The Master (Doctor Who)
The Master is a supporting character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He is a renegade Time Lord who is the greatest individual enemy of the Doctor. He should not be confused with the Master of the Land of Fiction, who appeared in the Second Doctor serial, The Mind Robber.
History within the show
Origins
The producers conceived the Master as a recurring villain, a "Professor Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes". He first appeared in Terror of the Autons (1971). The Master's title was deliberately chosen by producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks as evocative of supervillain names in fiction, but primarily because, like the Doctor, it was a title conferred by an academic degree.
Barry Letts had one man in mind for the role: Roger Delgado. Delgado had a long history of screen villainy and had already made three attempts to break into the series. He had worked previously with Barry Letts and was also a good friend of Jon Pertwee.
A would-be universal conqueror, the Master's stated goal is to control the universe (in The Deadly Assassin his ambitions were described as becoming "the master of all matter."), with a secondary objective of eliminating the Doctor. His most distinctive ability is that of hypnotising people by fixing them with an intense stare, often accompanied by his catchphrase, "I am the Master, and you will obey me." The original (and most common before 1996) look of the character was similar to that of the classic Svengali character; a black outfit with a beard and moustache. This was in keeping with the character's hypnotic abilities.
Unlike the Doctor, the Master's TARDIS has a functioning chameleon circuit, allowing it to change its external appearance to better fit in with its environment. A favoured weapon of the Master's is his Tissue Compression Eliminator, which reduces its targets to doll-size, usually killing them in the process. The Master also has a fondness for disguise, and sometimes operated under aliases which are variations on his title, such as "Colonel Masters" (in Terror of the Autons), the Reverend Mr. Magister (in The Dæmons, Magister being Latin for Master) and Professor Thascales (in The Time Monster, Thascales being Greek for Master).
In the three seasons following Terror of the Autons, the Master (as played by Delgado) appeared in eight out of the fifteen serials. Indeed, in his first season the Master is involved in every adventure of the Doctor's, always getting away at the last minute before he is finally captured in The Dæmons. Delgado's portrayal of the Master was as a suave, charming and somewhat sociopathic individual, able to be polite and murderous at almost the same time.[1]
Delgado's last on-screen appearance as the Master was in Frontier in Space, his final scene ending with him shooting the Doctor and then disappearing with the panicking Ogrons. Delgado wanted the Master to make one more appearance, in a story titled The Final Game (also planned as the Third Doctor's last story), in which the character would be killed off, with an ambiguity as to whether he had in fact died to save the Doctor. Tragically, before that serial could even be scripted, Delgado was killed in a car accident in Turkey on June 18 1973, while on his way to shoot footage for the French comedy The Bell of Tibet. The story was replaced by Planet of the Spiders (1974).
Quest for new life
With Delgado's death, the Master disappeared from the series for several years. In his next appearance, in The Deadly Assassin (1976), the Master (played by Peter Pratt under heavy make-up) appears as an emaciated, decaying wreck, at the end of his thirteenth and final life. [2]
Given the severity of his situation, this Master is much darker than Delgado's version. No longer considering his clashes with the Doctor a game, his goal is survival at all costs, manipulating people from behind the scenes. He attempts to seize control of the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole kept on the Time Lords' home planet of Gallifrey, in an attempt to give himself a new cycle of regenerations. After being defeated by the Doctor, the Master disappears from the series for another four seasons.
In 1981, the Master returned as a recurring villain. In The Keeper of Traken, the Master (Geoffrey Beevers under different heavy make-up) briefly gains control of another ancient power source, using it to transplant himself into the body of a Trakenite named Tremas (the father of Nyssa), overwriting Tremas's original mind in the process. Now played by Anthony Ainley, the Master appeared on and off for the rest of the series. Apart from his regular goals, extending his life — preferably with a new set of regenerations — is an extra prize he was determined to get.
In many of his appearances opposite the Fifth Doctor, the Master shows his penchant for disguise once again, on one occasion operating under a disguise for no clear plot reason. The character's association with playful pseudonyms also continued both within the series and in its publicity: when the production team wished to hide the Master's involvement in a story, they credited the character under an anagrammatic alias such as "Neil Toynay" (Tony Ainley) or "James Stoker" (Master's Joke).
