The Doctor & The Master
The Doctor has had several close encounters with his old enemy the Master over several regenerations, but just who is the Master? and where did the character originate from?
The Master is a recurring character in Doctor Who and its associated spin-off works. The character is a renegade alien Time Lord and the archenemy of the title character the Doctor. He or She is the Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes and is often up to dastardly schemes to try and kill the doctor, disrupt his travels in space and time, and/or get him into a lot of trouble.
The Master has been played by multiple actors since the character's introduction in 1971. Within the show, this is varyingly explained as the Master taking possession of other characters' bodies, or as a consequence of regeneration. (A biological attribute allowing Time Lords to survive death or fatal injuries.)
The role was originated by Roger Delgado in 1971, who portrayed the Master in Doctor Who for until his death in 1973. From 1976 until the show's cancellation in 1989, the Master was portrayed by a succession of actors: Peter Pratt (The Deadly Assassin 1976), Geoffrey Beevers (The Keeper of Traken 1981), and Anthony Ainley (1981 - 89). Eric Roberts took on the role for the 1996 Doctor Who TV film starring Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann as The Doctor. Since the show's revival in 2005, the Master has been portrayed by Derek Jacobi (2007), John Simm (2007 - 2010) (2017) and Michelle Gomez (2014 - 17), known as Missy in the latter incarnation.
Beevers, Jacobi, Roberts, and Gomez reprised the role for the Big Finish audio dramas, while Alex Macqueen and James Dreyfus portrayed incarnations unique to Big Finish.
So now that we know who The Master is and where he/she originated from, what encounters did The Master have with The Doctor?
Encounters with The Third Doctor (8 Stories, 43 episodes)
The Master, 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, a space-time ship, left non-functioning after the Doctor confiscates the ship's dematerialization circuit.
Having become one of the main characters in the show's eighth season, the Master reappears in The Mind of Evil, where he regains his TARDIS' circuit from the Doctor after attempting to launch a nerve gas missile that would initiate World War III. After another incursion on Earth in The Claws of Axos, and failing to hold the galaxy to ransom using a doomsday weapon on the planet Uxarieus in the year 2472 in Colony in Space, in The Dæmons the Master is finally captured on Earth by the organisation UNIT after Jo Grant prevents the alien Azal from gifting the Master his powers.
In The Sea Devils (1972), the Master is shown to be imprisoned on an island prison off the coast of England. He convinces the governor of the prison, Colonel Trenchard, to help him steal electronics from HMS Seaspite, the nearby naval base, which helps the Master 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, but 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.
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.
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 filmed.
A Quest for New Life (13 stories, 36 Episodes)
Played by Peter Pratt in his next appearance, with heavy make-up that makes him resemble an emaciated corpse, the Master returns in The Deadly Assassin (1976). Found by Chancellor Goth on planet Tersurus, the Master is revealed to be both in his final regeneration and near the end of his final life. The Master attempts to gain a new regeneration cycle by using the artifacts 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 Fourth Doctor stops the Master, who escapes after his assumed death.
The Master later returns in The Keeper of Traken, the role taken over by Geoffrey Beevers. 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 Trakenite scientist named Tremas and overwriting his host's mind.
From there, through Nyssa, the Master orchestrates the series of events that lead to the Doctor's regeneration into his fifth incarnation The Master then appeared on and off for the rest of the series, still seeking to extend his life – preferably with a new set of regenerations. Subsequently, in The Five Doctors, the Time Lords offer the Master a new regeneration cycle in exchange for his help. The Master's final appearance in the classic series is in Survival, having been trapped on the planet of the Cheetah People and under its influence, which drove 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.
Dalek Trial and Execution (1 story, 1 episode)
In the prologue of the TV Movie, 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. However, as posited in the novelization of the television 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". This interpretation is made explicit in the first of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks, 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.
Using his morphant body to break free from the container holding his remains, the Master sabotages the TARDIS console to force the vessel to crash land in San Francisco at the start of Earth's new millennium. From there, the Master has the morphant enter 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, but instead is sucked into it and supposedly killed.
Professor Yana & Harold Saxon (4 stories, 8 episodes)
Following the revival of Doctor Who in 2005, the Ninth Doctor believes the Time Lords all died on the final day of the Time War with the Daleks.
