The Master

The Master was the name most often used by a renegade Time Lord considered to be Galllifrey's most infamous child, and one of the most evil and corrupt beings the Time Lord race ever produced.

The Master part-way through his first regeneration cycle

Childhood and education

The individual later known as the Master was born on Gallifrey. His father was a landowner, with property on the red pastures across the slopes of Mount Perdition. The Master and a friend who later came to be known as the Doctor used to run across the fields there, calling up at the sky during their play. Despite the time spent with the Doctor, he later considered his life during this time to be more a life of duty than a childhood. (DW: "The End of Time")

When he was an eight-year-old novice, the Master was taken from his family to undergo initiation into the Academy. Brought there in the dark by a group of Time Lords, he was made to stare into the Untempered Schism, a gap in the fabric of reality that revealed the whole of the Time Vortex. It was then that the never-ending drumming in his head began, a rhythm he would later see as a call to war. (DW: "The Sound of Drums", "The End of Time")

At school, the Master and the Doctor assembled time flow analogues to spoil each other's time experiments. He would achieve a degree in cosmic science that was of a higher class than that achieved by the Doctor. (DW: "The Time Monster", "Terror of the Autons")

Life as a renegade

The Master was later exiled in unknown circumstances. While on his travels, he became aware of a technique known as matter condensation. He would put this technique into use with his tissue compression eliminator, a weapon that shrunk its victims to a miniature size. (DW: "The Mark of the Rani", "The Deadly Assassin")

He stole material from the files of the Time Lords, including a report on the Uxarieus doomsday weapon and information on the Sea Devils. (DW: "Colony in Space, "The Sea Devils")

Tremas

The Master in the body of Tremas

Bruce

The Master in the body of Bruce

Time War and aftermath

Harold Saxon

See Harold Saxon

Appendices

Appearances

• Doctor Who:
  • "Terror of the Autons"
  • "The Mind of Evil"
  • "The Claws of Axos"
  • "Colony in Space"
  • "The Dæmons"
  • "The Sea Devils"
  • "The Time Monster"
  • "Frontier in Space"
  • "The Deadly Assassin"
  • "The Keeper of Traken"
  • "Logopolis"
  • "Castrovalva"
  • "Time-Flight"
  • "The King's Demons"
  • "The Five Doctors"
  • "Planet of Fire"
  • "The Caves of Androzani" (hallucination)
  • "The Mark of the Rani"
  • "Time Inc."
  • "Survival"
  • "Doctor Who"
  • "Utopia"
  • "The Sound of Drums"
  • "Last of the Time Lords"
  • "The End of Time"
  • "Deep Breath"
  • "Into the Dalek"
  • "The Caretaker"
  • "Flatline"
  • "In the Forest of the Night"
  • "Dark Water"
  • "Death in Heaven"
  • "The Magician's Apprentice"
  • "The Witch's Familiar"
  • "Extremis"
  • "The Lie of the Land"
  • "Empress of Mars"
  • "The Eaters of Light"
  • "World Enough and Time"
  • "The Doctor Falls"
  • "Spyfall"
  • "Can You Hear Me?" (archival voice recording only)
  • "Ascension of the Cybermen"
  • "The Timeless Children"
• The Sarah Jane Adventures: "Death of the Doctor" (archive footage only)
• Destiny of the Doctor: "Smoke and Mirrors" (psionic projection)
• "Ace Returns!" (archive footage only)

References

• Doctor Who:
  • "Four to Doomsday"
  • "Black Orchid"
  • "Love & Monsters"
  • "The Runaway Bride"
  • "Smith and Jones"
  • "The Lazarus Experiment"
  • "42"
  • "A Town Called Mercy"
  • "The Bells of Saint John"
  • "The Time of the Doctor"
  • "Before the Flood"
  • "Hell Bent"
  • "The Pilot"
  • "Thin Ice"
  • "Knock Knock"
  • "Oxygen"
  • "Fugitive of the Judoon"
• Torchwood:
  • "Greeks Bearing Gifts"
  • "Captain Jack Harkness"
  • "Reset"
• Children in Need: Time Crash"
• Hornets' Nest: "The Stuff of Nightmares"
• Destiny of the Doctor: "Death's Deal"

Background

An excerpt from the BBC memo that outlined the characters to be introduced in Season 8

During the planning stages for Season 8 in the early months of 1970, producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks issued a memo to the writers commissioned for the upcoming season. This memo laid out three new recurring characters to be featured in Season 8. Amongst them was the Master, a new adversary for the Doctor. The following was written about him:

THE MASTER

"A lapsed Time Lord of equal, perhaps even senior, rank to the Doctor. Now on the run from the Time Lords.

"Sinister, polished, charming. A manipulator of others for evil ends, with a vested interest in chaos and misrule, which he turns to his own profit.

"He will cooperate with any evil force but will readily double cross his evil allies if things get sticky. Completely selfish and ruthless.

"Tends to use a variety of roles and aliases, often based on his title. Masters, Masterson, Le Maitre, Il Maestro. Always chooses a distinguished and affluent role for himself. Uses a naturally dominant personality amounting almost to hypnosis, to bring others under his sway. (But they can sometimes break loose).

"A long standing and implacable enemy of the Doctor, he is the force of evil bound to oppose the Doctor's force of good.

IMPORTANT NOTE

"The Master has a chameleon like ability to adapt to any society in which he finds himself. He will therefore be completely natural and convincing in his various human roles. He must not be written as a moustache twirling villain of melodrama, or given melodramatic dialogue; If anything his evil quality should be underplayed, though never forgotten.