 |
Anthony Ainley as
The
Master |
|
 Of all the monsters and villains within Doctor Who it
is the non-humanoid that are remembered the most. The most famous of course
are the Cybermen and
the Daleks. However, it is not only these villains
that The Doctor has become involved with. During The Doctor's travels he
has also encountered many human adversaries who have, for one reason or
another, tried to carry out some event which The Doctor has been compelled
to try and prevent. These have included characters not only from Earth
but from The Doctor's home planet as well.
Despite being a generally peaceful race whose overall
view is not to interfere with the lives and cultures of others there have
been many Time Lords who needed to be fought. These renegade and disillusioned
Time Lords have included: The
Meddling Monk, the War
Chief, Omega,
Borusa and The Rani, many of these being The Doctor’s old classmates
at the Academy while another was once his favourite teacher. However, it
is the renegade Time Lord known as The Master who seemed to end up pitting
himself against The Doctor the most.
There have been seven different actors who have played
The Master. The first was Roger Delgado (1971 - 1973) followed by: Peter
Pratt in 1976, Geoffrey Beevers in 1981, Anthony Ainley (1981 - 1989),
then, in the 1996 TV movie, Eric Roberts and more recently, in 2007, Sir
Derek Jacobi and John Simm.
The idea of having a recurring character for The Doctor
to be pitted against is similar to many other fictional programmes.
The Master can be likened to The Face in Adam Adamant Lives!;
The Joker, Penguin and The Riddler in Batman; Blofield in
the James Bond films and even Q in Star Trek The Next
Generation. In 1971 the idea
for The Master was not completely new. Some of his character traits
can easily been seen in the Meddling Monk and more so in the War
Chief. His personality can also been seen in later Doctor Who characters,
mostly the Back Guardian and even, though in a much smaller way,
The Rani.
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Roger Delgado
(1971 - 1973) |
|
Despite mostly playing the villain in the many films,
television and stage plays, Roger Delgado - the first actor to portray
The Master - was in real life the kindest and gentlest of men. During
filming on location he would on numerous occasions be cheered rather
than booed at by onlookers. It is reported that children loved him
and that he once said 'I love playing The Master. He is the man
fans love to hate'. He was a very popular member of the cast
and it was partly because of his sudden death, in a car accident,
that triggered the break up of those involved in the Third
Doctor's era.
As revealed
in the spin-off media, The Master was originally a close friend of
The Doctor's while the two of them were at school, at which point
he was known as 'Koschei' and was a member of the Deca, the ten greatest
Time Lords of their year, whose members included The Doctor, Ushas
(The Rani), Magnus (The War Chief) and Mortimus (The Meddling Monk).
According to The Doctor, when Time Lords reach the age of eight they
are taken to a tear in reality that allows them to see into the Time
Vortex; some are inspired, some run (The Doctor claims he was one
of these), and some are driven mad. If The Master's memory is accurate
- having actually died on more than one occasion the reliability
of his memory is suspect to say the least - when he looked into the
Vortex, he first began to hear the persistent sound of drums, allegedly
calling him to war with the Universe. However, regardless of the
truth about the drums, The Master's entire existence was undeniably,
irrevocably changed thanks to a mistake The Doctor made as a child;
when the young Koschei was nearly drowned by a school bully called
Torvic, The Doctor struck Torvic in the head and killed him, but,
unable to cope with his guilt, he agreed to allow the Eternal, Death,
to take his pain away, little suspecting that she would erase his
memory of committing the crime and transfer it to Koschei instead.
