Magnus Greel Magnus Greel was the Minister of Justice for the Supreme Alliance of Eastern States in the 51st century . When the Alliance fell to the Filipino Army in the Battle of Reykjavik , he became a wanted war criminal . He escaped by using an experimental time cabinet . He went to the late 19th century China and then to London , where he continued his depraved activities on a smaller scale . Biography . In Greel ' s time , the Earth was split into a number of warring alliances . The Icelandic Alliance and Greel ' s Supreme Alliance were at war . The Icelandic Alliance fell when Greel had the doll - like but homicidal cyborg known as the Peking Homunculus assassinate its commissioner Ingrid Bjarnsdottir ( TV : " The Talons of Weng - Chiang " ; AUDIO : " The Butcher of Brisbane " ) , setting off World War VI . ( PROSE : " Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng - Chiang " ) He considered himself a driving force in the project in which his nation pioneered time travel . Apart from that he also personally experimented with the catalytic extraction chamber , an attempt to cannibalise life energies . One hundred thousand " enemies of the state " were massacred for these experiments . As the Supreme Alliance ' s ironically named Minister of Justice , Greel carried out an atrocity earning him the title of the " Butcher of Brisbane . " ( TV : " The Talons of Weng - Chiang " ) A human monster , Greel thought nothing of unprovoked murder and cannibalism . ( PROSE : " Under Reykjavik " ) After the defeat of the Supreme Alliance in the Battle of Reykjavik , Greel utilised a time cabinet to travel with the Peking Homunculus back in time to 19th century China . Using information provided by his fifth incarnation , the earlier Doctor was able to prevent further bloodshed , bringing the brief Sixth World War to a close . ( TV : " The Talons of Weng - Chiang " ; AUDIO : " The Butcher of Brisbane " ) Living as a God . Greel passed himself off as a god , Weng - Chiang , to Li H ' sen Chang . With Chang posing as a conjurer and the Homunculus as a ventriloquist ' s dummy called Mr Sin , they eventually found themselves in London . The passage through time had caused great damage to Greel ' s DNA , deforming him . He wore a mask and concealing clothes to hide his true form . While Greel lived in fear of Time Agents , Chang abducted young women , including Emma Buller , for Greel to use their life energy to restore himself — a method which was inherently flawed and only accelerated the damage . Eventually he tried to restore his body using the time cabinet , but was instead shoved inside his own extraction chamber by the Fourth Doctor , resulting in fatal cellular collapse . ( TV : " The Talons of Weng - Chiang " ) The Fifth Doctor would later note that Greel ' s supposed death here was a part of the Web of Time . ( AUDIO : " The Butcher of Brisbane " ) Legacy . Even almost forty years after his death , the Tong of the Black Scorpion still venerated Greel as a god , while Chang ' s daughter Hsien - Ko - essentially immortal but also sterile due to her father ' s exposure to zygma energy before her conception - sought to divert the time cabinet to 1937 by generating a massive amount of Piezoelectricity to disrupt the zygma beam to 1937 . She intended to use this opportunity to torture Greel for the dishonour he had caused her father , but the Doctor prevented this plan by destroying her nuclear power generator and then using the TARDIS as part of a near - time ram to force the cabinet back on course ( PROSE : " The Shadow of Weng - Chiang " ) . Survival in the 20th century . Greel ' s mind was later reconstituted by Guinevere Godiva in 1968 by using a Venusian crystal . He took possession of Detective Inspector Dave Sacker to continue living . Jago and Litefoot discovered Greel ' s plan to return . Greel died when Ellie Higson stood in the distillation chamber and overloaded the power of his time cabinet . ( AUDIO : " The Final Act " ) Behind the scenes . " Weng - Chiang " was originally going to be the Master , following on from " The Deadly Assassin " , but producer Philip Hinchcliffe had this changed as he didn ' t want to have the Master revealed as the secret villain again . Alan Barnes has pointed out several clues in the story that still point to the original plan : the time cabinet ( " read ' TARDIS ' " ) and Greel referring to Leela as " the first morsel to feed my regeneration " . ( DWM 475 )