A History of - The Master

The various Masters from throughout the show's history. From left to right: Roger Delgado, Peter Pratt, Anthony Ainely, Michelle Gomez, Eric Roberts, Derek Jacobi & John Simm.

With the return of the Master to Doctor Who in the epic two-part Series 12 opener "Spyfall", I thought it might be a good time to do a little rundown of the history of the Doctor's greatest enemy, to get you up to speed before the second episode airs this Sunday. So strap in tight, as I run through the Master's on-screen history, some of their most evil plans and some of their most notable adventures away from the small screen!

1. Roger Delgado (1971-1973)

Roger Delgado as the Master, in a photograph taking during
the recording of "The Claws of Axos".

First introduced in the 1971 story '"Terror of the Autons", the Master was originally played by Roger Delgado, a notable television, theatre and film actor. Conceived by producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks as the Professor James Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes, this version of the Master was silky and urbane, and could even be quite charming. However, his evil was evident right from the beginning, with his alliance with the Nestene Consciousness in its second attempt to invade the Earth. His tussles with the Third Doctor came mostly during the Doctor's exile on Earth by the Time Lords, and, as such, the Master would often bring evil aliens to Earth in order to conquer and destroy, like the Autons, Axons and Kronos the Chronovore, or attempt to resurrect dormant beings like Azal the Daemon or the Sea Devils. In "The Daemons", the Master is captured by UNIT and the Doctor, and imprisoned in a fortress on an island off the English Coast, although he escapes during the events of "The Sea Devils", having hypnotised the prison staff into obeying him. His use of hypnotism was, pardoning the pun, masterful. He hypnotised Chinese captains, university dons, village locals and even the Doctor's companion, Jo Grant, into doing his bidding. The famous line "I am the Master, and you will obey me!" comes from here. This Master did have off-world adventures too: in "Colony in Space", the Master poses as an Adjudicator (another of the Master's tricks being his elaborate use of disguises) in order to locate the terrifying Doomsday Weapon; and in "Frontier in Space", in which the Master and the Ogrons try to stir up a war between the Draconian Empire and Earth on behalf of the Daleks. Sadly, however, this was to be Roger Delgado's final Doctor Who appearance: shortly after recording his part in "Frontier in Space", he was killed in a car accident in Turkey. This meant that his final appearance in the role, in a story entitled "The Final Game" couldn't be recorded. However, despite the man who brought him to life having passed away, this Master has lived on. Notable stories beyond the TV series featuring this Master include the 2000 novel "Last of the Gaderene", which sees him battle the Third Doctor and UNIT once more, the 2013 novel "Harvest of Time", where the Third Doctor and the Master are forced to work together, and the 2017 Doctor Who Magazine comic strip "Doorway to Hell", where the Master uses the Twelfth Doctor in order to enter a time-locked dimension, events that trigger his regeneration.

2. Peter Pratt (1976) & Geoffrey Beevers (1981)

Peter Pratt as the Master, in a photograph taken during
the recording of "The Deadly Assassin".

When we next saw the Master, he was in a very different form to that which we'd previously seen him in. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes decided to take a very different turn with the Master than the approach that Roger Delgado had taken. Rather than charming and urbane, this Master was disfigured and horrific, barely clinging to life. Now during Tom Baker's tenure as the Doctor, the Master was reintroduced during "The Deadly Assassin", a story set on Gallifrey, with the Master determined to extend his life beyond its natural end. Having reached his thirteenth and final body, the Master was determined to survive, and planned to steal the power of the Eye of Harmony in order to survive. Played on this occasion by one-time only Master actor Peter Pratt, this Master is determined that nothing, and no-one, will stand between him and survival. Unlike his previous self, if someone was no longer necessary to his plan, he would kill them. Seemingly defeated at the end of the story, the Master remained dormant until 1981, when he returned in "The Keeper of Traken", now played by Geoffrey Beevers. Still clinging to life, the Master planned to steal the power of the Source of Traken, but was foiled by the Doctor, and his companions Adric and Nyssa. However, in the serial's dying moments, the Master was able to steal the body of Nyssa's father, Tremas (an anagram of Master, for all you anagram fans!), and continue living once more. While Peter Pratt never returned to the role, Geoffrey Beevers has become a prolific voice for Big Finish, voicing the Master in a number of popular stories, including the 2003 story "Master", which sees the Master living out a human life as the 'good man' John Smith, the 2013 50th Anniversary story "The Light at the End", where the Master tries to erase the first eight incarnations of the Doctor from history, a guest role in the eleventh series of "Jago & Litefoot" from 2016, teaming up with Alex Macqueen's Big Finish Master in 2016's "The Two Masters" and the sinister and creepy "Mastermind" from 2013, where the Master is once more a prisoner of UNIT, and explains how he got there and ties up a number of plot points from "The TV Movie". But more on that later...

