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The Master (Doctor Who)

The Master, or "Missy (short for Mistress)" in their female incarnation, is a recurring character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its associated spin-off works. They are a renegade alien Time Lord and the childhood friend and later enemy of the title character, the Doctor.

The Master

Main incarnations
Others

Emil Keller, Professor Thascales, Colonel Masters, Martin Jurgens, Reverend Magister, Tremas, Kalid, Sir Gilles Estram, Bruce, Professor Yana, Harold Saxon, Razor, Missy (Mistress), Agent O, Grigori Rasputin

Multiple actors have played the Master since the character's introduction in 1971. Within the show's narrative, the change in actors and subsequent change of the character's appearance is sometimes explained as the Master taking possession of other characters' bodies or as a consequence of regeneration, which is a biological attribute that allows Time Lords to survive fatal injuries or old age.


The Master was originally played by Roger Delgado from 1971 until his death in 1973.[1] The role was subsequently played by Peter Pratt, Geoffrey Beevers, and Anthony Ainley, with Ainley reprising the role regularly through the 1980s until the series’s cancellation in 1989. Eric Roberts took on the role for the 1996 Doctor Who TV film. Since the show's revival in 2005, the Master has been portrayed by Derek Jacobi, John Simm, Michelle Gomez, and Sacha Dhawan.


Beevers, Roberts, Jacobi, Simm, and Gomez have reprised the role in audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions. At the same time, Alex Macqueen, Gina McKee, Mark Gatiss, James Dreyfus, and Milo Parker portrayed incarnations unique to Big Finish.

Origins[edit]

The creative team conceived of the Master as a recurring villain, first appearing in Terror of the Autons (1971). The Master's title was deliberately chosen by producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks because, like the Doctor, it was a title conferred by an academic degree. A sketch of three "new characters" for 1971 (the other two being Jo Grant and Mike Yates) suggested he was conceived to be of "equal, perhaps even superior rank, to the Doctor."[2]


Letts only had one man in mind for the role: Roger Delgado, who had a long history of playing villains and had already made three attempts to be cast in the series.[3] He had worked previously with Letts and was a good friend of Jon Pertwee.


Malcolm Hulke spoke of the character and his relationship with the Doctor: "There was a peculiar relationship between the Master and the Doctor: one felt that the Master wouldn't really have liked to eliminate the Doctor...you see the Doctor was the only person like him at the time in the whole universe, a renegade Time Lord and in a funny sort of way they were partners in crime."[4]


An unrelated character also known as the Master, who ruled over the Land of Fiction, had previously appeared in the 1968 serial The Mind Robber opposite the Second Doctor.[5]

Aims and character[edit]

A would-be universal conqueror, the Master wants to control the universe. In The Deadly Assassin (1976), his ambitions are described as becoming "the master of all matter".[6] He also had a secondary objective: to make the Doctor suffer. In The Sea Devils (1972), the Master mentions that the "pleasure" of seeing the destruction of the human race, of which the Doctor is fond, would be "a reward in itself."[7]

History within the show[edit]

Encounters with the Third Doctor[edit]

The Master, as played by Roger Delgado, makes his first appearance in Terror of the Autons (1971), where he allies with the Nestene Consciousness to help them invade Earth. The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) convinces the Master to stop this plan at the last minute, and the Master subsequently escapes, albeit with his TARDIS left non-functioning after the Doctor confiscates the ship's dematerialisation circuit.[8]


Having become a main character in the show's eighth season, the Master reappears in The Mind of Evil, where he regains his TARDIS's circuit from the Doctor after attempting to launch a nerve gas missile that would initiate World War III.[9] The Master is seen again in another incursion on Earth in The Claws of Axos,[10] and then fails to hold the galaxy to ransom using a doomsday weapon on the planet Uxarieus in the year 2472 in Colony in Space.[11] In The Dæmons, The Master is finally captured on Earth by the organization UNIT after Jo Grant (Katy Manning) prevents the alien Azal (Stephen Thorne) from giving The Master his powers.[12]