Ainley's portrayal was closer to Delgado's, but his Master's tendency to burst out into peals of malicious laughter was criticised by some fans as being too over-the-top. However, this was more a function of the scripts and direction that Ainley received than of his own interpretation of the character. Visitors to the recording of the story Planet of Fire recall Ainley giving a serious, understated performance in an initial take only to be overruled and asked to go more "over the top" for the final one. Like the villanous Davros, the Ainley Master also showed a knack for returning from death or eternal imprisonment, although how precisely he survived those seemingly final fates was never explained.
Ainley's final appearance in the role, in Survival, is more restrained. In that performance, Ainley depicts the Master as a sadistic character with a penchant for black humour and subtle menace. He is also given a more downbeat costume, reminiscent of the suits and ties worn by Delgado's Master.
Life after death
The Master also appeared in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie that starred Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. In the prologue, the Master's current body (portrayed for mere seconds in the final edit by Gordon Tipple) was exterminated by the Daleks as a punishment for his "evil crimes". It is not known if Tipple was portraying Ainley's incarnation of the Master or a new incarnation. All the novelisations and comics published around the same time as the release of the movie indicate that it is Ainley's Master; however, there is nothing in the movie to specifically confirm or deny this beyond the general look of Tipple's Master (which is only seen from a distance). First Frontier, an earlier Dr. Who novelization has a conflicting story where the Master regenerates into a new body, albeit with a similar, bearded Svengali appearance.
The Master's final request is that the Doctor is to take his remains back to Gallifrey. In the Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow by Marc Platt, the Doctor is given this task by the High Council of Time Lords. However, the Master manages to somehow survive his execution in the form of a small, snake-like, amorphous entity. This entity escapes from a casket in which the Doctor had stowed his remains and slithers inside the TARDIS console, shorting out the navigational systems and forcing the vessel to crash land in San Francisco, leading into the events of the rest of the television movie.
The novelisation of the television movie by Gary Russell posits that the modifications and alterations that the Master has made to his body over the years in attempts to extend his lifespan had allowed this continued existence, and the implication is that the "morphant" creature is actually another lifeform that the Master's consciousness possesses. 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 (DWM #273-#276). In The Fallen, it is revealed that the morphant was a shape-shifting animal native to Skaro.
The morphant form is unsustainable and requires a human host, and it possesses the body of Bruce, a paramedic (played by Eric Roberts). However, Bruce's body is also unsustainable and begins to slowly degenerate, although he has the added ability to spit an acid-like bile as a weapon. The Master once again attempts to access the Eye of Harmony to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations, but is sucked into the Eye and apparently destroyed (although if the latest rumours are true, he was imprisoned in the Eye of Harmony rather than destroyed).
Roberts' Master is easily the most flamboyant of all the Masters. Upon acquiring his new body, the Master dons a leather trenchcoat and aviator glasses (although he later swaps them for ceremonial Time Lord robes). To date, he is the only Time Lord to speak with an American accent.
The future
Template:Future television episode A BBC press release has confirmed that The Master is returning in the third season of the new Doctor Who series[3] but it did not reveal who will portray the character.
In the character's absence from the screen, press speculation has run rampant about his potential to return. During the second series of the revived Doctor Who, it was heavily rumoured that Anthony Stewart Head would play the character when it was first announced that he had been cast for an episode of the series;[4] the actor did appear in the second series, but played a new villain as opposed to the Master. Tom Baker has wryly suggested that he should be cast as the Master, as a tip of the hat to the old series.[5]
In 2007, the tabloid newspaper The Sun claimed [6] that John Simm will play the Master. Simm has been cast to play a politician named Harold Saxon.[7]. The same article also discusses the casting of Derek Jacobi as a character called the Professor in the episode "Utopia": it is suggested that his character will start as a seemingly benevolent figure whose real identity will be revealed when the Doctor sees him regenerate. "Utopia" is also the episode directly preceding Simm's appearance in the two-part season finale "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords" — which had excited speculation that both actors will be playing new incarnations of the Master."[8]. This episode has been described by a Totally Doctor Who presenter as "the first of a three-parter".[9]
In an interview broadcast on BBC 6Music on February 13 2007, Simm refused to confirm or deny details of his role.[10] The BBC has also remained quiet on the issue. On Saturday 24 February, during an interview on Soccer AM, Simm's Life on Mars co-stars appeared to confirm accidentally that Simm was filming on Doctor Who. Phillip Glenister, who is Simm's co-star in Life on Mars, also confirmed the rumours in a comment he gave to The Sun at the Royal Television Society awards. Another report from The Sun claims that actor Michael Sheen was also in the running to play the character,[11] but producer Julie Gardner has denied this.[12]
Parallels with the Doctor
The Master has in many ways been shown to be a parallel of the Doctor, and the series has occasionally suggested that the two are dependent on each other. After their first on-screen encounter in Terror of the Autons, the Doctor admits that he was "quite looking forward" to seeing the Master again. In The Five Doctors, the Master says, "A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about", and the Doctor called the Master "my best enemy". This parallelism and interdependence gives the two characters a yin-yang quality.