It was the innocent victim who suffered the guilt and self-loathing
of the crime which his friend had committed, driving him further
and further from the person he might have been, condemning him to
a lifetime of loneliness, hatred and despair as The Master.
 |
| Terror of the Autons |
|
For a time, at least, Koschei managed to control his grief,
simply exploring the universe rather than destroying it. Koschei even
rescued a young woman called Arilla from the 28th century and began to
travel with her, and even managed to do some good in the universe, albeit
using more violent methods than The Doctor did, such as killing men in
self-defence while The Doctor would seek merely to disarm. These travels
eventually came to an end when he met the Second Doctor during the events
of "The
Dark Path", while investigating a device known as the
Darkheart - created by the beings who would evolve into the Chronovores
- that was capable of changing history to the extent of reshaping the
evolution of entire planets in the past. During his encounter with The
Doctor, Koschei killed Allia by accident, only to discover that she was
a Time Lord who'd been sent by the High Council to spy on him, and this
discovery gave Death all the hold she needed to take control of Koschei
for good. He attempted to use the power of the Darkheart to rewrite history
to suit his own designs, vowing that even The Doctor would come to call
him 'Master', but the unexpected intervention of Jamie allowed The Doctor
to sabotage the Darkheart before it could be used, leaving Koschei to
be sucked into the orbit of a black hole. As a result, Koschei wasted
most of his lives trying to get out of the black hole's orbit via his
TARDIS.
The first television story The Master appeared in was
the 1971 story "Terror
of the Autons" where he is seen leaving
his TARDIS which has materialised as a blue removal van at a circus,
having decided to destroy Earth by bringing the Nestene Consciousness back to the planet. It is the use of his TCE - the Tissue Compression
Eliminator, a weapon that turned the target into a doll-sized version
of themselves - on a radio technician in the control room at the top
of an aerial mast and a warning from another Time Lord which first alerts
The Doctor to The Master's presence on Earth. It is not initially obvious
as to why The Master is out to get The Doctor in particular, but it is
fun to watch him try many different techniques and disguises to do so.
However, the fact that The Master is Death's Champion is the most likely
motivation for his attempts to kill The Doctor; as the Champion of both
Time and Life, The Doctor exists in direct opposition to The Master,
so, on some level, The Master is instinctively inclined to kill his 'counterpart'.
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| The Dæmons |
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There are many similarities between The Master and The
Doctor even though they are the exact opposite of each other. They both
attended the Time Lord academy at the same time, grew frustrated and
disillusioned with Time Lord society, both stole a TARDIS so as to roam
the universe and they are both equal intellectually. But here the similarities
end. Whereas The Doctor uses his time travelling abilities for good The
Master is only interested in causing chaos and disruption. The Doctor
hates guns and any other forms of violence whereas The Master gains great
satisfaction in using his TCE - and, in the modern series, his laser
screwdriver - just for the fun of it. The Doctor uses his hypnotic powers
(When he used them at all) to prevent confrontations, release the suffering
of others, and acquire vital information, whereas The Master uses his
powers to dominate the will of those who unfortunately become involved
with him. In their initial on-screen meeting in the Third Doctor’s
era, both men demonstrated a certain elegant charisma that made it easy
for them to win the support of others through nothing more than the force
of their personalities, but while The Doctor retained this charm under
many circumstances except when in direct danger, The Master more than
once shifted his attitude to show a ruthless, sociopathic side to his
nature, the sadistic aspect of his personality replacing his earlier
charm as time went on.
One of the most obvious differences between The Doctor
and The Master lies in their attitude towards death, with The Doctor accepting
that he will eventually die - often stating that death is what gives life
purpose to foes such as vampires ("The
Eight Doctors") - despite his ability to regenerate, while The
Master is constantly driven to survive, his later ruthlessness thus being
explained by his increased desire to escape death. This plays a particularly
important part in many of his actions as The Master is unable to regenerate
in the ‘normal’ way, having used up all of his available regenerations
due to being trapped in a black hole by the Second
Doctor and later injuries sustained when Susan destroyed his equipment
after he tried to kidnap her, driving him to seek an alternate means of
lengthening his life on several occasions. His first attempt was to use
all the energy he could from the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey itself. The
fact that this release would undoubtedly destroy his home world did not
bother him in the slightest. His second and more successful attempt was
when he captured and took over the body of Tremas, one of the Consuls of
Traken and also the father of The Doctor’s companion Nyssa's father,
the embers of the Source of Traken keeping his new body energised for as
long as he needed it until the fire died out. After Tzun provided nanobots
that should have restored his ability to regenerate proved unsuccessful,
his final attempt was to try and steal all of The Doctor's remaining regenerations.
