The Secret Diary of the Master (short story)

The Secret Diary of the Master
Main character(s):	The Master
Featuring:	Malcolm
Main setting:	8 November 2014
Key crew
Editor:	Tom Spilsbury
Writer:	James Stoker
Release details
Release date:	20 August 2015

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

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

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

• Malcolm Taylor
• The Master
• The Doctor
• Nestene Consciousness
• Jo Grant
• Axos
• Azal
• Ruth Ingram
• Stuart Hyde
• Kronos
• Og
• Not-Og
• Goth
• Kassia
• Kamelion
• Chang Lee
• Dalek Emperor
• Lucy Saxon

Worldbuilding

Individuals

• The Master thinks Stuart Hyde has a "very irritating moustache".
• The Bruce Master believes that, rather than his heritage, the Eighth Doctor actually became half-human in the process of regenerating.
• During the Year That Never Was, the Saxon Master had Bill Gates executed.

Monuments and landmarks

• During the Year That Never Was, the Saxon Master had the face of four his incarnations carved into Mount Rushmore: his current one, "Beardy One", "Beardy Two" and "Wizard of Oz".

Locations

• During the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords got the Doctor to seal the rift of the Medusa Cascade while the War Master was sent to the Cruciform to face the Dalek Emperor.

Popular culture

• The Master displays a fondness for prog music and intends to buy a King Crimson record.
• The Master believes the Dæmons were responsible for many landmarks in Earth's cultural history, from the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution to the Swinging Sixties.
• Hugh Grant was seen "dancing around Downing Street" in Love Actually.

Species

• The Dæmons are an "ancient race".
• The Master considers Sea Devils to be a mere subspecies of Silurians, who are also known as "Eocenes".
• Shapeshifting species include Zygons, Rutans and Axons.

TARDISes

• The Master's TARDIS once disguised itself as a Speak Your Weigh machine in Swindon.
• Around the time when his TARDIS was disguised as a Melkur, the Master had installed a special stereoscopic viewing system to replace the scanner

Notes

• 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

• The Master writes that it has "come to [his] attention" that the Doctor has recently been exiled to Earth. (TV: The War Games, Spearhead from Space)
• When setting out on his own attempt to conquer Earth, the Master is aware of previous attempts by the Cybermen, (TV: The Invasion) the Daleks, (TV: The Evil of the Daleks) and the Great Intelligence. (TV: The Web of Fear)
• The Master becomes an "invasion consultant" for the Nestene Consciousness, which entails suggesting new ways the Nestene's power can be used for warfare and murder, (TV: Terror of the Autons) and later performs similar services for the being known as Axos. (TV: The Claws of Axos)
• The Master plans to highjack the World Peace Conference to cause World War III. He also pencils a mind parasite into the scheme, but has only very vague plans for its use, and, in hindsight, he comes to view the inclusion of the parasite in the scheme as a misstep. (TV: The Mind of Evil)
• After his scheme with Axos fails, the Master decides to use the Doomsday Weapon, (TV: Colony in Space) and then, when this fails, to try and obtain the powers of Azal. (TV: The Dæmons)
• After his alliance with the Sea Devils falls through, the Master considers trying to find the planet of the Clangers to form an alliance with them. (TV: The Sea Devils)
• The Master redecorated his TARDIS control room shortly before beginning his scheme with Kronos, only to discover the Third Doctor happened to have done the same. (TV: The Time Monster)
• Some time after his plan to cause a war between the Humans and Draconians with the help of the Daleks and Ogrons fall through, (TV: Frontier in Space) the Decayed Master is founded "writing in pain" on Tersurus by Goth, and concocts a scheme to use the Eye of Harmony to regenerate himself, destroy Gallifrey and its solar system, and gain ultimate power. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
• The Master stole the body of Tremas, (TV: The Keeper of Traken) and then followed the Doctor to Logopolis. (TV: Logopolis)
• The Master notes that he "need not wast time to explain how" he survived the Castrovalvans' turning on him (TV: Castrovalva) to then scheme to get the power of the Xeraphin. (TV: Time-Flight)
• On Xeriphas, the Master found Kamelion, and brought him back to Earth for testing. (TV: The King's Demons)
• While in the Death Zone on Gallifrey, the Tremas Master is upset that the First Doctor does not recognise him (TV: The Five Doctors) because they were at the Academy together "quite recently for him". (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey, etc.)
• The Master's attempt to built a better Tissue Compression Eliminator instead left him "dimensionally challenged", forcing him to seek a cure on the planet Sarn. (TV: Planet of Fire)
• The Master survived being incinerated on Sarn, (PROSE: A Town Called Eternity) and headed to Killingworth. (TV: The Mark of the Rani)
• The Tremas Master "hilariously" brought a version of Mel from the Sixth Doctor's personal future to his trial, (TV: The Ultimate Foe) which he hopes will cause "no end of confusion". (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors)
• The Master was nearly taken over by the Cheetah Virus, (TV: Survival) but escaped and cured himself of the Virus's influence. (PROSE: First Frontier)
• Soon after this, however, he was captured by the Daleks and executed. However, having foreseen this eventuality, he had "acquired" the ability to "reconstitute [him]self as a viscous worm", which he promptly used to acquire a new body — that of a man called Bruce. (TV: Doctor Who)
• The Saxon Master is aware that the Doctor already knew how to fly, (COMIC: Levitation; TV: City of Death) and enjoys now having the same ability as a silver lining to his failed resurrection. (TV: The End of Time)
• Having "strangely enjoyed" wearing women's clothes when transplanted into the body of every single human to become the Master Race, (TV: The End of Time) the Master eventually regenerates into a female form: Missy. (TV: Dark Water)
• Missy delights in pointing out that Adric is part of the Nethersphere. (PROSE: Seb)