This is the history of the Master, and his various incarnations in the Classic series of Doctor Who.
Beginning[]
The Master's madness begun at the age of 8 when he was taken before Untempered Schism, a gap in the fabric of space and time, as part of a Time Lord initiation ceremony. Since then, the Master has been plagued by the four-beat sound of drums, believing them to be the "drums of war", and became into a would-be universal conqueror. Like the Doctor, he got his own TARDIS and flee Gallifrey. However, while the Master was an amoral person, he had not descended into total villainy at this point.
Koschei[]
Calling himself Koschei in the novel The Dark Path, the Master acted in a similar manner to the Doctor, righting wrongs across the cosmos, albeit with a greater willingness to kill. Koschei took on a human companion called Allia, who was actually a Time Lady assigned to watch over him and his unstalbe obsession with order. Koschei caught up with the Second Doctor at the Darkheart colony in the early years of the Galactic Federation. The temptation posed by the Darkheart device, capable of altering timelines without causing paradoxes or attracting the attention of various "higher beings", proved too much for Koschei, and the revelation that Ailla was a spy killed the last traces of good in him, and he became "the Master". After the Doctor trapped him in a black hole, the Master swore that he would take revenge.
Victor Magister[]
The Master encountered the Doctor during his Third incarnation when he was trapped on Earth. Wanting to make the Doctor suffer, the Master embarked on various schemes, such as allying with the Nestene Consciousness, using a mind parasite and stealing a missile to disrupt a peace conference, working with Axos to destroy Earth, trying to steal a doomsday weapon on the planet Uxarieus before being arrested by UNIT after trying to summon a Daemon Azal.
By the time of The Sea Devils, the Master was imprisoned inside a castle prison on Fortress Island as the only prisoner. The Master manipulated the patriotism of his gaoler, Colonel Trenchard, to aid him in stealing electronic equipment, to supposedly root out enemy agents. The Master's real goal was to contact, the Sea Devils, a aquatic version of the Silurians, whom he planned to start a war with humanity. Because the reactivation machinery of the Sea Devils' hibernation units deteriorated during millions of years of hibernation, the Master needed to construct a sonar device to awaken the remaining reptiles. The Master captured the Doctor and forced him to help create this device, but to prevent the device from reactivating further Sea Devil bases and start the war, the Doctor blew up the Sea Devil base by reversing the device's polarity, creating a massive reverse feedback. The Master faked a heart attack, and hypnotised the officer guarding him to act as his body, while the real Master escaped in a hovercraft.
After this, the Master tried to summon the Chronovore Kronos. After the Master's scheme to provoke a war between the Human and Draconian Empires on behalf of the Daleks (though he was planning to betray them) failed, the Master retreated. After this, in the DWM comic Doorway to Hell, he noticed the Doctor's TARDIS malfunctioned, stranding him in the 70s, and incorrectly believed the Doctor had regenerated. The Master then kidnapped the Collins Family, who had taken the Doctor in, and used them to access another dimension, where he could gain massive temporal abilities. He battled the Twelfth Doctor for them and his abilities were blasted back onto him, causing his regeneration.
Thirteenth Master[]
While multiple actors portray the Master in different bodies, from a regenerative standpoint, until he gains a new regenerative cycle, they are all the "thirteenth" incarnation of the Master. As well as this, the "Tremas" and "Bruce" Masters are considered separate renditions of the Master, as they are forced to revert to their the decayed form several times.
Decayed body[]
The Two Masters[]
As revealed in Big Finish's The Two Masters, the Master, in his thirteenth and last incarnation arrived on a Time Lord base on Tersurus to infiltrate their database. There he encountered a future incarnation (see below) of himself, who burned his body, leaving him a fraction above death. Fueled by his burning hatred, the Master was able to will his body into staying alive, despite it being a rotting husk of his former self. The future Master tried to allow history to take it's course. Before Goth could arrive, the Cult of the Heretic switched the Master's mind with that of his future self.
In Vampire of the Mind, the Master remembered being in great pain, the process left gaps in his memory. He returned to a prison in the south of England, setting up the Dominus Institute in order to lure the Doctor to him, planning to use a Mind Leech to absorb his intellect. The Sixth Doctor made a deal with the mind leech, one which had the leech only take the Doctor's short term memory. This was enough to sustain the Master but ruined his overall plans and he fled from the prison in his TARDIS.