TARDIS
The Master's TARDISes have fully functioning chameleon circuits and have appeared as many things, including a horsebox (Terror of the Autons), a computer bank (The Time Monster), a grandfather clock (The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper of Traken), a fluted architectural column (Logopolis, Time-Flight), an iron maiden (The King's Demons) and a fireplace (Castrovalva). The Master has two TARDISes in The Keeper of Traken; one of them took the form of the calcified, statue-like Melkur. This TARDIS was able to move and even walk, but was apparently destroyed when the Source of Traken was sabotaged. At one point in Logopolis, the Master's TARDIS appears as a police box, like the Doctor's.
Tissue Compression Eliminator
The Master's weapon of choice is the Tissue Compression Eliminator, which shrinks its target, killing them in the process. Its appearance is similar to that of the Doctor's favourite tool, the sonic screwdriver. Both the TCE and the sonic screwdriver resemble a short hand-held rod; at different times in the series, both tools have had an LED light on the end to signal its use. As an additional signal to its use, the ball-like shape on the end of the TCE opens up, while the LED lights up (in later appearances it also fired a beam of red light).
Intelligence, psychic abilities and mental connection
The Master and the Doctor are shown to have similar levels of intelligence, and were classmates in the academy on Gallifrey (it has been hinted that they were at least acquaintances there). One example is in The Five Doctors, when the Master sees the First Doctor. The elderly First Doctor asks, "Do I know you, young man?" The Master replies, "Believe it or not, we were at the academy together."
Both the Doctor and the Master have been shown to be skilled hypnotists. In Logopolis the Doctor said of the Master, "He's a Time Lord. In many ways, we have the same mind". The significance of this comment is unclear. 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.
Other appearances
- This section concerns the appearances of the Master in various spin-offs, which are of unclear canonicity and may not take place in the same continuity.
The Master has also been featured in spin-offs of the series, most notably David A. McIntee's "Master trilogy" of novels comprising The Dark Path and First Frontier in the Virgin Publishing lines and The Face of the Enemy for BBC Books, and the Doctor Who audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions, in which Geoffrey Beevers has reprised the role.
Doctor Who Annual 2006
An article in the Doctor Who Annual 2006, describing the Time War and written by Doctor Who writer and producer Russell T. Davies, stated that Time Lord President Romana tried to make peace with the Daleks through something known as the "Act of Master Restitution". While this is not elaborated on, it has been speculated that the Act may be how the Master came to be put on trial by the Daleks at the start of the 1996 television movie, however it may equally be the use of the word to mean the "main" or "predominant" reparations for the war.
Novels
The Master's past with the Doctor is explored somewhat in The Dark Path, which reveals that his name prior to taking the alias of the Master is Koschei. He turns evil and becomes the Master after he discovers that his companion and lover, Ailla, is an undercover agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency sent to spy on him.
During the course of the novel, Ailla is shot and killed. Not knowing she is a Time Lord and that she will simply regenerate, Koschei completes a time-based weapon in an attempt to bring her back and the weapon is used to destroy the planet Teriliptus and its inhabitants. When Ailla turns up alive, the knowledge that he has destroyed a planet for nothing, coupled with the revelation of Ailla's betrayal, proves too much. Koschei resolves to bring his own order to the universe at the expense of free will and becoming its Master. Trapped in a black hole at the end of the novel, Koschei uses up all of his regenerations trying to escape from it, establishing that the Delgado Master was his thirteenth and final incarnation had he not been able to artificially prolong his life.