Thankfully this final attempt failed, although he was later restored and
granted a new set of lives by the Time Lords when they required his aid.
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Peter Pratt
(1976) |
|
Not only
are The Doctor and The Master different but so are their TARDIS's. The
Doctor's it seems is faulty and so causes The Doctor, and his travelling
companions, no end of trouble. Whereas The Master's is not only fully
functioning, including the Chameleon Circuit, but it is even a later
model, much to the annoyance of The Doctor when he finds out (Although
part of this initial annoyance stemmed from the fact that this meant
that The Doctor couldn’t just steal components from The Master’s
TARDIS to repair his own and thus escape his current exile). Also, while
The Doctor often treats his TARDIS as his oldest friend, The Master’s
relationship with his TARDIS has never displayed any signs that he sees
it as anything more than a mere machine.
The
Master’s ultimate aim was to rule and gain power in any way possible,
but this was generally tempered by the all-consuming desire to destroy
The Doctor. Initially this was simply a need for revenge because of his
capture and subsequent imprisonment on Earth. But since then the constant
frustrations that The Doctor has dealt him have served to root this desire
to obliterate his rival far above any other schemes he might have. He was
driven not merely to beat The Doctor, but to show The Doctor that he had
outsmarted him. This led him to constantly gloat while he had the upper
hand and thus allowing The Doctor the necessary opportunity to ultimately
defeat him. However hard he tried The Master could never fully eradicate
this flaw within his character and so defeat The Doctor.
He
can in some ways be likened to the Daleks, as he is totally bad. The only
real difference in their characters is that The Master could be extremely
charming thus making him even more dangerous for those unfortunate enough
to trust him whereas a Daleks looks and acts untrustworthy from the outset,
with The Master regularly assuming disguises to win support - such as Reverend
Magister in "The
Dæmons" or Harold Saxon in "The
Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords" - while the Daleks only once pretended
to be anything other than the killers they are and this was merely due
to a lack of power ("The
Power of the Daleks"). He can also be
likened to a mischievous schoolboy as he takes great pride and satisfaction
in his macabre practical jokes. These have included bombs rigged with string,
a murderous telephone cable and even a deadly plastic armchair. But his
most horrific trademark is the many miniaturised corpses that he has left
behind from the use of his TCE which compresses the target down into a
twisted miniaturised version of themselves. It is therefore fitting that
at one point The Master became a victim of his own evil use of this gun,
being shrunk down to only a few inches in height while trying to increase
its power.
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Geoffrey Beevers
(1981) |
|
Due to
the many alien invasions and plots he instigated and assisted
in he became a very sought after fugitive to be hunted down
by UNIT and even by the
CIA. He derived perverse enjoyment from these events and
especially the subsequent confrontations with The Doctor,
most likely because they were
so evenly matched. This time frame, in many ways, marked
the ‘friendliest’ period
of their time as enemies, The Master once offering The Doctor
the opportunity to rule the universe beside him ("Colony
in Space"),
and on another occasion working with UNIT - along with the First
Doctor’s old companions Barbara
Wright and Ian
Chesterton - directly to help them stop an invasion from
an alternate Earth in The Doctor’s absence (Albeit because the invaders
had stolen his TARDIS and tortured his other self to the
brink of death, The Master
actually killing his other self out of mercy) ("The
Face of the Enemy").
Despite this, The Doctor's consistent compassion towards
his adversary when faced with a situation that could result
in The Master’s
permanent defeat - such as when he requested that The Master
be freed by Kronos ("The
Time Monster"), or his evident grief when The Master appeared to have
been killed by an exploding spaceship ("The
Last of the Gaderene ")
- was never fully reciprocated, their encounters always
featuring The Master making some effort to kill The Doctor
(Although he once infiltrated UNIT
HQ on Christmas during their mutual exile simply to talk
to The Doctor, only planting bombs in the base because it
was ‘expected’ of
him). In many cases, however, The Master’s desire to ensure The Doctor
knew that he had lost was his main weakness, as it meant
that he always gave The Doctor the chance to escape when
the situation got serious rather
than just kill him outright before his latest plan was completed.