During several episodes in the revival show's second and third series, a man known as "Saxon" or "Harold Saxon" is mentioned. In "Love & Monsters", Victor Kennedy is reading a newspaper with the headline "Saxon leads polls with 64 percent". In "The Runaway Bride", the British Army are heard being given orders from "Mr. Saxon" to fire upon the RacnossWebstar. In "Smith and Jones" (2007), medical student Oliver Morgenstern tells the news that "Mr. Saxon" was proven right about there being life beyond Earth. A poster with the words "Vote Saxon" also appears in the episode. In "The Lazarus Experiment", Francine Jones leaves an answerphone message for her daughter Martha, warning her that the Tenth Doctor is "not safe" and "This information comes from Harold Saxon himself."
As well as this, as foreshadowed in "Gridlock", the Face of Boe gives the Doctor a message before dying: "You are not alone".
In "Utopia", a scientist called Professor Yana is revealed to be the Master, disguised in biological human form to hide from the Time War. Overhearing conversations between the Doctor and his companion Jack Harkness causes Yana to become curious about the device which controlled his transformation; opening the fob watch, he is reunited with the Master's consciousness and made biologically Time Lord again. He is shot, regenerates into a younger incarnation 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 United Kingdom under the alias of Harold Saxon. The Master kidnaps Martha's family and conquers Earth. A flashback shows the Master at the age of eight, during a Time Lord initiation ceremony where he is taken before a gap in the fabric of space and time known as the Untempered Schism, from which one can see into the entire Vortex. The Doctor states that looking into the time vortex causes some Time Lords to go mad and that this event was where "some say" it all began for the Master. In "Last of the Time Lords", Martha spends a year working on an elaborate plan to defeat the Master's plan to wage war against the universe and also save her family. In the episode, the Master himself mentions that looking into the vortex as a child made "the drumming" in his head choose him as a "call to war". When fatally shot by his human wife, Lucy Saxon, the Master refuses to regenerate, knowing it will haunt the Doctor. The Doctor cremates the dead body on a funeral pyre, but after he leaves a female hand is seen picking up the Master's ring from the ashes and laughter is heard.
The Master returns again in The End of Time (2009–10) 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 a manic undead 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, and using their combined presence, triangulates the "drumbeat" in his head to its source: The Time Lord President Rassilon. The Time Lord Chancellor describes the drumming noise in the Master's head as something "history says is a torment that stayed with him for the rest of his life." The Time Lords, having set up the signal back in time in the Master's head as a child as a means to escape the last days of the Time War, return to the universe. Confronted with Rassilon, whose drumbeat is the cause of the Master's insanity, the Master teams up with the Doctor to destroy them. He too is sent back to Gallifrey when the Time Lords are again sealed away in the Time War, trapped once more.
On 6 April 2017, the BBC confirmed that Simm would be returning as the Master in the tenth series, appearing alongside his successor in the role, Michelle Gomez, for the first multi-Master story in the programme's history; he appears in the two-part finale. Previously, there have been multi-Master stories in audio dramas, books, and comics.
The End of Time marked the last appearance of the Master until 2014 when the character was brought back as a woman with no explanation given at the time as to how he escaped Gallifrey or what prompted his regeneration. Four years later, Simm reprised the role for the show's first ever "multi-Master" story, "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls", which caught up with Simm's Master shortly before his regeneration. In the story, the Master is posing as a menial worker on the basement floor of a Mondasian colony ship, helping to bring the Cybermen into existence anew. When the Doctor appears aboard the ship with the Master's own future incarnation, he meets his successor, Missy, who is struggling between her nature and a promise to reform her ways. In the second part, the two Masters pair off as friends, but Missy's loyalties remain divided between the Doctor and her old self. The Master explains to the Doctor that the Time Lords "cured" his condition from The End of Time and expelled him from Gallifrey; he set himself up as a ruler on the Mondasian colony ship after his TARDIS broke, before being overthrown and hatching a new Cyberman-related plan. He and Missy plan to abandon the Doctor on the ship using Missy's spare dematerialisation circuit to repair his TARDIS, but Missy decided, at the last, to stand alongside the Doctor. She stabs her past self, giving him enough time to reach his TARDIS before he will regenerate. In return, he shoots her with his laser screwdriver to prevent himself from ever siding with the Doctor, claiming to have disabled her regenerative abilities. He leaves his future self to die and returns to his TARDIS, where he will soon forget having met his future self.
