The "War Chief"

The "War Chief"
Main aliases:	see list
Species:	Time Lord
Affiliated with:	War Lords, Black Coven, Nazi Party
Place of origin:	Gallifrey
First appearance:	The War Games
Appearances:	see list
Main actor:	Edward Brayshaw

Incarnations of the Master
First cycle
Between cycles
Second cycle
Third cycle
Other universes
More ambiguous

Forging an alliance with the War Lord and his people, the Master acted as the War Chief for the War Game. After the failure of the War Lords due to the actions of the Second Doctor, the War Chief suffered a failed regeneration and travelled back in time to use the Nazis as his agents, until he was stopped by the Seventh Doctor.

Biography

Ally of the War Lords

The War Chief stands with the War Lords. (TV: The War Games)

The Master regenerated into his eleventh incarnation (PROSE: CIA File Extracts) in a Trastevarian jail, where he met the War Lord, and told him that the Sisterhood of Karn's Elixir of Life was vital to his people's regeneration process. (PROSE: Save Yourself)

Now calling himself "the War Chief", he worked with the War Lords. They abducted soldiers from wars spread across Earth's history, though they didn't go too far because of the risk of humans' technological knowledge, for simulated versions of the wars from which they came. Thinking humans the most vicious species in the galaxy, the aliens hoped to pit the survivors against each other and use them to conquer Mutter's Spiral once they had eliminated the weak and the cowards and were left with the hardier warriors.

The War Chief tries to convince the Second Doctor to join him. (TV: The War Games)

The War Chief aided the War Lords by helping them build SIDRATs, TARDIS-like space-time machines. They used them to kidnap the human soldiers and travel between era-specific zones which they had created. The War Chief and the Second Doctor met and recognised each other. The War Chief solicited the Doctor's help to double-cross the War Lords and seize power for themselves. The Doctor pretended to accept the War Chief's offer.

The Security Chief of the operation distrusted the War Chief, believing he meant to call in the Time Lords. While the Security Chief was willing to accept the War Chief had upheld his part of the bargain and had been afforded every need, he had still refused to tell them how to construct the SIDRATS. The two engaged in a series of machinations against each other which ended with the War Chief disgraced when the Security Chief recorded a condemning conversation between the War Chief and the Doctor, and he took it to his leader. The War Chief got his revenge when he shot his rival dead. Unable to resolve matters, nor return the soldiers to their own times, the Doctor summoned the Time Lords for aid, while the War Lords uncovered the War Chief's plans and executed him, though he tried to talk his way around it, claiming those plans had been faked, but he wasn't believed. (TV: The War Games) Unknown at the time, while the War Chief remained on the War Lords' ship, the War Chief did not die, but actually underwent a faulty regeneration. His new form looked like two bodies fused together. He took to wearing cloaks, hoods and cane sticks to disguise the fact, with white hair and a bushy white beard, eventually convincing the War Lords that his "betrayal" of them was just a misunderstanding. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)

The Black Coven

Having helped the War Lords to break the time loop the Time Lords had erected around their world, the War Chief helped them travel to Nazi Germany. He served as an occult advisor to Adolf Hitler under the name "Doktor Felix Kriegslieter" at the head of the Black Coven, hoping to change history with the Nazis as his agents, believing that they were so vicious that they barely needed the War Lords' conditioning. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) One time, concerned with Hitler's health, Martin Bormann telephoned him. (PROSE: Players)

The Seventh Doctor later confronted the War Chief, prompting him to try to take the Doctor's healthy body and his six remaining regenerations. However, his efforts to replace Hitler with Heinrich Himmler were thwarted by Himmler's devotion to his Führer. This allowed the Doctor to alert Hermann Goering to "Kriegslieter's" betrayal and destroy the War Chief's base by overloading its nuclear reactors, the brainwashed Nazis falling to the superior initiative of their mentally free opponents. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)

Death

In the final moments before his base at Drachensberg castle collapsed, Ace looked down and saw the War Chief engulfed in flames, no longer malformed but appearing as his "young, tall, dark and satanically handsome" self, (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) because he had managed to regenerate into his ninth incarnation, (PROSE: CIA File Extracts) who tried to start afresh by calling himself "Koschei" again, only to succumb to his darker nature and become "the Master" once more. (PROSE: The Dark Path, The Face of the Enemy)

Post-mortem

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)

Personality

The War Chief. (TV: The War Games)

Behind the War Chief's actions lay a degree of idealism, albeit tainted with power-lust. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) He was an ambitious and arrogant individual, cunning, and with great tactical abilities. He also made feuds easily, which made it easy for his allies to turn against him. (TV: The War Games)

He wished to take over the universe so he could bring order to it, although he was willing to lie and manipulate his way to that power without scruples. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) He pretended to serve the War Lords loyally, while plotting to take control of them after they succeeded in their plans. (TV: The War Games) While allied with the Nazis, the War Chief considered much of their racial beliefs, scientific works and belief in the occult to be nonsense. However, he was perfectly willing to play along with all of this to win favour with the Nazi leaders, especially Heinrich Himmler. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)

The War Chief admired the Doctor and his scientific prowess, and once jeopardised his own plan in a fruitless effort to convince the Doctor to join him. He also felt that the Doctor ought to side with him against the Time Lords, believing that, if they caught up with both of them, the High Council would be as merciless to the Doctor as they would to himself. (TV: The War Games)

Behind the scenes

The War Chief's later incarnation. (NOTVALID: The Legions of Death)

• The necklace prop the War Chief wears in The War Games is the same prop previously worn by Zephon in The Daleks' Master Plan.
• Legally, the likeness of Edward Brayshaw's War Chief is a distinct license from license to use the likenesses of other incarnations of the Master, at least as far as the production of merchandise action figures is concerned.

