The Master

Real Name: Unknown

Identity/Class: Extra-temporal and extra-terrestrial (Gallifreyan)

Occupation: Conqueror and master villain, former British Prime Minister

Affiliations: (formerly) the Deca; allied to the Daleks, the Axons, the Nestene Consciousness, the Sea Devils, the Rani, Toclafane

Enemies: The Doctor, UNIT

Known Relatives: Lucy Saxon (wife)

Aliases: Koschei, Reverand Magister, Professor Thascales, Mr.Seta, the Adjudicator, the Commissioner, the Duke of Dominoes, Melkur, the Portreeve, Tremas, Kalid, Sir Gilles Estram, Major Kreer, Bruce, Professor Yana, Harold Saxon

Base of Operations: Mobile throughout time and space.

First Appearance: Doctor Who "Terror of the Autons" (BBC, 1971)

Powers/Abilities: The Master is a powerful hypnotist, able to dominate most beings with a few seconds of talking to them. He is also a skilled disguise artist. Like the Doctor, he is a Time Lord, giving him incredible recuperative powers and the ability to regenerate if injured to the point of death - although this last ability has now been used up. Using his TARDIS he is able to travel virtually anywhere in time and space. He also tends to be armed with a variety of weapons, most commonly his Tissue Compression Eliminator which shrinks its victims to death. However his greatest weapon remains his tremendous intellect.

History: Every Holmes must have his Moriarty, the arch-nemesis who constantly confronts him and forces him to fight his utmost to overcome their evil schemes. And so, when the Doctor entered his third incarnation and was briefly exiled to 20th century Earth, his past caught up with him. The Master, an old friend of the Doctor's from his Academy days, who had become his bitterest rival, came to our planet to harass and haunt his former classmate.

A Time Lord like his rival, the Master was ideally suited like no other to battle the Doctor. Armed with an evil genius and the ability to hypnotise lesser minds with a gaze and a few choice words, he went from one villainous scheme to another as he attempted to gain power and destroy his heroic counterpart.

Like the Doctor, the Master has changed his appearance over the years, although he can no longer do so naturally and instead has acted as a parasitic body snatcher the last couple of times he has been forced to do so.


Koschei incarnation

(Divided Loyalties (fb)) Koschei of the House of Oakdown is at the Time Lord Academy at the Capitol. He has become a member of the Deca, a group of students far smarter than the average Gallifreyan. One of his closest friends is a fellow Prydonian who has just adopted the name, the Doctor.

(The Dark Path)


Delgado incarnation

(Reconnaissance)

(Terror of the Autons) Now calling himself the Master, Koschei makes contact with the Nestene Consciousness, and strikes a deal with them to help them conquer the Earth. He does this mostly to plague his old friend the Doctor.

(The Mind of Evil)

(The Claws of Axos)

(Colony in Space)

(The Daemons)

(The Man in the Ion Mask)

(Freedom)

(The Face of the Enemy)

(Libra: The Switching)

(Who Killed Kennedy)

(The Sea Devils)

(The Time Monster)

(Verdigris)

(Frontier in Space)

(The Killing Stone)

(The Duke of Dominoes)

(Legacy of the Daleks)


Pratt/ Beevers burnt incarnation

(The Deadly Assassin) Having been found on Terserrus by Chancellor Goth, the dying Master holds his form together by sheer force of will. Goth takes him back to Gallifrey and hides him in the catacombs beneath the Capitol. The Master hatches a scheme to access the Eye of Harmony and harness its energies to power a new cycle of regenerations.

(The Keeper of Traken)


Ainley incarnation

(Logopolis) With his body crisis apparently averted through the theft of Tremas' form, the Master now  returns his attention to the conquest of the universe.

(Castrovalva)

(Time-Flight)

(The King's Demons)

(The Five Doctors)

(Planet of Fire)

(A Town Called Eternity)

(The Mark of the Rani)

(Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe)

(Business Unusual)

(The Quantum Archangel)

(Survival)

(Stop the Pigeon)


Art by Lee Sullivanback to Beevers incarnation

(Dust Breeding) The Master attempts to cleanse his form of the Cheetah virus, but his method backfires, and instead his form is blasted backwards through its own timeline, returning him to the scarred and dying form he inhabited just prior to the theft of Tremas body.

(Master)


restored to the Ainley incarnation, still infected with Cheetah virus

(First Frontier) Having somehow figured out a way of restoring his body to the Tremas form, the Master is disappointed to discover he still carries the Cheetah virus in his cells. Allying himself with the Tzun, whose knowledge of genetics are without peer, he strikes a bargain with them to have them develop nano-probes which will cleanse his form and allow him to regenerate again.