His regular catch phrase was 'I am The Master and you
WILL obey me.' Unfortunately for those who heard this statement they usually
ended up being either hypnotised into doing so or duped into believing
that The Master was their honest leader. Of all of The Doctor's companions
who have had the misfortune to meet The Master, Jo Grant was
one of the few to prove that he was no threat to her. However, this was
not the case when they first met when The Master easily managed to hypnotise
her to deliver a bomb to UNIT in an attempt to kill The Doctor. Jo did
eventually manage to redeem herself in their final encounter when she informed
him that she could now withstand his hypnotic attacks and she was able
to prove it much to his announce. Other companions however did not fare
so well: Adric found himself caught in The Master's
TARDIS and was forced to trick The Doctor, Nyssa had to suffer the loss
of her father who was taken over by him, Tegan
Jovanka's Aunt Vanessa was murdered,
Peri found herself confused and disorientated into believing Kamelion -
while under The Master’s control - was her stepfather, Mel had to
witness an old schoolfriend fall under his influence, Ace never got the
chance of getting the better of him, Dr Grace Holloway and Chang Lee were nothing
but pawns in his attempt to use the TARDIS to destroy Earth, and Martha
Jones was forced to walk an Earth under The Master’s control for
a year while the immortal Jack Harkness was repeatedly tortured to death
merely for the fun of it.
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Anthony Ainley
(1981 - 1989) |
|
Not only is The Master able to trick and use The Doctor's
companions and other humans in his plans and schemes, he was also able
to manipulate events and take advantage of many alien creatures. These
have included the Autons,
the Axos, Azal, Sea
Devils, Draconians, Ogrons,
the Cybermen and even the Daleks (Although these last were subsequently
responsible for putting him on trial for his crimes and - apparently -
executing him).
The Master
was also good at subterfuge and impersonations. He has been seen as a telephone
repair man, a scientist, an art collector, and even as a vicar! He also
used disguises to evade being captured and this included not only disguising
himself but others as well so as to fool his hunters into believing that
he had been caught or killed when in fact it is somebody else instead while
he makes his getaway, as most notably seen when he escaped prison after
The Doctor destroyed the Sea Devils’ headquarters during The Master’s
attempted alliance with them. He was particularly known for using elaborate
face-masks during the Fifth
Doctor’s era - once even assuming a disguise
simply because he felt like it rather than for any practical purpose while
attempting to control the power of the ancient race known as the Xeraphim
on ancient Earth ("Time-Flight") -, with most of his other ‘disguises’ simply
featuring him assuming a new identity while remaining unaltered physically.
He remains one of The Doctor's most persistent and dedicated
of enemies and has become the most endearing of The Doctor's foes. Even
though he has been outwitted and trapped by The Doctor many times he is
a survivor. He has been arrested and imprisoned by UNIT, banished by Rassilon,
seemingly vaporised in a volcano on the planet Sarn, trapped in The Rani's
TARDIS as it spins out of control, trapped in the Matrix, facing off against
an army of Chronovores, reverted to savagery on the dying Cheetah planet,
cornered by murderous genetically engineered jackals, and even falling
into the Eye of Harmony.
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| Castrovalva |
|
The Master's plans to wreak havoc and disruption
have always been on a grand scale. He is not content with just petty crime
and he has no interest in money or any other financial gain. The Master
always thinks big; to destroy The Doctor's beloved planet Earth by unleashing
the evil of Axos upon it ("The
Claws of Axos"), or to disrupt
the whole universe by instigating an interstellar war between Earth and
the Draconian Empire ("Frontier
in Space"), are in his scheme
of things. Of course he is happy to use smaller events - such as attempting
to prevent the signing of the Magna Carta ("The King’s Demons")
- to add to his ultimate aims especially if The Doctor gets caught up and
humiliated along the way.
The Master has appeared in a total of 20 television stories.
His most appearances were during the Third Doctor's forced exile on Earth.