In The Sea Devils (1972), the Master is shown to be imprisoned on an island off the coast of England. He convinces the governor of the prison, Colonel Trenchard (Clive Morton), to help him steal electronics from HMS Seaspite, the nearby naval base. This allows the Master to contact the reptilian Sea Devils, the former rulers of Earth, so he can help them retake the planet from humanity. The Master convinces the Doctor to help him build machinery that would bring the Sea Devils out of their millions of years of hibernation. Still, the Doctor sabotages the device by overloading it, destroying the Sea Devil base, and preventing war between humanity and reptiles. The Master subsequently escapes in a hovercraft. The Doctor reveals in this serial that the Master was once a "very good friend" of his.[13]


Delgado's last appearance as the Master is in Frontier in Space (1973), where he works alongside the Dalek and Ogron races to provoke a war between the Human and Draconian Empires. The scheme fails, and the Master escapes after he shoots at the Doctor.[14]


Delgado was slated to return in a serial called The Final Game, which would have been the season 11 finale. However, he died in a car crash in June 1973, and the story was never produced.[15]

A new regeneration cycle – the long serving Master[edit]

Played by Peter Pratt in his next appearance, the Master returns in The Deadly Assassin (1976), opposite the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker). Special effects makeup was applied to Pratt to give the Master a corpse-like appearance. Found by Chancellor Goth (Bernard Horsfall) on the planet Tersurus, the Master is revealed to be in his final regeneration and near the end of his final life. The Master attempts to gain a new regeneration cycle by using the artefacts of Rassilon, the symbols of the President of the Council of Time Lords, to manipulate the Eye of Harmony at the cost of Gallifrey. But the Doctor stops the Master, who escapes after his assumed death.[6]


The Master later returns in The Keeper of Traken, the role taken over by Geoffrey Beevers.[16] Still dying, the Master came to the Traken Union to renew his life by using the empire's technological Source. Though the plot fails, the Master manages to cheat death by transferring his essence into the body of a Traken scientist named Tremas (Anthony Ainley) and overwriting his host's mind.[17]


The Master (Ainley, in a total of 31 episodes as the character) confronted the next three regenerations of the Doctor on and off for the rest of the classic series, still seeking to extend his life – preferably with a new set of regenerations. Subsequently, in "The Five Doctors" (1983), the Time Lords offer the Master a new regeneration cycle in exchange for his help.[18]


The Master's final appearance in the classic series is in Survival (1989, the final story of the series' original 26-year run), trapped on the planet of the Cheetah People and under its influence, which drives its victims to savagery. Though the Master manages to escape the doomed planet, he ends up back on the planet prior to its destruction when he attempts to kill the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy).[19]

Dalek trial and 'execution'[edit]

The Master was the primary antagonist of the 1996 Doctor Who television movie. He was played by American actor Eric Roberts.


In the prologue, the Master (portrayed briefly by Gordon Tipple) is executed by the Daleks as a punishment for his "evil crimes". But before his apparent death, the Master requests his remains to be brought back to Gallifrey by the Seventh Doctor.[20] However, as posited in the novelisation of the movie by Gary Russell, the Master's self-alterations to extend his lifespan allow him to survive his execution by transferring his mind into a snake-like entity called a "morphant."[21] This interpretation is made explicit in the first of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks,[22] and also used in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip story The Fallen, which states that the morphant was a shape-shifting animal native to Skaro.[23]


Using his morphant body to break free from the container holding his remains, the Master sabotages the Doctor's TARDIS console to force it to crash land in San Francisco in December, 1999. From there, the Master, as the morphant, enters the body of a paramedic named Bruce to take control of him. However, the Master finds his human host to be unsustainable as the body slowly begins to degenerate, although the Master has the added abilities to spit an acid-like bile, both as a weapon and to mentally control victims as an alternative to his usual hypnotic abilities. The Master attempts to access the Eye of Harmony to steal the remaining regenerations of the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann), but instead is sucked into it and supposedly killed.[20]

Professor Yana and Harold Saxon[edit]

In "Utopia", a scientist called Professor Yana (Derek Jacobi) is revealed to be the Master, disguised in biological human form to hide from the Time War. Yana overhears a conversation between the Doctor and Jack Harkness about the time vortex and time travel in general. He used the Chameleon Arch to temporarily place his Time Lord identity within a Fob Watch. This makes Yana curious about his own fob watch and when he opens it he is reunited with the Master's consciousness.[24] The Master is shot and regenerates into a new body (John Simm) and steals the Doctor's TARDIS.


