Template:After Cheetahs

Making sense of the 1990s

It's difficult to understand what happens to the Master after Survival without examining the real-life publishing history of non-televised Doctor Who. Each major purveyor of Doctor Who fiction in the 1990s gave a different take on what happened to the post-Cheetah Master, largely because each had differing publishing ambitions.

Virgin Books

As the name implies, the Virgin New Adventures are about telling new stories, and this clearly colours Virgin Books' approach to the Master. 1994's First Frontier is the first piece of fiction to feature the Master after Survival. It's an attempt to move beyond the Ainley Master into uncharted territory by establishing that the Master gets to properly regenerate again. After leaving Cheetah World for 1957 Earth, he regains full Time Lord form, Ace shoots him, and he becomes someone that looks like — according to author David A. McIntee's description — Basil Rathbone. Other stories that can fit into this "Rathbone" continuity are Housewarming and the book Happy Endings.

BBC Books

In 1996, BBC Books begin planning their takeover of the Doctor Who prose license. Their ambition: give the Eighth Doctor pride of place. The loyalty their editors have is to the TV movie — not to Virgin Books. So they are interested in drawing a straighter line between Ainley and Roberts. Toward this end, Terrance Dicks presents The Eight Doctors as the inaugural novel of the Eighth Doctor Adventures range. The book includes an explanation of how the "snake" seen in the TVM related to Ainley. By the end of the decade, Mike Tucker and Robert Perry completely eviscerate New Adventures continuity. In the short story Stop the Pigeon and the book Prime Time, they return to Survival — and happily ignore First Frontier. To them, the Master still looks like Anthony Ainley. He's still infected with the Cheetah Virus. And he very definitely doesn't have a new set of regenerations. The BBC Books Master — except in the Past Doctor Adventures range — is more or less just the Ainley Master.

Big Finish

Big Finish are built on sound. They need a voice actor to command the part, and one that will sell CDs. So they decide to go with an actor who's already established in the role: Geoffrey Beevers. This means that their narrative problem is to explain why the Master sounds like the guy from The Keeper of Traken. Their solution is simple: undo Keeper of Traken. Write a tiny bit of technobabble to suck the Tremas facade away. Voilá: Beevers' got the gig again. Look for this "retro-Beevers" Master in Seventh Doctor audios Dust Breeding and Master. But don't expect much in the way of narrative connection. There's no explanation of how this Master either escaped Cheetah World or turned into Eric Roberts.

Handed over to the Daleks

Although there are three post-Survival paths for the Master, the explanations given by both BBC Books and the Virgin New Adventures don't contradict each other about what happens immediately pre-TV movie. They don't tell the same story, of course, but neither are they in irresolvable conflict. The Eight Doctors is simply more interested in telling the story of the morphant snake, while Lungbarrow concentrates on the political gambit that Lord President Romana undertakes in handing over the Master to the Daleks.