Missy (12 stories, 15 episodes)
The Master returns in the eighth series in a new female incarnation called "Missy", which is short for "Mistress". The Master's return is seeded in the series 7 episode "The Bells of Saint John" when a "woman in the shop" brings Clara Oswald and the Eleventh Doctor together by giving Clara the telephone number to the Doctor's TARDIS. This plot thread is picked up on again in "Deep Breath"; the Twelfth Doctor and Clara realise that a woman has been scheming to keep the two together. Missy is shown observing the pair from a world she refers to as 'Heaven', speaking to recently deceased individuals the Doctor encountered throughout the series.
It was in "Dark Water" that Missy formally introduces herself to the Doctor while revealing the "afterlife" to be a Gallifreyan Matrix Data Slice hosting a virtual afterlife storing the conscious minds of recently deceased people to be housed later within an army of Cybermen. In "Death in Heaven", revealing herself as the one who gave Clara the phone number to the TARDIS and had also manipulated the Doctor and Clara into staying together, Missy offers the Doctor control of her Cybermen army in the hopes of compromising his morality. She is defeated when her Cyberman army is destroyed and appears vapourised when shot by the posthumously cyber-converted Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
Missy returns in "The Magician's Apprentice" / "The Witch's Familiar", revealed to have faked her demise using a teleporter powered by the energy of the Cyberman laser weapon that shot her. She contacts Clara when she believes the Doctor anticipates that he will die, and travels to Skaro with the pair to confront Davros. She helps save the Doctor from Davros' scheme but fiendishly attempts to trick the Doctor into killing Clara as they escape the crumbling Dalek city. When the Doctor and Clara abandon Missy on Skaro, she encounters a room full of angry Daleks but informs them that she has a clever plan.
Gomez's final series in the role was series 10, airing in 2017. Early in the series, the Doctor explains to his companion Bill Potts that he is guarding a vault on Earth as a result of a promise, which is revealed by a flashback in "Extremis" to be a promise to watch over Missy, who is captive in the vault after the Doctor spared her from execution on a faraway world, and Missy promised to become good. In "The Lie of the Land", the Doctor's crew visits Missy in the safe to gain intelligence on an enemy she had defeated in the past.
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. Missy's gradual reform is indicated in several more episodes. 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 series finale "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls" by sending Missy, Bill, and Nardole on a rescue mission aboard a spaceship experiencing time dilation near a black hole. However, they soon run into Missy's past incarnation aboard the ship, where the Master has initiated the genesis of new Cybermen.
Trapped aboard the ship together, Missy finds her loyalties torn between her promise to the Doctor and the lure of her old self. After initially betraying the Doctor, she later chooses to stand alongside him against a Cyberman army, stabbing her past self and sending him back to his TARDIS to regenerate, concluding her life has led to her becoming the Doctor's ally. Enraged at the idea of ever becoming the Doctor's ally, the Master shoots Missy with his laser screwdriver, disabling her ability to regenerate and killing her.
Now, what about The Master's characteristics.
Intelligence and Attitude - The Master and the Doctor are shown to have similar levels of intelligence, and were classmates at the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey, where the Master outperformed the Doctor. A similar connection between the two was also referenced in The End of Time in which the Master reminisces with the Tenth Doctor about his father's estates on Gallifrey and his childhood with the Doctor before saying "look at us now".
In the 2007 episode "Utopia", the Tenth Doctor calls the transformed and disguised Master a genius and shows admiration for his intellect before discovering his true identity. The Tenth Doctor further expresses admiration for the Master's intellect in The End of Time by calling him "stone cold brilliant" and yet states that the Master could be more if he would just give up his desire for domination. The Twelfth Doctor states that Missy is "the one person almost as smart as me".
Delgado's portrayal of the Master was that of a suave and charming sociopathic individual, able to be polite and murderous at almost the same time. His design is homage to the classic Svengali character: a black Nehru outfit with a beard and moustache.