Basil Rathbone/Gordon Tipple incarnation

(First Frontier) Successfully regenerating after Ace fatally shot his last body, the Master continues to work with the Tzun to help them invade the Earth.

(Housewarming)

(Happy Endings)

(The Eight Doctors)

(Doctor Who: The Movie)


Eric Roberts incarnation

(Doctor Who: The Movie) His own body destroyed by the Daleks, the Master survives as a consciousness inhabiting a symbiotic deathworm. He uses this temporary form to steal the body of an ambulance man, killing his victim in the process. Trapped now in a decaying form, he only has a short time left to him to transfer his mind into something more permanent - such as the newly regenerated Doctor.


Preacher incarnation

(The Fallen) Trapped in the Vortex, the Master's mind makes contact with Estarath the Gatherer, who restores him to corporeal form in the revived corpse of a wino on Earth.

(Road to Hell (bts))

(The Glorious Dead)


Derek Jacobi incarnation

(The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) Having somehow survived all his recent misfortunes, and the destruction of the entire Time Lord civilisation, the Master attends the Doctor's wedding. He is temporarily sans beard, as the Doctor has grown one, and the Master feels he must always be the Doctor's polar opposite.

(The Screams of the Shalka)


Professor Yana

Utopia


Harry Saxon

Utopia

The Sound of Drums

Last of the Time Lords

Comments: Originally played by Roger Delgado, after the death of that actor in a tragic car crash the part was played by both Peter Pratt and Geoffrey Beevers, as a scarred Master at the end of his life cycle. Stealing another's body to heal his own damaged one, Anthony Ainley became the new Master and played opposite four Doctors, before being replaced in the US produced TV movie by Eric Roberts (and very briefly Gordon Tipple). The Master recently returned to Doctor Who, portrayed first by Sir Derek Jacobi, and then by John Simm. The part was played by Johnathan Pryce in the spoof story The Curse of Fatal Death, and Geoffrey Beevers has returned to the role for two Big Finish audio plays. Sam Kisgart (an anagram of Mark Gatiss) has played the part of the incarnation which followed immediately from Delgado's in the alternate universe Doctor story, Sympathy for the Devil. Sir Derek Jacobi portrayed him online (making him the second actor to have played both the Doctor and the Master, after Mark Gatiss) in the BBCi fully animated audio drama The Scream of the Shalka, a couple of years before playing him on TV.

Thanks to Tim Hammerquist for corrections.

 

 

 

 

 


Other incarnations

The Magistrate alternate

(The Infinity Doctors) In a reality where it seems the Doctor never left Gallifrey, his best friend from the Academy is The Magistrate, a bearded Time Lord who often dresses in black. The Magistrate is one of Gallifrey's most law abiding citizens.


Koschei alternate

(The Face of the Enemy) In a reality where the Doctor turned evil after being exiled to Earth and took over the planet, Koschei never became the Master. Instead he was captured and tortured by the authorities when he landed on Earth.


Delgado alternate

(Sympathy for the Devil) The Master arrives on Earth, just as in Terror of the Autons. But the Doctor has not begun his exile to Earth, and the Master is trapped there, forced to watch as UNIT handles the same threats the Doctor would have, only using far greater force. Without the Doctor's aid, the peace initiatives with China fail, and the world is a far darker and more violent place. The Master works for the UN for a while, before defecting to the Chinese, where he uses the mind parasites seen in The Mind of Evil to brainwash political dissidents into becoming suicide shock troops for the Chinese government. When all the parasites reach the point where they can absorb no more, the Master realises those troops will soon regain their memories. He locates the last, uncollected parasite, kept prisoner in a monastery in Hong Kong, and steals a stealth plane to go there the day before the British hand the colony back - his plan, to gain control of the creature and then use this as a bargaining chip to be appointed ruler of the world. However the plane crashes while landing, and he is fatally injured.

Kisgart incarnation (one subsequent to Delgado)

(Sympathy for the Devil) Regenerating, the Master kills a witness who had come to see if there were any survivors who might need help, and steals the man's clothes. He then makes his way to the monastery where he encounters the newly arrived Doctor (recently regenerated into the Warner incarnation).


Pryce alternate

(The Curse of Fatal Death) In another timeline the Master plots the Doctor's death, but accidentally broadcasts his plans directly into his adversary's TARDIS.


Delgado Master's apocryphal appearances

(The Glen of Sleeping) The Master revives a group of time lost highland warriors as part of a plan to steal a nuclear submarine. However the Doctor turns the tables on him and sends both the renegade and his Scottish allies back to 1845.

(Fogbound)


Ainley Master's apocryphal appearance

(Destiny of the Doctors) The Master somehow traps all the different incarnations of the Doctor in a virtual reality, and it is up to the Doctor's newest ally to rescue him.


CLARIFICATIONS: Not to be confused with

Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.

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