The Secret Diary of the Master (short story)

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The Secret Diary of the Master was a short story by James Stoker published in Issue 490 of Doctor Who Magazine, shortly after the broadcast of TV: Death in Heaven. It posited that, throughout their lives, the Master kept a diary, which was found by UNIT after Missy's apparent death at the graveyard in the aforementioned television story.

The story had a similar concept and delivery to The Susan Diaries, which had been published anonymously in Doctor Who Magazine about a decade earlier.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

DWM has intercepted a top-secret email about the Time Lord menace known as "the Master"; the villain with many faces and countless plans...

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

A UNIT clean-up team, headed by Malcolm Taylor, find a black book at the site of the recent incident involving the Doctor and Missy. It is in fact the Master's diary. Enthusiastically noting that it may fill some gaps in UNIT's file on the Master, Malcolm emails it to Kate Stewart and the rest of UNIT Command in both Geneva and New York, recommending that it be placed in the Black Archive. He also attaches twenty-seven extracts from the diary, ranging from the Master's first attempt to invade Earth to Missy's latest. Chillingly, the last entry appears to have been written after Missy's Cyberman scheme failed, suggesting she survived her apparent execution by Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.

Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

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Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • This story nods to the UNIT dating controversy: the diary entry written during TV: The Mind of Evil shows the Master to be uncertain of exactly when in Earth's history he has become stuck, although he guesses it's "probably" the 1970s.
  • This story was illustrated with screenshots of past Master stories, captioned in a way which tied them to the text of the story, although it's unclear whether these photos and captions are supposed to be part of the in-universe diary or not.

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]