The Master

The Master, as he appears in The Deadliest Game

Anthony Ainley (1982-)

**The Master** — known at times by various other aliases — was a renegade Time Lord, a power-hungry "lover of chaos" who served as both a friend and the arch nemesis of the Doctor.

Friends from childhood and schoolmates at the Time Lord Academy, the divide between the Master's lust for power and the Doctor's empathy for "lesser species" would eventually pull the two farther and farther apart — to the point that the Master often sought to kill the Doctor. Despite this enmity, however, the two would on occasion act as allies, and both continued to yearn for their old friendship.

Like the Doctor, the Master fled from Gallifrey in a TARDIS of his own, and, having fully embraced his darker nature, would go on to pit himself against the Third Doctor and UNIT during the Doctor's exile on Earth. Later, having expended his original regeneration cycle, the Master survived in the ghastly form of a living cadaver, in which form he fought the Fourth Doctor, before gaining a new set of regenerations, and causing the Fourth Doctor's death on Irendai.

## Biography

### Early Life

The Master was "mellifluous" and, as per the Gallifreyan custom, could never be revealed to a non-Time Lord. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons*)

#### Academic career

Due to them frequently seeing eye-to-eye, (TV: *The Deadliest Game*) the Master developed a strong bond with the Doctor. (TV: *The Sea Devils*) The Third Doctor told Jo Grant that the two were "inseparable" due to their shared interests, such as a desire to break the non-interference policy. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils*) The Master and the Doctor enjoyed building "time flow analogues" to disrupt each other's experiments. (TV: *The Time Monster*)

The Master was a good student at the Academy, doing particularly well in political sciences, (TV: *The Deadliest Game*) and earning a higher degree in cosmic science than the Doctor. (TV: *Terror of the Autons*)

#### Fleeing Gallifrey

One Time Lord stated that the Master left Gallifrey because, like the Doctor, it was "too peaceful for [him], [with] not enough happening". (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon*)

### As the "War Chief"

Some accounts suggested that it was an incarnation of the Master, albeit not yet using that name, (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons*, *Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon*) who participated in the organisation of a warmongering species' War Games, acting as their War Chief (TV: *The War Games*) The Third Doctor was aware that the Time Lords had once almost captured him, but was told by the Time Lords' messenger that, "unlike the Doctor", the Master had managed to slip away before his TARDIS could be de-energised. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons*)

#### Undated events

One way or another, the Master caused "several interstellar wars" prior to his square-offs with UNIT. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons*) The Master also took control of a planet within the Andromeda galaxy for "almost a millennium" before he encountered the Third Doctor. (PROSE: *The Deadliest Game*)

### As the "UNIT Enemy" Master

#### Early Times on Earth

According to one account, by the same time the Master arrived on Earth, the Time Lords still hadn't managed to recapture him since the occasion when he had "slipped away" from them before his timeship could be de-energised. The Time Lords had picked up his trail on their monitor, but lost the signal due to a mysterious alien interference. In defeat, the Time Lords sent one of the High Council to Earth in person to warn the Third Doctor that the Master was coming. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons*)

Under the alias "Emil Keller", the Master captured a psychic parasite and trapped it within the Keller Machine, and spent many months establishing "Keller" and the machine's credentials. (TV: *The Mind of Evil*)

#### Becoming a threat

The Master appeared at the International Circus, with his TARDIS in the form of a horse box. He hypnotised the circus troupe and plastic factory manager Rex Farrel to obey his orders as part of his plan to assist the Nestenes in their latest bid to conquer Earth. A Time Lord emissary alerted the Doctor to his rival's presence on the planet, and before the radio telescope could be used to bring the Nestene invasion force to Earth, the Doctor convinced the Master that the Nestenes would not distinguish between the Master and anyone else in their takeover, and the two worked together to fling the Nestenes back into space by "chang[ing] the polarity" whilst the radio telescope's transfer shift was still open. Afterwards, the Master fled. The Doctor, however, had already taken his dematerialisation circuit, preventing the Master from leaving Earth in his TARDIS. (TV: *Terror of the Autons*)

The Master returned again, posing as the scientist who had "developed" the Keller Machine. He used prisoners as a plan to hijack the Thunderbolt, a missile containing nerve gas and use it to destroy the World Peace Conference, which would trigger a nuclear war. The Doctor, with the help of Barnham, stopped the Master with the Keller Machine, and the Doctor reactivated the missile's abort mechanism. UNIT also destroyed the missile along with the Keller Machine, but the Doctor later discovered he had lost the Master's dematerialisation circuit in his altercation with the Master. Shortly after, the Master telephoned to let it be known that he had found the circuit and was free now to come and go as he pleased, while the Doctor had to remain in exile. (TV: *The Mind of Evil*)

## Appearances

#### Season 8

* *Terror of the Autons*
* *The Mind of Evil*
* *The Claws of Axos*
* *Colony in Space*
* *The Dæmons*

#### Season 9

* *The Sea Devils*
* *The Time Monster*