Connection with the Master

Ever since Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon called back to the events of The War Games while also stating that the Doctor and the Master were the only two renegades ever to have run away from Gallifrey, the notion emerged of the War Chief having been an early incarnation of the Master from before he adopted the title, since, although the character was never called anything but "War Chief" in his only televised story, there was no evidence that this was a regular moniker or modus operandi; during the story, the term "War Chief" was treated more as a title (akin to "War Lord" and Security Chief) instead of a name.

The 1980s board game Doctor Who: The Game of Time & Space stated they were indeed and the same, as was the Monk, thus allowing the notion of the Doctor and the Master as the only two Renegades to stand. The module Legions of Death in FASA's The Doctor Who Role Playing Game has the War Chief as a renegade Time Lord distinct from, but a former ally of, the Master, who himself was also known as the Monk. However, neither is considered a valid source by this wiki due to the branching storylines which naturally result from a roleplaying format.

The Target novelisations of Doctor Who TV stories were the main medium in which the idea of the War Chief eventually becoming the Master gained traction, including under the pens of Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks, the two co-writers of The War Games and co-creators of the War Chief.

Though Malcolm Hulke's 1979 novelisation Doctor Who and the War Games stated that the War Chief was declared dead by the Time Lords, 1985's CIA File Extracts highlighted that the Time Lords had never found a body. A post-War Games War Chief later featured in Dicks' original novel Timewyrm: Exodus. That story specified that the War Chief was forced to leave Gallifrey due to his political career; similar explanations were given for the Master's running away in Birth of a Renegade and Time and Relative.

The novelisation Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon, written by Malcolm Hulke and edited by Terrance Dicks, shows that, when enquired about the Doctor and the Master, an elderly Time Lord recounts the events of The War Games, for which he was present. The book also established that the Doctor and the Master were the only two renegade Time Lords who had ever left Gallifrey, implying by process of elimination that the Master was both the War Chief and the Monk.

Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, written by Terrance Dicks, stated that "Master" was a new title and that the Doctor had interfered with the Master's schemes in the past, but that the Master had escaped the Time Lords before his TARDIS could be deactivated. Finally, Dicks' later novelisation of The Three Doctors stated that the Master and Omega were the only two Time Lords that the Doctor had ever fought.

In 1985, Gary Russell penned The Legacy of Gallifrey, a prose overview of Gallifrey's history from the perspective of Rassilon. In that story, the Doctor's friends and fellow dissenters at the Time Lord Academy were a mere group of three future Renegades: the Doctor, the Master and the Rani. The War Chief was mentioned in the summary of the Second Doctor's trial as having been a treacherous member of the High Council, once more attributing the Master's common political backstory to the War Chief, and a Time Lord messenger later warning the Third Doctor about the Master, as seen in Terror of the Autons, was reframed as a direct consequence of CIA-loyal Time Lords being told to keep an eye on the Doctor after his trial, with the Master now being described as "seeking revenge for past deeds".

Nevertheless, and even though the distinction was never actually made clear in any story they over saw as such, Virgin Books' editorial policy was that the Master and the War Chief were two distinct characters. Gary Russell later parodied this approach in his novel Divided Loyalties, where the Celestial Toymaker gives the Fifth Doctor nightmares about his time in the Academy. In the dreams, "Magnus" (who plans to ally himself with the War Lords) and "Koschei" (clearly the Master) are intentionally characterised as extremely similar; Magnus is obsessed with the War Lords, and Koschei looks up to Magnus. The Master's pseudonym "Koschei" originates from The Dark Path, but the Second Doctor didn't recognise it in that book, establishing the Doctor's dreams in Divided Loyalties to be unreliable. Nonetheless, this novel established an in-universe distinction between the two characters that would be later cited in A Brief History of Time Lords.

Further complicating matters was, in 1992, the comic story Flashback from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, which introduced the character Magnus as the First Doctor's close friend on Gallifrey who became his rival after a betrayal. The story hints that Magnus already had more than one body. The name "Magnus" means "great" and was popular among royal houses in the Middle Ages. Most readers immediately identified the character as a younger version of the Master, as the Master had previously been established to be the Doctor's Academy friend in TV: The Sea Devils; indeed, according to DWM editor Gary Russell, this was the original intention. However, Russell later chose to retcon Magnus into being the War Chief so as not to conflict with other versions of the Master's past.

This led to Invasion of the Cat-People mentioning "Magnus" as someone whom the Second Doctor had once warned to be careful with his regenerations, tying into the fact that the Master had quickly used up all his regenerations, an important plot element in The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper of Traken, even while the aforementioned Divided Loyalties explicitly identified "Magnus" as a younger War Chief distinct from the younger Master.

At any rate, the Master/War Chief connection continued to be pushed, including by stories not licensed to use either character. The Book of the War implies very strongly that the War King of the War-torn Homeworld, who used to be its greatest criminal, was not only once the Master, but also the War Chief, as he keeps a disassembled hypercube in his chambers as a nostalgic keepsake, in a clear allusion to the denouement of The War Games. Craig Hinton and Chris McKeon's unpublsihed novel Time's Champion, in its completed unlicenced charity version, similarly treated the War Chief and the Master as the same person.