3. Anthony Ainley (1981-1989)

Anthony Ainley as the Master, in a photograph taken during the recording of "Logopolis".

Once again in complete contrast to his prior incarnation, stage and screen actor Anthony Ainley's portrayal of the Master was a return to the kind of Master Roger Delgado had been. He was a classic villain in the oldest sense: making up hair-brained schemes and plans for his own amusement, plans that the Doctor would have to defeat. The longest serving Master in the TV show thus far, Ainley was introduced in the dying days of Tom Baker's tenure, and would go on to battle Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy's Doctors, across nearly a decade of adventures. From triggering the Fourth Doctor's regeneration in "Logopolis", to kidnapping not one, but TWO Concorde's in "Time-Flight"; from actually helping the Doctor during the events of "The Five Doctors", to working with evil Time Lord the Rani in "The Mark of the Rani", this Master came up with many schemes for domination. Like his previous incarnation, this Master was ruthless at dealing with those who stood in his way, and yet took a gleeful pleasure in the chaos and destruction he caused. Like those Masters before him, he was a fantastic hypnotist, once again ensnaring the Doctor's companions, this time Nyssa and the robot Kamelion, into doing his bidding. And, like those before him, this Master was proficient with his most feared weapon, the Tissue Compression Eliminator. Using it to shrink his victims down to the size of dolls, this Master ruthlessly used the weapon on many occasions: most famously killing companion Tegan's Aunt Vanessa in "Logopolis", and even shrinking himself in "Planet of Fire". This Master wasn't above helping the Doctor when needed. In the aforementioned "Five Doctors", the Master tries to help the various Doctors get through the Death Zone, while in "The Trial of a Time Lord", the Master briefly declares a truce with the Sixth Doctor, so the pair of them can deal with the Valeyard. While this Master was playful in his villainy, there were times where survival would override all. This Master couldn't regenerate: he was trapped in the body of Nyssa's father, and, as such, he had no more regenerations. And in "Survival", the final story of the classic series of Doctor Who, the Master was succumbing to the Cheetah Virus, which had the power to turn even Time Lords into feral Cheetah People. Our last sight of this Master was battling with the Seventh Doctor, before the Doctor was teleported back to Earth. Anthony Ainley did reprise the role one last time, for the 1997 video game "Destiny of the Doctors". Sadly, Ainley passed away in 2004, but his Master has still lived on: in the 2001 novel "The Quantum Archangel", which is a sequel to "The Time Monster", in the 2013 comic "Prisoners of Time", which saw the Master ally himself with disgraced Ninth Doctor companion Adam Mitchell, and Big Finish even found a way for this Master to appear in the 2015 box set "The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure", where the Master uses an avatar body (played by Chris Finney) in an attempt to control a dimensional nexus.

4. Eric Roberts (1996)

Eric Roberts as the Master, in a photograph taken during the
recording of "The TV Movie".

When Doctor Who returned to television in 1996, there was one villain he brought back with him: the Master. As part of the deal allowing producer Philip Segal to have Paul McGann as the Doctor, American co-producers Fox wanted a big name American actor cast in the part of the Master. And so, television and film legend Eric Roberts was cast as the iconic Doctor Who villain. Like Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley before him, Eric Roberts' Master had a flair for the camp and the dramatic. Unlike any other Master before him, however, this was turned up considerably, leading to a mixed response towards Roberts' portrayal by fans. Roberts, however, throws himself into the role, and does bring up some of the more ruthless side that Peter Pratt and Geoffrey Beevers did as the Decaying Master. In "The TV Movie", the Master manages to escape execution by the Daleks by, well, turning into a snake?, and taking over the body of paramedic Bruce after forcing the TARDIS to land in San Francisco on New Year's Eve, 1999. Inadvertently causing the Seventh Doctor's regeneration, the Master attempts to steal the Doctor's body in order to survive (his surrogate body decaying rapidly), using the TARDIS' link to the Eye of Harmony, and a Chinese gang member named Chang Lee. This Master has a brutal way with killing people: not content with shrinking them with his TCE, or just shooting them, he has a habit of snapping people's necks, throwing them off balconies and even slime-ing them to death with his new snake powers. Sadly, this Master only made one TV appearance, being pulled into the Eye of Harmony at the story's end. This Master hasn't even had much life in the extended universe, at least until 2019, when Roberts returned to the role in two Big Finish Productions: "The Diary of River Song: Series 5", which saw Roberts' Master running into River Song on a wrecked time-ship in the vortex, while "Ravenous 4" saw Eric Roberts' Master appearing alongside Geoffrey Beevers, Derek Jacobi and Michelle Gomez in a mind-blowing story that sees the Masters going up against the Eighth Doctor, his companions Liv and Helen, Time Lord criminal the Eleven and the Ravenous, a race of creatures notable for being able to hunt Time Lords.

