Regeneration Operation
The Regeneration Operation was the Bruce Master's name for his failed attempt to steal the Eighth Doctor's remaining regenerations. (PROSE: The Secret Diary of the Master)
After Clara Oswald jumped into the Doctor's time stream to stop the Great Intelligence erasing him from existence, (TV: The Name of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Name of the Doctor (TV story)"]) a splinter of Clara stood with the Doctor, Grace Holloway and Chang Lee after their fight against the Master. (PROSE: The Eighth Doctor Part 1 [+]Loading...{"page":"173","1":"The Eighth Doctor Part 1 (short story)"})
History
Background
- Main article: The Master's trial (Doctor Who)
In his "final" incarnation, the Master, a man with "saturnine features", (TV: Doctor Who, PROSE: The Novel of the Film) arrived in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and was captured to be placed on trial (AUDIO: Mastermind) by a Dalek scouting party. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Another account claimed that the Master's trial by the Daleks took place immediately after his experience on the Cheetah World, with the Tremas Master having been driven mad by the cheetah virus that ailed his stolen Trakenite body. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
At any rate, the Master was indeed tried in the presence of the Dalek Emperor (PROSE: The Novel of the Film) and the whole Parliament of the Daleks, (PROSE: The Runes of Fenric) for his attempts to destroy them and usurp their place as "the supreme creatures of the universe", (PROSE: The Novel of the Film) specifically with regard to his failure in their mutual plot behind the Human-Draconian War, (PROSE: The Runes of Fenric) while encased in a painful column of light which prevented him from moving; (PROSE: The Novel of the Film) it was "said" that he stayed oddly impassive as his long list of crimes was read out to him. In truth, this was all a ruse to get inside the Doctor's TARDIS and further extend his precarious existence. (TV: Doctor Who)
The Dalek Litigator judged the Master guilty, ordering him to be exterminated as his punishment. (AUDIO: Vengeance) After he was tried and executed by the Daleks on Skaro, he made a final request: for the Seventh Doctor to transport his remains back to Gallifrey. (TV: Doctor Who) According to one account, he made this request via telepathic contact with the Seventh Doctor, even as he was about to be discorporated, and the Daleks never knew of his demands, which the Doctor fulfilled covertly by sneaking into the Dalek bastion. (PROSE: The Novel of the Film) According to other accounts, it was as part of a Time Lord-Dalek treaty (PROSE: Lungbarrow) called the "Act of Master Restitution" (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords, Meet the Doctor) that the Doctor was able to safely journey to and from Skaro to retrieve the Master's remains. (TV: Doctor Who)
The incident
After stealing the body of Bruce Gerhardt, the Master posed as Bruce in order to find the Doctor. The Seventh Doctor, having been shot, was taken to Walker General Hospital, where his circulatory system would be fatally damaged during surgery. The Doctor would regenerate into a new body hours later in the morgue, the anaesthetic nearly destroyed the regenerative process, resulting in the unprecedented delay. Learning from Bruce's colleagues that the Doctor had died on the operating table and that his body had apparently been stolen, the Master was also informed by Nurse Curtis that the young gang member who had been present when the Doctor was shot, Chang Lee, had also stolen the Doctor's possessions, including the TARDIS key. (TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"]) Heading to the TARDIS, the Master found Lee already inside, (PROSE: The Novel of the Film [+]Loading...["The Novel of the Film (novelisation)"]) and regaled him with stories of the Doctor's supposed villainy, claiming that the Doctor had stolen his lives and home, and was several notorious villains in history including Genghis Khan. With Lee's help, the Master was able to open the Eye of Harmony, discovered that the Doctor had regenerated into a new body, and that the Doctor was apparently half-human. (TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"])
While the Master and Chang Lee opened the Eye of Harmony in the TARDIS, the Doctor had sought out Grace Holloway. The Doctor, suffering from amnesia, believed Grace knew who he was. However, the opening of the Eye prompted the Doctor's memories to return, and he proceeded to scare Grace away with his erratic behaviour, making her believe he was insane because of his claims of being a time traveller, being an alien, and that the Master's actions would result in the eventual destruction of the Earth. (TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"])
Stealing Bruce's ambulance by murdering his paramedic partner, the Master and Lee answered Dr. Grace Holloway's request for an ambulance to collect the Doctor, (PROSE: The Novel of the Film [+]Loading...["The Novel of the Film (novelisation)"]) and agreed to take them to Professor Wagg's atomic clock at the Institute for Technological Advancement and Research and repair the timing malfunction the Master caused with the clock's beryllium chip, when he was really planning to bring the Doctor back to the TARDIS. Realising the Master's true identity, the Doctor and Grace escaped, but before they could do so, the Master secretly possessed Grace's mind. When the Doctor got back to the TARDIS to fix the timing malfunction, the Master had Grace knock the Doctor out and put him in restraints.