Aspects of Simm's portrayal of the Master parallel Tennant's Doctor, primarily in his ability to make light of tense situations and his rather quirky and hyperactive personality. According to the producers, this was done to make the Master more threatening to the Doctor by having him take one of his opponent's greatest strengths, as well as making the parallels between the two characters more distinctive. This rationale is written into dialogue by the Master in "Utopia", in which he explicitly states, as he is regenerating, that if the Doctor can be young and strong, then so can he. In an episode of Doctor Who Confidential, "Lords and Masters", Russell T Davies also classifies the Master as both a sociopath and a psychopath.
Michelle Gomez maintained Simm's portrayal of the character, specifically the psychopathic behavior and inappropriate emotional responses to certain situations, as well as the original traditions of ruthless, murderous behavior and grandiose, Machiavellian criminal intelligence that have been consistent throughout all incarnations. However, she also displayed a much more coquettish manner, with her new female identity allowing her to fully express aspects of the Master's ambiguous bond with the Doctor. While determined to torment and corrupt the Doctor with moral temptation while inflicting pain and death to humanity, she frequently referred to him as her "boyfriend" or "friend" and appeared to ultimately desire his acquiescence and company.
She is also well aware that she is even more dangerously psychopathic than before, describing herself as "Bananas" to UNIT agent Osgood right before killing her. However, when circumstances result in Missy being kept in a vault and monitored by the Doctor after an averted execution, Missy actually comes to show signs of remorse for what she had done in the past, to the point that she prepares to side with the Doctor over her own past self.
Mental Abilities - Both the Doctor and the Master have been shown to be skilled hypnotists, although the Master's capacity to dominate – even by stare and voice alone – has been shown to be far more pronounced. In Logopolis the Doctor said of the Master, "He's a Time Lord. In many ways, we have the same mind." The Master is often able to anticipate the Doctor's moves, as seen in stories such as Castrovalva, The Keeper of Traken, Time-Flight, and The King's Demons, where he plans elaborate traps for the Doctor, only revealing his presence at the key moment. In The Deadly Assassin, the Master was able to send a false premonition as a telepathic message to the Doctor, but it is unclear whether he performed this through innate psychic ability, or was aided technologically.
In The End of Time, the Master uses a kind of psychic technique, previously used by the Doctor to read the minds of others, allowing the Doctor to hear the constant 'drumming' inside the Master's mind.
TARDIS - In the original Doctor Who series, the Master's TARDISes have had fully functioning chameleon circuits, having appeared as various things, including a horsebox, a spaceship, a fir tree, a computer bank, a grandfather clock, a fluted architectural column, an iron maiden, a fireplace, a British Airways jet, a cottage and a triangular column. Of the Master's TARDISes seen in The Keeper of Traken, one appears as the calcified, statue-like Melkur, able to move and even walk; the other appears as a grandfather clock. The Melkur TARDIS is destroyed. At one point in Logopolis, the Master's TARDIS even appears as a police box, like the Doctor's.
When the Master reappears as Missy, the Doctor muses in Death In Heaven that Missy must have acquired a TARDIS in order to carry out her plan. However, Missy time travels via Vortex Manipulator in series 9. In The Doctor Falls, the Master acquired a TARDIS before leaving Gallifrey but burned out its dematerialization circuit while attempting to get away from a black hole too fast. His future incarnation Missy provides him with a spare and the Master is able to fix his TARDIS and depart.
Weapons - The Master's original weapon of choice was the "tissue compression eliminator", which shrinks its target to doll-like proportions, killing them in the process. Its appearance is similar to that of the Doctor's tool, the sonic screwdriver.
Despite his own fondness for the weapon, Russell T Davies decided against bringing it back for the Master's reappearance in "The Sound of Drums", on the grounds that the Master had too many new "tricks" to use against the Doctor. In some audios, the Master has used a staser pistol rather than the TCE.
The John Simm Master unveils a new handheld weapon: a laser screwdriver. The device functions as a powerful laser weapon, capable of killing with a single shot. It also carries the ability to age victims rapidly using a miniaturised version of the genetic manipulator developed by Professor Lazarus. The screwdriver itself also contains isomorphic technology, a biometric security feature which effectively disables use of the device by anyone other than the Master.
The Master does use a laser screwdriver again to battle the Cybermen. After being stabbed by Missy, the Master shoots her with the laser screwdriver at "full blast" which will prevent her regeneration and kill her permanently.