5. Derek Jacobi (2007)

Derek Jacobi as the Master, in a promotional image for the
third series of Doctor Who.

When the Master finally made his return in the revived series, it was in the shocking twist ending to Series 3 episode "Utopia". For the vast majority of the story, we had been lead to believe that stage and screen legend Derek Jacobi had been playing the kindly scientist Professor Yana. However, as we discovered, the Professor had just been an invention: the Master's ultimate disguise. Escaping the horrors of the Time War, the Master had used a Chameleon Arch in order to make himself human so that the Daleks and the Time Lords would never find him. It took the arrival of the Tenth Doctor, Captain Jack and Martha Jones before the Professor started to question the strange watch he had kept with him for his whole life, and, opening it as the last survivors of humanity took off for Utopia, the Master was reborn. Despite only 5 minutes of screen time, Jacobi quickly established himself as probably the scariest incarnation of the Time Lord villain, with his ice cold delivery and chilling demeanor. This was a Master that had no attachments to anyone: he would kill them without a second thought, and would do so in the most painful way possible. This version of the Master was judgmental and arrogant, believing himself above everyone around him. However, despite his brutal killing of his assistant Chantho, she was able to shoot him, triggering his regeneration which, for the first and only time, we saw directly on screen. Sadly, this was all we got of Derek Jacobi's Master on screen, but, once again, this Master has had an extensive life off-screen. Since 2017, Big Finish have featured this version of the Master in a spin-off series of audio box-sets, focused around his Master. Entitled "The War Master", we get a chance to expand upon this Master's character, and discover what the Master got up to during the Time War. In particular, the first set, "Only the Good", explains how the Master came to run away from the Time War, as well as, for the first time in the character's history, being given a companion in the form of Jonny Green's med-tech Cole Jarnish. Other appearances include a notable turn in 2018's "Gallifrey: Time War Volume 1", where the War Master is partnered with Leela, 2018's "UNIT: Cyber-Reality", which sees this Master forced to team up with Kate Stewart and UNIT in order to defeat the Cybermen, and 2019's "The Diary of River Song: Series 5", where the War Master and River Song rub shoulders during another of the Master's schemes to take control of the Time War.

6. John Simm (2007-2010, 2017)

John Simm as the Master, in a promotional image for "The End of Time".

After the Master's regeneration in "Utopia", his next incarnation was, again, a sharp contrast to his previous body. Not only younger, but more manic, this Master had an insanity that few of his predecessors showed, and a desire for more personal revenge against the Doctor. In the Series 3 finale "Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords", the Master becomes Harold Saxon, and manipulates the people of the United Kingdom into voting for him as prime minister using the Archangel Network (that could never happen in real life, surely?). He then plans to introduce the world to the Toclafane, a race of aliens that, as it turns out, he himself created. After assassinating the US president, the Master brings the Toclafane, or, as it turns out, the last survivors of the human race who went looking for Utopia, to conquer the Earth, using the Doctor's TARDIS, which has been cannibalised in order to make a paradox engine. Capturing the Doctor and Captain Jack, the Master ends up ruling over Earth for a whole year, forcing the human race to work as slaves. It's only thanks to the intervention of Martha Jones that the Master is defeated. However, he is shot by his wife, and decides not to regenerate if he will be the Doctor's prisoner if he lives. He next shows up in David Tennant's final story "The End of Time", which depicts the Master's resurrection. However, owing to interference from his wife, the process goes wrong, leaving the Master in a state somewhere between life and death. More than any other Master in the show's history, we probed with Simm's Master into why the Master was the way that he was, an arc which culminated in "The End of Time" with the discovery that the Time Lords, during the final day of the Time War, had implanted the sound of four repeating drumbeats inside the Master's mind during his initiation to the Time Lord academy as a child. This then allowed the Time Lords to return to the universe, a plan that was foiled by the Doctor and the Master, when he realised what the High Council was planning for the rest of the universe in order to avoid the Time War. Banished back into the Time War with the Time Lords, it was thought that this was the end for this Master, especially once we met his next incarnation. However, in a shock twist, John Simm returned for the programme's first multi-Master story, "World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls" in 2017. This time cast as a more traditional Master, in the vein of Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley, the Master was found by the Twelfth Doctor, Nardole, Bill and Missy aboard a Mondasian colony ship that had become caught in a black hole. Disguised as the kindly Razor, the Master spent years manipulating Bill for his own purposes, all the while aiding the scientists who were developing Cybermen out of the people on the lower floors. Eventually, he aids the Doctor, his future self and the Cyber-converted Bill: however, he decides to leave them all to die, running out on them with Missy. Missy, however, stabs him in the back (literally!) and dumps him in a lift, with enough time to get back to his TARDIS before regenerating. While this Master may not have had much of a life beyond the small screen, he has had one notable appearance in the 2008 novel "The Story of Martha", which depicts the destruction of Japan, one of the events that takes place during the year the Master ruled Earth, between "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords".