In The Two Masters, having realized what had happened to him, the Master hired assassins to kill the older Master. The act of having a Time Lord inhabiting the body of his past self led to the universe beginning to break down. Realising this, the Seventh Doctor helped them get back into the right bodies. After this, history was allowed to run its normal course.
The Deadly Assassin[]
In this state, the Master came across the fellow Time Lord, Chancellor Goth. Sensing that Goth was hungry for power, the Master was able to mentally influence and use him for a scheme to steal the artifacts of Rassilon, in order to steal energy from the Eye of Harmony, which he hoped would help him to restore his damaged body to a healthier state, as well as getting revenge on the Time Lord and the Doctor, by also using the artifacts to destroy Gallifrey. The Fourth Doctor was, however, able to foil this scheme, but could not stop the Master from escaping once again in the aftermath.
Big Finish[]
Following the Doctor's trail, the Master arrived in Victorian England, and battled the Doctor's friends Jago and Litefoot, and eventually plotted to use their energy to heal himself, but was thwarted by them, with the help of the Sixth Doctor. While hunting for the mysterious White Worm in Derbyshire in 1979, the Fourth Doctor once again happened upon the Master, and was surprised to see him in a still damaged, but also notably less decayed form. The Master revealed that he had managed steal a small amount of energy from the Eye during his previous scheme. While it was not enough to completely restore himself, it allowed the Master to heal himself into a more stable state.
The Master, as portrayed by Geoffrey Beevers in Big Finish.
The Master began a series of battles with the Doctor, such as battling the first 8 Doctors and erase his adventures from the timeline in The Light At The End. In The Evil One, while he was stealing gold, the Master hypnotised Leela to kill the Doctor. During the events of Requiem of the Rocket Men/Death Match, the Master got involved with the Rocket Men, during which he kidnapped Leela and used her as his champion in the Death Match.
The Keeper of Traken[]
The Master would next encounter the Doctor, as he was scheming to take the mighty powers of the mythical Keeper of Traken for himself.To this end, over a period of years, within his TARDIS, which had become a Melkur statue, he won over Kassia, who later married Trakenite scientist Tremas. The elderly Keeper, sensing the Master's evil, summoned the Doctor to Traken, leading to the Master to speed up his plans. After Tremas was nominated next Keeper, the Master used her feelings for him to offer herself as Keeper instead, after which the "Melkur" took her place. During a confrontation with the Doctor in his TARDIS, the Master considered using his powers to possess the Doctor. However, the Doctor's allies managed to disconnect the Master from the Keepership. Despite this, the Master would still achieve a triumph of sorts as he was able to find a more permanent way to cheat death; namely by transferring his being into the body of Tremas.
Tremas incarnation[]
In his new body he headed to Logopolis in hopes of discovering the mysterious purpose the planet's people was working towards. Halting the operations of the planet, he demanded answers from its leader, but through this interrogation he discovered that the purpose of Logopolis was to keep a entropy field which threatened to destroy all the universe at bay, and his through his meddling he had inadvertently brought all of existence in danger. He sought out the help of the Doctor, who reluctantly agreed to work together with him, as he saw as the only way to save the universe.
However, after they stabilised the Charged Vacuum Embodiment and thereby stopped the entropy field, their uneasy alliance quickly ended, as the Master immediately decided to exploit the situation. He send out a message to the people of the universe threatening to unleash the entropy field again, unless they all submitted and accepted him as their supreme ruler. The Doctor was able to stop him, but was seriously injured in the process and had to regenerate into the Fifth Doctor. To get revenge, the Master lured the Doctor to the city Castrovalva where he posed as the librarian Portrevee. After the Doctor foiled his plan the city disappears along with the Master. But the Master would return by unexplained means, still searching for a way to extend his life.
The Master eventually managed to escape, but his TARDIS was damaged after his escape. The Master decided to use the Xeraphin to his advantage, but was defeated by the Doctor, being stranded on their home planet. However the Master repaired his TARDIS and escaped with Kamelion, a shapeshifting robot, who the Master used in a scheme to sabotage the signing of the Magna Carta.