The Face of the Enemy centres around the regular Delgado Master, but includes a cameo by a Koschei from an alternate timeline (originally featured in Inferno) who never became the Master. This version of Koschei is still a loyal Time Lord who becomes stranded on the alternate Earth after an alien attack. He is subsequently captured and forced to work for the fascist rulers of this Earth, who keep him alive, in agony, using life support systems. When the Master, crossing over from the other universe, learns of this, he ends his counterpart's life in a show of compassion.
The reason the Master is so emaciated when he appears in The Deadly Assassin is explored in John Peel's novel Legacy of the Daleks, in which he attempts to capture the Doctor's granddaughter Susan Foreman, but is badly burned when she attacks him in self-defence and takes possession of his TARDIS. After Susan escapes, the dying Master is eventually found by Chancellor Goth on the planet Tersurus, which leads directly into the events of The Deadly Assassin.
First Frontier shows the Master (apparently the Anthony Ainley version) finally acquiring a new body, who according to McIntee is based on the cinema persona of Basil Rathbone. This incarnation reappears in Happy Endings by Paul Cornell, Virgin Publishing's celebratory fiftieth Virgin New Adventures novel. After the broadcast of the television movie, some fans suggested that this is the incarnation briefly played by Gordon Tipple in the prologue, although this is contradicted by the Eighth Doctor Adventure The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks, which shows the Master in his Cheetah-infected Ainley persona in the lead-up to the television movie.
The short story Stop The Pigeon, and the Past Doctor Adventure Prime Time, both by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker and probably set before First Frontier, feature the Ainley Master looking for a cure for the Cheetah virus.
Gallifrey and the Time Lords are destroyed in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Ancestor Cell, but in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street a mysterious stranger wearing a rosette appears who could have been the Master, somehow surviving the cataclysm. Gallifrey's destruction here is not related to its subsequent destruction just prior to the new series (see Time Lord - Recent history). In Lance Parkin's The Gallifrey Chronicles, a surviving Time Lord named Marnal appears, and it is implied in dialogue that he may have been the Master's father. In the same novel (and earlier, in Sometime Never...), the Doctor talks with a malign entity within the TARDIS's Eye of Harmony, which could have been the Roberts Master, throwing the true identity of the Man with the Rosette into doubt. However, the entity within the Eye refers to itself as an "echo", thus leaving scope for the real Master to be elsewhere. (In his Doctor Who chronology book AHistory, Parkin suggests that Lawrence Miles intended the Man with the Rosette to be the Master, even it was not explicitly stated.)
The Master is seen to escape the Eye of Harmony in the short story Forgotten by Joseph Lidster, published in Short Trips: The Centenarian. The story ends with him left in 1906 in possession of a human male's body.
Another version of the Master appears in The Infinity Doctors (also by Parkin), where he is known as the Magistrate and is, once again, the Doctor's friend, although when this takes place in continuity (or if it really takes place in an alternate reality) is unclear. Parkin, however has stated that the novel can fit into continuity and that its incarnation of the Master is based on Richard E. Grant.
During the Faction Paradox arc that runs through the Eighth Doctor Adventures, a character known as the War King is featured which is implied to be a future incarnation of the Master. The character is also referenced in The Book of the War, published by Mad Norwegian Press when the Faction Paradox stories spun-off into their own continuity.
Comic strips
The Master returns in a new body and guise, that of a street preacher, in the previously mentioned Doctor Who Magazine comic strip story The Fallen, although the Doctor does not recognise him. The Master reveals himself a few stories later, in The Glorious Dead (DWM #287-#296). The Master had survived the events of the television movie by encountering a cosmic being named Esterath in the time vortex. Esterath controls the Glory, the focal point of the Omniversal spectrum which underlies all existence. The Master's scheme to take control of the Glory fails, and he is banished to parts unknown (see Kroton).
This incarnation of the Master resembles a middle-aged black human. (No Time Lord in the television series was ever played by a black actor, although a black Time Lord appears in the spin-off novel The Shadows of Avalon by Paul Cornell, and Time Lord founder Rassilon is portrayed in several audio plays by black actor Don Warrington.)