Michelle Gomez, in a promotional image
for the tenth series of Doctor Who.

7. Michelle Gomez (2014-2017)

After a four-year rest, Steven Moffat brought the Master back in time for Peter Capaldi's first series as the Twelfth Doctor. However, this was to be the most radical reinvention of the character yet: actress Michelle Gomez had been cast in the role, making her the first female incarnation of the Doctor's arch nemesis. After a number of cameo appearances throughout the eighth series, Missy (the Master's new name) appeared in all her glory in the series finale, "Dark Water/Death in Heaven", where she was in charge of the mysterious 3W institute, attempting to create an army of Cybermen for the Doctor. Maintaining the insanity of her predecessor, this version of the Master also had a habit for making people 'say something nice' before they died, and like to push the Doctor towards being like her. It also turned out that she had pushed the Doctor into travelling with Clara Oswald, in order to create a perfect dynamic that she could manipulate. When the Doctor went missing in "The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar", Missy and Clara tracked the Doctor down, only to discover that he was hiding from Davros, the creator of the Daleks. While various other Masters had shown moments of likability, remorse or even guilt for their actions, Missy was the only Master who has ever come close to true redemption. Throughout the tenth series, Missy was imprisoned in the Vault, which was being guarded by the Doctor and Nardole at St. Luke's University in Bristol. While resistant to the process to begin with, when Missy helped the Doctor and Bill to defeat the Monks in "The Lie of the Land", the Doctor realised that Missy was starting to change and develop. Across the last few stories of the season, we saw Missy grow and develop, to the point where the Doctor felt she would change. All this came to a conclusion in "World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls", where Missy, Bill and Nardole go to answer a distress signal from a Mondasian colony ship. However, Bill is shot, leading to her conversion into a Cyberman, while her previous self manipulated events. Now torn between her loyalty to her past, and what the Doctor has shown and taught her, Missy eventually decides to join the Doctor in facing down the Cybermen, and stabs her past self in the back. However, determined to prevent her from joining the Doctor, her past self shoots her, preventing her regeneration in the process. Left for dead, that was where we all believed the Master's story had ended... Away from the screen, Missy has had a wide variety of adventures, from appearances in Titan Comics' Twelfth Doctor strips, like 2018's "A Confusion of Angels", to 2018's "The Missy Chronicles", a series of short stories featuring Missy's exploits away from the Doctor. And Michelle Gomez returned to the role for Big Finish in 2019: teaming up with River Song to escape a prison in "The Diary of River Song: Series 5", joining forces with three of her past selves in "Ravenous 4" and even getting the chance to shine in her own series: "Missy: Series 1", which also saw her cross paths with another renegade Time Lord, the Monk (played by actor and Doctor Who fan Rufus Hound).

So, that's the Master's story, from his first appearance in "Terror of the Autons" all the way up to her latest showing in "World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls". I'm really looking forward to seeing Sacha Dhawan step into the role properly this week, and seeing where he takes this iconic character next!

Sacha Dhawan, in the closing moments of the Series 12 episode "Spyfall: Part One".

All pictures are copyright to the BBC, while the first image is also copyright to Doctor Who Magazine and Panini. Thank you very much for reading.