Having donned more traditional Gallifreyan robes, the Master boasted of his plans to the restrained Doctor, accidentally letting it slip that he had lost his lives trying to destroy the Doctor, exposing his earlier lies to Lee. After killing Lee for refusing to follow his orders, the Master forcibly opened the Eye using Grace's retina so that he could steal the Doctor's regenerations. Although the Master was able to initiate the transfer process that would give him access to the Doctor's remaining regenerations, Grace was able to prevent this by rerouting the TARDIS' power and sending the ship into a temporal orbit. Grace released the Doctor from his restraints, but the Master threw Grace off of a balcony inside the Cloister Room, killing her. With the Master's body dying as the Doctor's regenerations were returned to him, the two Time Lords fought near the Eye of Harmony, culminating in the Master falling into it when he leapt at the Doctor and misjudged the angle. The Doctor called out to him and offered his hand, but the Master refused his aid. (TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"])
According to one account, when the Master stole a fraction of the Doctor's regeneration energy, he transcended Bruce's body and got stuck in an incomplete regenerative state as a Watcher. Grace perceived him as a brilliant white figure with a lumpy unformed face and a snarl which spoke with Bruce's voice. As in other accounts, this Watcher Master physically fought the Doctor and was trapped in the Eye of Harmony. (PROSE: The Novel of the Film [+]Loading...["The Novel of the Film (novelisation)"])
As the TARDIS travelled back in its time-stream, Grace and Lee were revived by some energy from the Eye. The TARDIS then returned them back to San Francisco in time for New Year's Day 2000. (TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"]) According to one account, following Clara Oswald jumping into the Doctor's timestream (TV: The Name of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Name of the Doctor (TV story)"]) a splinter of Clara stood alongside the Doctor, Grace, and Lee in the TARDIS as it arrived back to San Francisco. (PROSE: The Eighth Doctor Part 1 [+]Loading...{"page":"173","1":"The Eighth Doctor Part 1 (short story)"})
Aftermath
Leaving San Francisco, the Doctor fell victim to a last trap set by the Master, causing yet another case of amnesia. He found himself travelling to different past points in his own timeline, encountering his previous incarnations to regain his memories via telepathic contact with each past incarnation. During these visits, he also offered the past Doctors advice and assistance, even securing the release of Borusa from the Tomb of Rassilon while arranging an inquiry into the trial of his sixth incarnation. At the end of this journey, Rassilon revealed that he had been guiding the Doctor's journeys to make some changes to the pattern of history; the Doctor regained his memories and acquired a new companion, Sam Jones, a young woman from the same Shoreditch neighbourhood in which he lived in during his first incarnation. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
Since the Doctor had inadvertently changed his own timeline by travelling through it, (PROSE: Alien Bodies) the "Great Grey Eminence" made a deal with the Faction Paradox to fold the Doctor's timeline back on itself and rewrite Gallifreyan history, at least according to the Book of Lies. The Boy suggested that, as part of the Eminence's plan to re-sterilise Gallifrey, he arranged for the Doctor to travel with Sam rather than someone who would dare to "screw" him. (PROSE: Unnatural History)
As the Eye of Harmony tried to break him down into pure energy, the Master managed to ride the energy into a spare room, which the Doctor's TARDIS then ejected into the Time Vortex to protect the Doctor. The Master, having reconstituted his stolen body, would remain stranded in the Vortex for hundreds of years, rooting through the Doctor's possessions in search of something to help him escape. (AUDIO: The Lifeboat and the Deathboat) Nevertheless, the power of the Eye had re-energised the decaying body he had stolen from Bruce, enabling him to continue to use it. (AUDIO: Day of the Master)
The Master eventually found himself on Kolstan, where he met Artron, and posed as an assistant sent by the Time Lords. When the Eighth Doctor arrived, the Master inflicted a fatal wound on the Doctor and used this to force Artron to operate a machine that would transfer the energy of the native Kolstani into him. However, Artron was able to adjust the machine so that he would absorb the power of the Kolstani instead, although this unintentionally turned them into the Ravenous. When Artron used the power of the Kolstani to disappear with the Doctor, the Master used his future TARDIS to escape to the Time Lord station that all his incarnations used as a base. Meeting with the the "War" Master and Missy, the Master worked with them to stop the Ravenous's alliance and granting the future Decayed Master a new regenerative cycle, allowing him to regenerate into the Reborn Master. The Bruce Master had his mind wiped by his successors and was thrown back into the Time Vortex in order to preserve their timeline. (AUDIO: Day of the Master)