Missy uses a small hand-held device, about the size of a large mobile phone, which allows her to remotely control her technology and scan her surroundings. It also contains a weapon that she uses to disintegrate Dr. Chang, Osgood, and Seb. In "The Magician's Apprentice", Missy uses a newer, upgraded version of this device which appears to be more powerful. It allowed her to control airborne planes after she had frozen them in time, as well as simultaneously disintegrate several UNIT guards.
Missy's parasol is revealed to be a disguised sonic/laser device in "The Doctor Falls". She uses it to defend against an attacking Cyberman. A more unusual feature, demonstrated in "Death in Heaven", allows her to travel through the air in a Mary Poppins-style fashion, but presumably only for short distances.
While not actually weapons, Missy also possessed a pair of vortex manipulators "cheap and nasty time travel" which are linked to one another, which she used to transport herself and Clara Oswald to the Doctor's 'farewell party' in medieval Essex. They are destroyed in "The Witch's Familiar" when, to avoid being killed by Daleks, they channel energy from the Daleks' weapons to teleport them away, looking as if they were exterminated. In the same episode, Missy says her brooch contains a Gallifreyan Dark Star alloy pin, given to her by The Doctor "when my daughter...", which she uses to pierce a Dalek's armored shell.
Missy uses a small blade concealed in her sleeve to stab her own past self, triggering his off-screen regeneration.
Companions and Alliances - Unlike the Doctor, The Master doesn't usually have companions. There have been times when he made exceptions, though in his case they are not so much "companions" as "tools". In Castrovalva, the Doctor's companion Adric was abducted by the Master and forced to create a block transfer computation. Later, in The King's Demons, Kamelion is controlled by the Master before the Doctor steals him away, with the Master regaining control of Kamelion in Planet of Fire. In the second episode of The Ultimate Foe, Sabalom Glitz chose to go with the Master in search of Time Lord secrets.
In the 1996 television movie, Chang Lee helps the Master because he has been duped into believing that the Doctor had stolen his body. When Lee begins to realise the truth behind the Master, his loyalty begins to falter, therefore the Master attempts to kill him without hesitation. In promotional media surrounding the movie, Lee is depicted more as a companion to the Eighth Doctor and was referred to as such in a documentary series released as part of the 50 year anniversary celebrations, The Doctors Revisited - The Eighth Doctor.
In "Utopia", Chantho plays a similar companion role to the Professor Yana persona. Chantho states that she has been with him for 17 years as a "devoted assistant". Later, when the Master persona resurfaces, he berates her for never freeing him from his confinement and the two fatally wound one another, resulting in Chantho's death and the Master's regeneration.
In "The Sound of Drums", the Master, as Harold Saxon, is married to Lucy Saxon, to whom he refers at one point as his "faithful companion". Lucy is aware of the nature of the Master's plans yet is still loyal to him. She has travelled with him to Utopia, the end of the universe, and thus believes "there's no point to anything." Their relationship appears to be non-platonic; they kiss quite often and it seems as though their marriage is more than just a pretence.
Lucy comments, "I made my choice, for better or for worse." In "Last of the Time Lords" she is still present, but showing signs of apparent physical abuse, and her loyalty towards him begins to waver. She shoots the Master at the climax of the story, killing him. She is imprisoned, but when the Master's coven made the preparations for his resurrection in The End of Time, she is forced into giving the Master's biometric signature on her lips to complete the ritual. Having foreseen his return, Lucy threw a vial containing a chemical to disrupt the resurrection, killing herself in the resulting explosion while only succeeding in giving the Master a tentative life.
Although not a companion in the traditional sense, the Master allied himself with another evil renegade Time Lord, the Rani, in The Mark of the Rani to thwart the Doctor. The Master has also been known to ally himself with other villains of the series, including the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Autons. None of these alliances lasted past the Master achieving his own aims, or his being stopped by the Doctor.
So why does the master keep coming back? Will we ever see an end to the character? - Probably not. The Master is the Doctor's greatest enemy and what makes the relationship between The Doctor and Master so compelling is the contest between these two characters, the audience are drawn into what's going on between them and are genuinely interested to know which of the two is going to win (ultimately, we know it will be the Doctor in the end) but how?
As long as there is a contest or a competition going on between the Doctor and the Master, the conveyed perception of things is that the audience will never get sick of it and will continue to enjoy watching it as the series continues.
