Arch upon seeing the Dalek Emperor taking control of the Cruciform, the Master set his TARDIS to dematerialise 10 seconds after he exited it, and it went away to some unknown place. (AUDIO: The Heavenly Paradigm)
Post-Time War
Awakening from his "Professor Yana" persona on Malcassairo in the year 100,000,000,000,000, the Master stole the Doctor's TARDIS. (TV: Utopia) Travelling to the 2000s, the Master cannibalised the TARDIS into a paradox machine with which he conceived the Year That Never Was. (TV: The Sound of Drums) Ultimately, the TARDIS was reclaimed and restored by the Tenth Doctor after Jack Harkness destroyed the paradox machine, reverting the year and erasing the Master's New Time Lord Empire. (TV: Last of the Time Lords)
The Master later ended up on Gallifrey on the final day of the Last Great Time War. (TV: The End of Time) "Mutually" kicked out by the Time Lords, the Master retrieved his TARDIS and left the planet, eventually arriving at the bottom of a Mondasian colony ship which had been drawn to the pull of a black hole. With his TARDIS too close to the event horizon, the Master attempted to take off only to cause the destruction of his dematerialisation circuit when he went too fast.
Over a decade would pass before the Master encountered a future, female incarnation who dubbed herself "Missy". Provided with a spare dematerialisation circuit by his future self, who had remembered to keep one as a result of this encounter, the Master proceeded to leave the ship in his TARDIS. However, before he left, Missy mortally wounded him in such a way as to force the Master's regeneration into her shortly after he reached his TARDIS. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Missy travelled in a Type 45 TARDIS. She was trying to replace the TARDIS's energy source, and she gained an opportunity when the Time Lords took control of her TARDIS to force her to prevent the time experiments at the Kyme Institute. She later jettisoned its Eye of Harmony so that the Time Lords couldn't control it. She replaced it with a living power source she acquired in the Kyme Institute after the mission from the Time Lords to prevent time experiments from damaging history. Jettisoning the Eye of Harmony was difficult, but locking the living power source proved harder. The creature would continually try to escape its new containment field, but Missy was counting on that, and she noted the energy levels given off were more than sufficient to fuel her TARDIS. (PROSE: Lords and Masters)
Missy implemented a plan involving travel through time to harvest recently deceased human minds for as long as humanity had a concept of the afterlife, the Twelfth Doctor theorised that she achieved this through use of a TARDIS. (TV: Death in Heaven)
Exterior
During his rivalry with the Doctor, the Master changed his TARDIS into several different forms, including: an Adjudication flyer, an out-of-date space locker, (PROSE: The Dark Path) a horsebox, (TV: Terror of the Autons) a white cube, (TV: The Claws of Axos) a spaceship, (TV: Colony in Space) a black Rolls-Royce limousine with darkened windows, a bulkhead door aboard the HMS Redoubt, (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy) the Stone of Sacrifice in the cavern of the church at Devil's End, (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy, The Eight Doctors) a computer bank, (TV: The Time Monster, AUDIO: Vampire of the Mind) a filing cabinet, (PROSE: The Touch of the Nurazh) a control panel, a wardrobe, (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks) a grandfather clock, (TV: The Deadly Assassin, The Keeper of Traken, PROSE: The Eight Doctors, AUDIO: Mastermind, And You Will Obey Me) a tank, a red pillar box, (AUDIO: The Light at the End) the Melkur, (TV: The Keeper of Traken) a police box, (TV: Logopolis, PROSE: The Quantum Archangel, AUDIO: Dominion) a laurel bush, (TV: Logopolis) a Doric column, (TV: Logopolis, Castrovalva, Time-Flight, AUDIO: Dust Breeding) a marble fireplace, (TV: Castrovalva) Speedbird Concorde 192, (TV: Time-Flight) an iron maiden, (TV: The King's Demons) a three-sided column, (TV: Planet of Fire) a wooden beach hut, a statue of Queen Victoria, (TV: The Ultimate Foe) a red telephone box, (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) a transport crate, (AUDIO: The Death of Hope) a palm tree, (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence) and a white pillar. (COMIC: Outrun, The Judas Goatee)
On Traken, the Master disguised a TARDIS as the Melkur. In this form, it was shown to be able to walk and could fire sonic beams from its eyes. When this TARDIS was destroyed, he fled in another he had kept in the former. This TARDIS was disguised as a grandfather clock. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
While preparing a trap for the Fourth Doctor, the Master temporarily changed his ship into a police box. He later hid it inside the Cloister room as a laurel bush and finally as a stunted, brown Doric column. (TV: Logopolis) He tended to use a column as his TARDIS' "default" exterior. (TV: Castrovalva, Time-Flight, Planet of Fire)
X-rays bounced off the TARDIS exterior, unable to penetrate it. (AUDIO: Mastermind)
Interior
The Master's TARDIS had a varied interior. Some interiors seemed to mimic the Doctor's re-designs of his own TARDIS at the time of the encounter. (TV: The Time Monster, Planet of Fire)
Much of the time, the interior was simply a sombre, black version of the interior of the Doctor's TARDIS, sometimes with special equipment such as the Hadron web which he used to hold Adric captive. (TV: Castrovalva)
Companions who spent time in the Master's TARDIS after spending time in the Doctor's ship noted that the atmosphere of the Master's TARDIS was far less welcoming than that of the Doctor's ship, as though both TARDISes had adapted to the moods of their owners. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
During the Last Great Time War, the Master operated on the brain of his TARDIS. Because of this, a chronal tumour protruded from one side of the console. (COMIC: The One)
The Master's library
Like the Doctor's, the Master's TARDIS had a well-stocked library. The Master's interests, however, tended toward the evil and arcane. Among the more diabolical works he owned were the Necronomicon, shelved between the Liber Inducens in Evangelium Aeternum and The Black Scrolls of Rassilon. It also included the Book of Vile and its Black Appendix, The Ambuehl Lores and the Insidium of Astrolabus. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
Specific systems
Once, the Master tricked the Doctor into materialising his TARDIS around his own, creating a dimensionally recursive loop, (TV: Logopolis) repeating a situation that had previously occurred accidentally. (TV: The Time Monster)
Behind the scenes
- The Master's console room and console tended to mirror the Doctor's due to the same set (temporarily repainted) and console being used for filming.[source needed]
- The walking Melkur statue was portrayed by Graham Cole, who remained uncredited both on-screen and in Radio Times.
- Tom Saunders designed a brand new interior of the War Master's TARDIS for the trailer of Only the Good.
- Gavin Rymill illustrated an original design for Missy's TARDIS interior in REF: TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual.