In Character Assassin (DWM #311), the Delgado Master visits the Land of Fiction and steals part of the technology behind it, wiping out several nineteenth century fictional villains as he goes.
Audio plays
The Master appears in the Big Finish Productions audio play, Dust Breeding, where Geoffrey Beevers reprised the role. The story reveals that, at some point after Survival, The Master's Trakenite body is damaged and he becomes a walking corpse again, using the alias Mr Seta, another anagram of Master.
In the later Master, it is revealed that while the Seventh Doctor is Time's Champion, the Master is Death's. This is a result of an incident in their youth, where the Doctor gave his childhood friend over to Death (personified as a woman) rather than become its slave himself, creating the Master. The Master forgives the Doctor for this, understanding that he did not foresee the consequences, but the end of the play implies that the Master will once again become Death's servant.
Another out-of-continuity Master is heard in the Big Finish audio play Sympathy for the Devil, voiced by "Sam Kisgart" (an anagram of Mark Gatiss). In this alternate version of events, the Third Doctor does not arrive for his exile on Earth until 1997 and the Master has been trapped on the planet while a series of extraterrestrial disasters occurred over the decades without the Doctor's help to stop them.
Others
The Master was also played by Jonathan Pryce in the Comic Relief skit Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. Eric Saward included the Anthony Ainley version in his short story, "Birth of a Renegade," in the Doctor Who 20th Anniversary Special one-off magazine, published by Radio Times (and in the United States by Starlog Press) in 1983. In 2003, an android version of the character (resembling the Delgado Master and voiced by Derek Jacobi) appeared in the animated webcast, Scream of the Shalka. While this last Master is not part of official continuity, he also appears, with the "Shalka Doctor" (Richard E. Grant in the webcast), in a follow-up short story by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright, The Feast of the Stone. This Master is created by the Doctor and is apparently once again his friend — albeit a slightly sinister one. Exactly why the Doctor created an android duplicate of the Master is not revealed, but it is suggested that the Doctor somehow extended the Master's own life by doing so. The android is also able to pilot the Doctor's TARDIS, but is physically unable to leave the ship, perhaps as a safeguard. It can also be switched off.
The Master also appears in the Viz comic strip and Flash animation Doctor Poo, suffering from a case of diarrhoea.
Further appearances
Audio dramas
- The Killing Stone (BBV Audio, read by Richard Franklin)
Other
- Who Killed Kennedy (Virgin)
- Destiny of the Doctors (Computer game; played by Ainley; his last performance as The Master)
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Fans have occasionally seized upon the two Time Lords' rivalry to speculate that the Master and the Doctor are, in fact, brothers. Such speculation was fueled by the Master's last line in Planet of Fire, which was originally scripted by Peter Grimwade (with permission from script editor Eric Saward) to allude to this as "Doctor, could you do this to your own..." However, this line was excised in post-production, and the Master's last words in the story are somewhat obscured. On the other hand, Lance Parkin's novel The Gallifrey Chronicles implies that the Doctor and the Master had different fathers.
- ^ Fan speculation has also tried to link the Master with the Meddling Monk and/or the War Chief, renegade Time Lords and adversaries of the Doctor predating the Master's first appearance. Such speculation postulated that either the Monk or the War Chief eventually regenerated into the Master; however, the licensed spin-off novels have contradicted these theories by featuring return appearances by both renegades, as well as providing an origin story for the Master.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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- ^ English, Paul (2004-09-11). "OLD FATHER TIMELORD". Daily Record. Retrieved 2007-02-02.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2001320029-2007040780,00.html
- ^ Hoggard, Liz (2007-02-11). "John Simm: The time of his life". The Independent on Sunday. Retrieved 2007-02-11.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Of a Thursday". Digital Spy. 2007-04-01. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Episode 10". Totally Doctor Who. Season 2. Episode 10. 2007-06-15.
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{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Cook, Benjamin (2007-03-28 cover date). "With a Little Help From My Friends". Doctor Who Magazine (380): p. 16.
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External links
- "The Feast of the Stone" - short story featuring the Shalka Master on the BBCi website.
- The Canon Keeper's Guide to Doctor Who — "The Master's Travels" - a speculative chronology of the Master's appearances in television, novels and audio plays (scroll down)
- International Hero Profiles - a profile of the Master and his various identities