In "The Sound of Drums," the Doctor makes his way back to Earth to find the Master has become Prime Minister of the UK under the alias of Harold Saxon. The Master kidnaps Martha's family and conquers Earth.[25]


In "Last of the Time Lords", Martha spends a year working to save her family and to thwart the Master's plan to wage war against the universe. The Master himself mentions that looking into the vortex as a child made "the drumming" choose him as a "call to war" in his head. When fatally shot by his human wife, Lucy Saxon (Alexandra Moen), the Master refuses to regenerate, knowing it will haunt the Doctor.[26]


The Master returns in "The End of Time" (2009–2010) when his disciples attempt a resurrection ritual using a surviving piece of the Master's body. However, Lucy sabotages the ritual, bringing the Master back as an unstable creature, hungry for human flesh and leaking electrical energy. The Master proceeds with a plot to transform the entire human race into his own clones. The Master is sent back to Gallifrey when the Time Lords are sealed away in the Time War, trapped once more.[27]

Missy [edit]

The Master influences the Doctor's life in the seventh series episode "The Bells of Saint John", when an unseen "woman in the shop" gives Clara Oswald the phone number to the TARDIS, initiating Clara's time as a companion. Independent of any connection to the "woman in the shop", an unidentified woman (Michelle Gomez) appears briefly in the eighth series episodes "Deep Breath" and “Into the Dalek”, welcoming a character to the afterlife. This mystery woman, and the fact that she is the "woman in the shop", is not revealed to be the Doctor's childhood friend until "Dark Water", when she formally introduces herself to the Doctor as a new female incarnation called "Missy", which is short for "Mistress". She reveals that she has created an "afterlife" from a Gallifreyan Matrix Data Slice, which stores the consciousness of dead people so they can eventually be made into Cybermen.[28]


In "Death in Heaven", Missy offers the Doctor control of her Cybermen army in the hopes of compromising his morality. She is defeated when her Cyber army is destroyed, and appears vaporised when shot by the posthumously cyber-converted Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.[29] Missy returns in "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar" (2015), revealed to have faked her demise using a teleporter powered by the energy of the Cyberman laser weapon that shot her.[30][31]


In the tenth series episode "Extremis", it is revealed that the Doctor is keeping Missy in the well appointed Vault, having spared her from execution but vowing to keep her locked away for one thousand years. In "The Lie of the Land", the Doctor's crew visits Missy in the Vault to gain intelligence on the Monks. Her demeanour seems little changed, and she has low regard for human life, but in the episode's coda, she sheds remorseful tears for all the millions of deaths she has caused.[32] In "Empress of Mars," she returns the Doctor's TARDIS to Mars to rescue the Doctor and Bill. In "The Eaters of Light," she has been released from her cage by the Doctor to run repairs on his TARDIS, which is isomorphically locked so that she cannot pilot it.


The Doctor attempts to test Missy's reformation in the tenth series finale "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls" by sending Missy, Bill, and Nardole (Matt Lucas) on a rescue mission aboard a spaceship experiencing time dilation near a black hole. However, the Master (John Simm) is aboard the ship and has initiated the Cybermen's genesis. Missy's loyalties are torn between the Doctor and her old self. After initially betraying the Doctor, she later stands alongside him against a Cyberman army, stabbing her past self causing the Master to regenerate. Enraged at Missy becoming the Doctor's ally, the Master shoots Missy with his laser screwdriver, ostensibly disabling her ability to regenerate and killing her.

"The Glen of Sleeping" by Gerry Haylock and Dick O'Neill ( 107–111)

TV Action

"Fogbound" by Frank Langford (Doctor Who Holiday Special 1973)

"The Time Thief" by Steve Livesey (Doctor Who Annual 1974)

"The Man in the Ion Mask" by Brian Williamson and (Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991)

Dan Abnett

List of Doctor Who villains

List of television programs where multiple actors played one character

on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki

The Master