It was during this time that he found himself captured by UNIT, once being
convinced to help UNIT deal with an invasion from an alternate Earth during
The Doctor’s absence, although he nevertheless attempted to escape
once the crisis was at an end. Even though The Master had many attempts
to have The Doctor killed The Doctor still took the effort to visit him
while The Master was in prison. This could have been because of the fact
that during this time The Doctor was himself stuck on Earth and desperate
also to travel in his TARDIS again, and was thus hoping that The Master
would tell him where his TARDIS was. However, The Master eventually escaped
after contacting the Sea Devils, a race of beings who had lived on Earth
millennia ago, and escaped from prison after The Doctor had been forced
to destroy the Sea Devils’ base.
In the
series, The Master’s departure occurred when The Master vanished
from The Doctor's life after a temporary alliance with the Daleks, but
he was never forgotten. When he did finally reappear again several years
later The Doctor had already undergone his regeneration into the Fourth
Doctor. However, The Master's character and appearance had also undergone
a complete transformation. Gone was his suave and elegant
appearance, and he now resembled a living skeleton rather than anything
human. This regeneration
was later revealed to have been caused by an out-of-sequence
confrontation with the Eighth
Doctor and Susan ("Legacy
of the Daleks"), who
had encountered The Master on Earth years after the Dalek invasion. The
Master had attempted to gain control of a matter transmuter, capable of
turning any element into any other element, but was driven off Earth by
The Doctor and his allies from the remainders of the original Dalek resistance
force, although Susan’s husband David died in the struggle when he
took a shot intended for The Doctor. The Master tried to take Susan as
a hostage, but didn’t realise she was also a Gallifreyian until she
incapacitated him with a telepathic shriek, subsequently leaving him badly
burned when she destroyed the matter transmuter with his TCE and left with
his TARDIS. Now that The Master had reached the end of his cycle of regenerations
he is desperate to stay alive. He was even more obsessed with hatred and
out for revenge against his fellow Time Lords and especially The Doctor.
To this end, he attempted to gain control of the Eye of Harmony - the power
source of all Gallifrey – to use its energy to save himself, despite
the potential risks to Gallifrey as a whole if his plan succeeded, but
The Doctor thwarted his efforts and succeeded in defeating his old adversary,
although The Master was at least partially ‘energised’ by the
confrontation.
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| Time-Flight |
|
His subsequent
return to the series featured The Master’s most infamous plan, as
it not only resulted in not only the death of Tegan's Aunt Vanessa, the
destruction of Logopolis and the blackmail of the whole universe but the
near death of The Doctor. To the viewing public The Master was the cause
for the end of Tom Baker's era as the Fourth Doctor. The Master's plan
to dominate the whole Universe was finally thwarted but it resulted in
The Doctor falling from a deep space satellite dish thus causing his fourth
regeneration. With his enemy disorientated from the recent regeneration,
The Master attempted to set a trap for his nemesis by creating an illusionary
city called Castrovalva with the unwilling aid of Adric, but the city was
so elaborate that the inhabitants developed free will and turned against
The Master
Due to The Master's desire to humiliate The Doctor he
had great pleasure and satisfaction when asked, by the Time Lords, to rescue
The Doctor whose incarnations had become trapped within the Death Zone.
However, it is understandable that he was unable to convince the Third
Doctor that he was in fact there to help. He fared no better with the Fifth
Doctor as well and so ended up assisting the Cybermen. But they too ended
up being tricked and slaughtered by The Master's trickery, shortly before
he himself was defeated by the Third Doctor and The
Brigadier and subsequently
banished by Rassilon. Some time after this, he attempted to improve the
power of his TCE, but this resulted in him being shrunk and forced to use
The Doctor's companion Kamelion - whom The Doctor was subsequently forced
to execute after Kamelion was left horrified at the thought of being used
against The Doctor again - to travel to the planet Sarn, where the healing
fires might be able to restore him to his proper height ("Planet of
Fire"). He was thought to have been killed, but escaped to briefly
join forces with the Rani as he blackmailed her to help him kill the Sixth
Doctor ("Mark of the Rani"), before trying to use The Doctor
to defeat The
Valeyard, who he regarded as a greater threat than The Doctor;
at least with The Doctor he could be sure of having the 'advantage' (Presumably
referring to The Doctor's compassion, thus meaning that The Doctor could
be ‘predicted’ or controlled by threatening others, while The
Valeyard lacked that particular trait) ("The Trial of a Time Lord:
The Ultimate Foe").