When the five incarnations of the Doctor were kidnapped by Borusa, the Time Lords promised the Master new regenerations if he could save the Doctor. The Fifth Doctor didn't trust him and was teleported away, so he allied the Cybermen to get to the Tower of Rassilon, hoping to receive immortality. The Doctors captured him, and the Master was left to go on his way. At some point after this, the Master, experimenting with his TCE, accidentally shrunk himself, and took used a device to take control of Kamelion, directing him to land the Doctor's TARDIS on Sarn. With Kamelion acting as his proxy, the Master had him pretend to be the locals' god and order the Doctor's death. When this failed, he had Kamelion take the small box his lab had become and take it to the lab on Sarn that used Numismaton Gas, hoping it could restore him. As the Master stood in a gas vent and returned to normal size, the Doctor used the gas to apparently burn him to death.
After escaping, the Master took to threatening his next incarnation. This included teaming up with the Rani and interfering in the trial of the Valeyard. After which in the Past Doctor novel The Quantum Archangel, the Master was attacked by the Chronoves as revenge over his TOMTIT scheme, and realized the Source that was keeping his body stable was fading, leading to his decay. The Master decided to embark on a scheme that would destroy the Chronovores and grant him omnipotence. This ended up creating the Quantum Archangel. He and the Doctor worked together to rectify his mistake, and the Master used it to his advantage to restore his body.
The Master's new look after residing in the cheetah world for so long.
Eventually, the Master was trapped on the Cheetah Planet, and brought hunting specimens from Earth to their planet, while being turned into one of them by the cheetah virus. Eventually, he found a pliable young man called Midge and used him to escape. Using Midge as his "hunting dog", the Master recruited a gang of Perivale youths to defeat the Seventh Doctor and Ace. The Master teleported the Doctor to the Cheetah World, which had begun to break up. The Doctor escaped, but the Master was trapped on the dying world. Somehow escaping from the planet this incarnation of The Master lived on although he was still plagued by the virus even in his next body.
Kreer Master[]
Mr. Seta[]
According to some stories, the Tremas Master survived for some time, but was still plagued by the Cheetah Virus. In the audio Dust Breeding, the Master sought out a sentient weapon known as the Warp Core, which was sealed inside The Scream. He engaged in an elaborate scheme, having attempted to simply steal the painting, but had his previous body be destroyed, reducing him to his decaying form. The Master collected four Krill eggs with the intention of awakening the Warp Core from its slumber and exhausting it, so that he could draw it into his TARDIS to be his slave. The Master then used a mask to disguise his deformity and followed the Warp Core as it arrived on Duchamp 331. Under the alias "Mr. Seta", the Master funded Madame Salvadori's trip to Duchamp 331.
There, the Master unleashed the Krill upon the passengers, hypnotising Salvadori's aide, Klemp, in the process. Revealing his true identity, the Master kept Salvadori alive, before encountering the Doctor. When the Core arrived, the Master tried to ally with it, but it dismissed him, leading him to ordering Klemp to kill Salvadori, but Klemp's loyalty was too strong, so the Master killed him. The Doctor escaped to his TARDIS, and attempted to gain control of the Warp Core through his TARDIS's telepathic circuits, while the Master used his TARDIS to fight of the Doctor's influence, and gain control of it. After it and the planet was destroyed, the Master was flung through time and space.
Bruce[]
The Master's Apparent End[]
The Master's eyes during his execution.
Eventually, the Master is executed by the Daleks as a punishment for his "evil crimes". But he survives his execution by transferring his mind into a small, snake-like morphant that slithers inside the Seventh Doctor's TARDIS console, forcing the vessel to crash land in San Francisco on December 30, 1999 where it enters the body of a paramedic named Bruce. But as Bruce's body is unsustainable and begins to slowly degenerate, the Master attempts to access the Eye of Harmony with help of a teenager named Chang Lee, who he convinces the Doctor is evil, to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations. After discovering the newly regenerated Doctor, the Master and Chang Lee attempted to bring him and Grace to the TARDIS under false pretence, but the Doctor realised who the Master was and managed to escape with Grace. During the escape however, the Master managed to infect Grace with his essence, which took control of her once they returned to the TARDIS of their own volition.