After
this encounter, The Master's body began to wear down as the Source of Traken
became depleted. In an attempt to 'recharge' himself - as well as to strike
back at the Chronovores, who he believed were seeking revenge on him for
his earlier attempt to control Kronos - The Master attempted to hijack
the power of the Lux Aeterna - the cosmic energy underlying the fabric
of reality - to become a God, but this only resulted in the temporary creation
of the Quantum Archangel, a being that was determined to remake creation
to give everyone their perfect reality, regardless of the fact that this
would take all meaning out of life. After the Archangel was defeated, The
Master used the dregs of the Lux Aeterna to recharge his body, but was
later attacked by the Chronovores, although he apparently escaped them
under un-revealed circumstances. Subsequently travelling to the planet
of the Cheetah People, The Master began to devolve into an animal-like
state, and was forced to send the planet-hopping kitlings to Earth to try
and lure the Seventh
Doctor to the planet to help him. However, The Master eventually succumbed
to the cheetah 'infection', regressing to a savage, feral state, but was
left behind on the rapidly-dying planet after trying to kill The Doctor.
 |
| The Mark of the Rani |
|
Somehow
escaping the destruction of the planet, but now dying of the Cheetah ‘contagion’,
The Master tried to contact the race known as the Fleshsmiths, who harvested
the flesh of others to survive after a terrible catastrophe, hoping that
they would be able to create a new body for him. However, the Fleshsmiths
imprisoned him and tried to use his TARDIS as a studio set to aid in their
schemes to brainwash the planet Blinni-Garr using subliminal messages in
television broadcasts. Having managed to escape the Fleshsmiths while The
Doctor thwarted their plans, it would appear that The Master apparently
found some other way of curing himself from the infection of the Cheetah
people, but a subsequent attempt to steal the painting The Scream unintentionally
released a psychic weapon of destruction known as the Warp Core, which
was contained in the painting, regressing The Master back to his withered
appearance and forcing the Seventh Doctor to telepathically fight The Master
for control of the Core until the colony where The Scream had been displayed
was destroyed, annihilating the Core and leaving The Master with no other
option but to run.
Some time
after this, The Doctor was reunited with this incarnation of The Master
when he attempted to make a deal with Death in an attempt to bring his
old friend some measure of peace. Under the terms of the deal, Death would
relinquish her hold over The Master for ten years, giving him the chance
to live the life she took from him, but The Doctor would have to kill him
when those ten years were up. As a result, The Master had his memory taken
from him and was banished to the town of Perfugium, where he took on the
identity of the disfigured Doctor John Smith, making friends and actually
attracting romantic interest due to his genuinely good intentions and his
air of mystery. On the tenth year of his time in the village, John Smith
invited his old friends Inspector Victor Schaeffer and his wife Jacqueline
to his house, with Death manifesting herself as John’s maid, Jade,
to ensure that The Doctor kept his word. Realising that John and Jacqueline
genuinely loved each other, The Doctor tried to use this to save The Master,
but Victor, driven mad by Death’s manipulations, killed Jacqueline,
leaving John willing to kill his ‘friend’. As Death stopped
time to allow John, rather than The Master, the opportunity to decide what
to make of his future, she revealed the last secret about Torvic’s
death - that it was The Doctor rather than The Master who’d killed
Torvic - but John forgave The Doctor, understanding that the adult cannot
be blamed for the foolish decisions made by a child who failed to comprehend
what was being offered. John was left with the choice of killing Victor
before he had killed Jacqueline, despite the knowledge that doing so would
turn him into The Master once more, and The Doctor was forcibly banished
from Perfugium before he could even bid John farewell, much less learn
what his old friend would choose in the end.