With the Doctor captured, the Master changed into Gallifreyan robes "for the occasion", and began to embark on his possession of the Doctor. However, he was tricked into revealing his story to Chang was a lie, leading him to kill the boy. Electing to use Grace's eye instead, the Master opened the Eye, and began the transfer, which would also destroy Earth as a consequence. However, Grace managed to rewire the TARDIS into a temporal orbit, managing to reverse the effects of the Eye. The enraged Master killed Grace and grappled with the Doctor, but ended up being sucked into the Eye of Harmony and seemingly killed. This was the Master's final appearance in the televised classic series, but expanded media would continue his story, and fill in the gaps up to the Revived series.
Preacher body[]
As revealed in the DWM comic The Glorious Dead, after the Master passed through the Eye of Harmony, his essence was left wandering the Time Vortex. Nearly dying, he was rescued from the Vortex by a being named Esterath, the controller of the Glory, the focal point of the Omniverse. The Master was told that it was time for the Glory to gain another controller, but the power had to be fought for. The Master assumed that the battle would be between himself and his greatest foe, the Doctor.
The Master was resurrected into the body of a recently deceased vagrant on the streets of 2001 Brixton. Some weeks afterwards, due to a symbiotic link he had formed with the Doctor's TARDIS when it consumed part of his essence after he passed through the Eye of Harmony, the Master witnessed one of the Doctor's adventures. The symbiotic link between the TARDIS and the Master had also given the latter the ability to influence the flight of the TARDIS, which he used to send the craft to times and places which would weaken the Doctor's self-belief and confidence. The Master subsequently used this link to trail the Doctor for some time without his enemy suspecting. He was present in London during the events of The Fallen, witnessing the fallout of Grace's attempt to merge human and Time Lord DNA with the DNA of a Morphant. He killed Duncan, an MI6 agent, with his TCE as a calling card.
The Glorious Dead[]
The Master later made contact with Sato Katsura, a Japanese samurai unwillingly rendered immortal as a result of his involvement in the Doctor's adventures. The embittered warrior became the Master's follower. At his behest, Sato adopted the identity of Cardinal Morningstar and became the leader of the Church of the Glorious Dead, instigator of a holy war that altered the history of Earth, to become "Dhakan". After revealing his plot to the Doctor, the Master won a sword fight with the Doctor by stabbing him, but then learned that the true battle for the Glory was between his companion, Sato, and the Doctor's, the Cyberman Kroton, of which Kroton won. Amongst his first acts as the controller of the Glory were to cleanse the TARDIS of the Master's influence and to place the Master somewhere inescapable. The Master declared he would survive and return. Presumably this was the Eye, as karmic punishment.
Living As a Body Snatcher[]
the Master would remain imprisoned within the Eye of Harmony, managing to retain his conciousness, and eventually he learned to extend his mental abilities outside the Eye and into the Doctor's TARDIS, hoping to find a way to escape.
Forgotten[]
One day, as the TARDIS was floating at night time over London in the early 20th century, he had luck with subconsciously influencing one of the Doctor's friends, Edward Grainger, as he was sleeping, leading the companion to sleepwalk to the Eye and open it, allowing the Master to escape, though in a severely diminished, insubstantial form. The Master attempted to kill Edward as a baby, which as a consequence would unravel the Doctor's timeline, but was prevented from doing so, and he remained in Edwardian London.
Mastermind[]
Following his escape, as revealed in the audio story Mastermind, the Master was once again able to possess a human, but he also faced the problem of the body gradually decaying into uselessness, forcing him to continuously possessing new bodies over the years, while trying to keep a low profile to keep the Doctor from detecting him. Knowing that the time of World War I was approaching, the Master eventually decided to emigrate to America to stay out of the conflict. He boarded the Titanic, oblivious to the ship's infamous fate. The Master, though taken by surprise by the accident striking the ship, was able to survive by cheating himself to a spot on the lifeboats, and he eventually reached the shores of the United States, landing in New York, just as his latest host body was about to give out. Here he had a chance encounter with a lieutenant in the infamous Hudson Duster's gang, and was able to possess him.
Determined to make his host body last longer, the Master decided he need money and power. Using his devious mind, he was able to climb to the top of the Hudson Dusters hierarchy, taking to calling himself "Don Maestro". After 20 years of living in his current body, he occupied the body of his host's son, Michael, and moved to Las Vegas where he owned a casino, the profits from he accumulated to fund experiments with the short term goal of elongating of the lifespan of his host body and, in the long term, finding a way to restore his Time Lord body. Fearing the eventual decay of his body, the Master used his money to buy a penthouse to isolate himself from infection. After years living in isolation, his host's son confronted him with the knowledge that he had possessed both his father and his grandfather in some way. He then trapped the Master in the penthouse.