 |
Eric Roberts
(1996) |
|
Whatever
the eventual outcome of that confrontation, it would appear that John Smith
went on to become The Master once more, as he returned at a later date,
having apparently regressed his body back to the ‘Ainley’ incarnation
only to find himself contaminated by the Cheetah infection once more. Increasingly
desperate to survive, The Master contacted a race known as the The Tzun ("First
Frontier"), who were able to provide him with new nanobots that allowed
him to regenerate (The new incarnation being apparently based on Basil
Rathbone). However, after The Master betrayed the Tzun, setting up a situation
where they would be blamed for starting a nuclear war when they wished
to take advantage of the crisis to offer a message of peace, he destroyed
their ship and left Earth, leaving The Doctor to prevent a Tzun warhead
from destroying Earth. However, it would appear that the nanites that gave
The Master his new regenerations were unsuccessful or only worked in the
short term, as he was next seen having stolen the sacred Loom of Rassilon’s
Mouse to create a new body for himself ("Happy
Endings"). Unfortunately,
he chose to conduct his experiments in the same village where The Doctor’s
companion Benny was getting married, and, with the aid of the former Timewyrm,
The Master was captured by UNIT, although he apparently escaped to search
for further means to continue his existence.
In his
final confrontation with The Doctor, The Master had himself executed by
the Daleks, but transferred his mind into a deathworm, a telepathic creature
that allowed people to transfer their minds into other bodies at the moment
of death. Asking for The Doctor to take his remains back to Gallifrey,
The Master caused the TARDIS to land on Earth and triggered the Seventh
Doctor’s regeneration, simultaneously entering the body of a paramedic.
Using this body, The Master opened the TARDIS’s link to the Eye of
Harmony, intending to use the energy of the Eye to steal The Doctor’s
remaining five regenerations, while also destroying Earth as it was pulled
into the Eye at midnight, when the opposing gravitation forces would be
at their weakest. However, aided by new companions Dr Grace Holloway and
Chang Lee (Who initially worked with The Master until the truth about him
was revealed), The Doctor escaped his old enemy’s trap, their confrontation
ending with The Master being sucked into the Eye of Harmony in The Doctor's
TARDIS. However, this was not the last we saw of him; in "The
Gallifrey Chronicles", the amnesic Doctor briefly spoke with a
disembodied voice from the Eye of Harmony that seems to be The Master.
Based on the information proved in the conversation, it would appear that,
having been trapped in the anti-matter world, The Master had acquired the
same god-like power as Omega, but resents the fact that he cannot use this
power in the real world.
 |
Sir Derek Jacobi
(2007) |
|
When The
Master finally returned in the latest series, it was in the guise of the
kindly Professor Yana (An acronym of the Face of Boe’s last words
- ‘You Are Not Alone’ - but whether this is deliberate is unknown),
an old, human man living at the end of the Universe. Having been resurrected
by the Time Lords with a new body and a new set of regenerations to act
as a warrior in the Time War, The Master fled in fear after witnessing
the Dalek Emperor take control of the Cruciform, and escaped the War by
turning himself into a human and hiding at the end of the universe, a time
where not even the Time Lords had ventured. However, as when he was transformed
into John Smith by The Doctor’s second deal with Death, The Master’s
new personality was a caring, compassionate person, working to save what
was left of humanity by sending them on to the fabled 'Utopia Project'
("Utopia").
Aided by the Tenth
Doctor, Martha Jones and Captain
Jack Harkness, the Professor managed to send the remnants of humanity away
to safety in a rocket, but Martha unintentionally reminded him of his Time
Lord nature, restoring his original identity. Although he was shot by the
Professor’s assistant, The Master managed to escape into the TARDIS,
regenerating into a new, younger body, although The Doctor locked the TARDIS
coordinates to prevent The Master from travelling anywhere but the TARDIS’s
last two destinations.