After UNIT were alerted to the presence of penthouse, they discovered the Master in a comatose state, which he later revealed he had entered voluntarily as it was the only way to preserve his decaying body during his isolation. He was imprisoned in the UNIT Vault, awakening every 5 years for one hour, before returning to a coma. After 15 years living in the Vault, the Master awoke for a third time, and was interrogated by two UNIT officers. However, he managed to hypnotize both of them and escape his imprisonment. Discovering that UNIT had recovered his TARDIS from a sealed tomb in the Valley of the Kings, he used it to escape from the Vault.
Ravenous 4[]
to be added
Reborn[]
As far as he knew, the Master was resurrected by the Time Lords, and gained a new regenerative cycle. This version of the Master only appears in Big Finish's audio dramas.
UNIT: Dominion[]
to be added
The Two Masters[]
At some point, the Master made a deal with the Cult of the Heretic to regenerate the universe using their anomaly cage. The Cult manipulated the Master into coming into contact with his younger self, whom he disfigured with a staser. The Cult then betrayed the Master by switching the minds of the younger Master and the older Master. The paradox of having a Time Lord inhabiting the body of his past self led to the universe beginning to break down. The Cult intended to execute the future Master to make the paradox unbreakable, but the future Master was able to escape. After a period trapped in the 1980s, to the point where he spent twenty years trapped as a disembodied mind in his own TARDIS, the future-in-past Master was able to restore his body after a confrontation with the Fifth Doctor.
The Seventh Doctor encountered both of the Masters and helped them get back into the right bodies. The two Masters then stole the Doctor's TARDIS to trap him on a battlecruiser about to crash, before destroying the Cult, planning to use the animaly cage to bend the universe to their will. but the Doctor managed to track them using the Master's own TARDIS, and the Doctor used the Masters' discarded weapons to immobilize the two Masters before using the Cult's equipment to restore the universe as it was, with his only changes being to send both Masters back to their original locations in time and space.
Dark Eyes 2[]
The Master was recruited by CIA Coordinator Narvin, due to the growing danger of the Dalek Empire, the Time Lords came to see his savagery as a useful trait in a pawn they could use against them. When the Time Lords detected a possible timeline where the Eminence, a sentient gas that took control of humans, would become the final life-form in the Universe, they saw a potential in using the Eminence against the Daleks and the Celestial Intervention Agency gave the Master the information he needed.
The Master travelled to the Nixyce System and stole an Eminence Teleportation casket, integrating it into his TARDIS console. In 1970s London he posed as Dr Harcourt De'ath and performed experiments on human immunity to the Eminence, hoping to remove it so the Eminence wouldn't be defeated. He saved Dr Sally Armstong from being hit by a taxi and recruited her. The Master took up posing as a ophthalmologist who, under the pretense of curing blindness, removed people's eyes and replaced them, enabling him to see through their eyes and control them. He encountered the Eighth Doctor, who told an Eminence located in his mind how to pilot a TARDIS. Using the casket in the Master's TARDIS it piloted it away with the Master and Sally. However using the telepathic circuits of his TARDIS the Master isolated the Eminence and Sally expelled it into the Time Vortex.
Dark Eyes 3[]
Some time later, Sally and the Master kidnapped Molly O'Sullivan from her home in 107 Baker Street, and took her to a world on the edge of humanity's war with the Eminence. There, the Master ran an experiment, using the retro-genitor particles in Molly to fight the Eminence's breath of forever. The Master then destroyed Ramosa, kidnapping all of the planet's human colonists on board his TARDIS. The Master infected the human colonists of Ramosa with retro-genitor particles, planning to expose them to the Eminence, and gain control of all of them using the fragment of the Eminence contained in his mind.
The Master unleashed his plans for humanity on Earth. He allied himself with the Eminence and allowed them to conquer Earth. He subsequently activated the retro-genitor particles in the humans and asserted his psychic influence over them. The Doctor escaped the Master's clutches and helped a group of humans overcome the Master's influence and stop his plans. Whilst the Celestial Intervention Agency erased his work from history, the Master escaped in his TARDIS, which was disguised as a palm tree.
Dark Eyes 4[]
Future[]
- Main article: The Master (Modern Who)