 |
John Simm
(2007 -2010) |
|
Arriving
in the twenty-first century, The Master subsequently took on the identity
of Harold Saxon, an up-and-coming politician, setting up an elaborate satellite
network to broadcast a subtle subliminal signal that would stop anybody
consciously registering that ‘Harold Saxon’ had no past and
no real policies, as well as prevent The Doctor realising that another
Time Lord was on Earth. This new incarnation was an even greater ‘mirror’ to
The Doctor than ever before, sharing many common traits with the Tenth
Doctor, such as a tendency to babble, a certain enthusiasm about his new
body, a habit of acting eccentric at somewhat inappropriate moments, and
a varied knowledge and fondness for Earth culture; he was even known to
listen to the Scissor Sisters. Manipulating Martha’s family to create
an elaborate trap for The Doctor (Who escaped to the past by repairing
Jack’s damaged Vortex Generator), The Master cannibalised the stolen
TARDIS - its coordinates locked to prevent him going anywhere but Earth
and the end of the universe - to create a Paradox Engine, bringing the
future humans who sought Utopia back as the ‘Toclafane’ - metal
spheres with blades who talked in a sing-song voice - to decimate their
ancestors, believing that it was his right as a Time Lord to change history
and create a new Time Lord empire. Over the course of a year, The Master
tortured The Doctor and Jack, forcing them to watch as he decimated the
world they had vowed to protect and turned it into the base where he would
wage war against the universe.
 |
A Young Master
(The
Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords)
|
|
Fortunately,
The Master continued to make his typical two crucial mistakes when facing
The Doctor; he underestimated The Doctor’s companions - specifically,
Martha Jones, who had escaped using Jack Harkness's vortex generator
- and he left The Doctor alive so that he could gloat about his victory,
albeit transforming The Doctor into a withered version of himself who
could do nothing but watch. Thanks to Martha spreading the story of The
Doctor across the world, The Doctor was restored to full health by The
Master’s own psychic network as the entire population of Earth
thought the word ‘Doctor’ at the same moment. With The Doctor
restored and The Master disarmed - his only remaining weapon would blow
up Earth and destroy him as well, something The Doctor knew The Master
couldn't do - Jack destroyed the Paradox Machine, rewinding time back
to the moment it was activated so that nobody but those in the immediate
vicinity of the machine remembered the last year. However, The Master
was subsequently shot in the chest by his ‘companion’ Lucy
Saxon, refusing to regenerate as the alternative was to be forever imprisoned
inside the TARDIS, dying in The Doctor’s arms, tauntingly informing
The Doctor that he’d won by preventing his old enemy from saving
him.
 |
| The End of Time |
|
Once again,
however, The Master found a way to cheat death, assembling a ‘cult’ prior
to his ascension to the role of Prime Minister who would resurrect him
if something went wrong. Using a ring of The Master’s that apparently
contained some aspect of his mind, along with biodata acquired from Lucy
Saxon, this cult were able to restore The Master to life, but Lucy’s
attempt to disrupt the ‘ritual’ resulted in The Master being
imperfectly resurrected, his new body burning through its life energy at
an accelerated rate, leaving him looking at least a decade older than he
had previously and with a ravenous hunger; although his condition also
granted him the ability to make superhuman leaps and shoot energy bursts
from his hands, these actions apparently drained his life energy faster.
Even in this weakened condition, however, The Master was given a terrifying
chance when he was abducted by billionaire Joshua Naismith to repair an
alien healing device capable of healing the population of an entire planet,
reprogramming the device to impose his DNA over the human race and turn
everyone on Earth into versions of himself. With the drumbeat he heard
now amplified, The Masters were able to track the drums to their source...
learning, much to their shock, that the source was the Time Lords themselves.
In the last days of the Time War, in a desperate attempt to escape destruction,
the Time Lords had sent the signal into the mind of The Master in the past
in order to create an escape route from the Time Lock surrounding the war,
the President of the Time Lords unconcerned about the fact that coming
back into the universe would unleash the horrors of the Time War upon creation,
believing that it was better for the universe to die with the Time Lords
than for it to go on without them. Outraged at having being used by the
Time Lords in that manner - particularly after the President rejected him
as a disease -, The Master helped The Doctor break the link that had drawn
the Time Lords back to the universe, sacrificing himself in a last, vengeful
attack upon the Lord President as the Time Lords faded back into the Time
War. Whether The Master will return again remains unknown. |
|
