Why does no one ask, Master Who?: (#4 - Mr. Steal Your Father's Body )
Why does no one ask, Master Who?: A Character Study Series Masterlist
Long before it became another somewhat recurring theme of the Master to go around trying to steal the Doctor or anyone else's body in order to survive, the Tremas Master (also known as the Ainley!Master) was successful in that goal, having stolen the body of Nyssa's father at the end of âThe Keeper of Traken,â and finding a way to extend his life a little longer.
Anthony Ainley portrayed his take of the Master as a flamboyantly evil, bombastic and sophisticated individual. He was prone to laughing maniacally and reciting lengthy and verbose speeches, accompanied by melodramatic gestures and poses.
With a new lease on life, this Master wasn't afraid to kill anyone, especially the Doctor. He is also the incarnation most known for having this be said about him: "You are one of the most evil and corrupt beings our Time Lord race has ever produced. Your crimes are without number and your villainy without end" and smiling with pride over it.
He is also the incarnation most known for working alongside the Rani and becoming infected with the Cheetah Virus and getting fangs. RAWR!
Important Character Traits for Ainley!Master:
The first to succeed in stealing another person's body for their own!
Of all the Masters, this incarnation seems to have the highest body count.
The most recurring villain of the Fifth Doctor's era, appearing in no less than four serials.
Unable to use his natural hypnotism and instead used other means to enslave others.
As of 2023, the Tremas Master is the longest serving incarnation of the Master seen on-screen, with Anthony Ainley's tenue in the role lasting eight years from his debut to the end of the classic series.
Anthony Ainley wanted to play his incarnation of the Master as cold and calculating but, with the exception of his final televised appearance, he instead portrayed the character as a pastiche of original actor Roger Delgado.
Afterwards, the Master was captured by one of the species he had used in his scheme, with him suggesting to the Doctor that "[the Doctor] knew what they [would] do to him" for his crimes against them (GAME: Destiny of the Doctors) seemingly leading to the Master being executed by the Daleks. (TV: Doctor Who)
Next we will meet the Deathworm Morphant Master, also known as the Bruce Master from the TV Movie!
excuse me i have to say something obscene (which is the point) the master definitely masturbated in the matrix chamber. the heart of gallifrey (âbut hes the president. kill him and gallifrey could be yoursâ), the room he found out about the timeless child in, panopticon right over there, watched but unwatched, witnessed by the dead, the bodies he desecrated, torture room in the cellar, turning his own body, which has been used as a tool so many times by the timelords, back into a base physical thing whichs only purpose is his own pleasure, an agressive retraction of his plea to rassilon in end of time to take him with them in their journey to become beings of consciousness, while turning those same powerful timelords he once begged for acceptance into a perversion of that same ideal, and doing it by doing something that Time Lords Do Not Do; sex. something timelords do not do because of their robbing the timeless child of her regeneration.
a kind of self-love that is 100% spiteful and ironic and painfully self-aware on his part but at the same time a genuine expression of his anger (in a way that 13 is unable to access) and in that somehow looping back to a kind of, if not self-love really, a renewed self-loyalty (contrasted with 13âs continual self-abandonment), a negation of missys self-betrayal in the doctor falls, the pyrrhic victory that created (not to say birthed) him.
This is one of the best âOrigin stories of the Masterâ Iâve ever read besides the Big Finish audio called âMasterâ and the drumbeat explanation in âThe End of Time.â
Just prepare for me to use this all to dive into my character study of the Master...
My thoughts: (SPOILERS below the cut)
I loved the character of Ailla and all the potential behind her. I would love to see more of her, but I know itâs something that I wonât get, just like the freakin Deca.
McIntee did a wonderful job capturing all the characters. I honestly felt like I was watching/reading a missing Second Doctor adventure and I loved it. All the character dynamics and interactions were spot on.
The plot was just *chefs kiss*
What I love about this book the most is it is literally just a Villain Origin story of how Koschei became the Master and it didnât disappoint. He went from an Anti-Hero who was like the Doctor to the villain called the Master, still like the Doctor, but trying to help the universe in the way he thought was right (even if it was twisted.) McIntee did a great job keeping that mirror/parallel that the Doctor and Master have always had with each other, even concerning the whole Order vs Chaos battle.Â
I actually literally cried over two sections of this book (1. Koscheiâs reaction to Aillaâs death, and 2. The betrayal he felt, leading to his downfall and turn into the Master.)
I can honestly see this explanation and the Big Finish Audio called âMasterâ, along with the drumbeat explanation in âThe End of Time, all being reasons as to why the Time Lord we know and hate to love became who they are.Â
Like, not only did his best friend pretty much make him into Deathâs Champion in childhood in order to take his place and guilt for a crime he didnât commit (Audio: Master)...
But the Doctor (yet again), his own people, and someone he thought was his companion and actually cared about and wanted to be with him have betrayed him, thinking he wasnât stable. (The Dark Path.)Â
Now, throw Rassilon implanting the drums into the Masterâs head as a young kid so Gallifrey could have an escape plan in the future, making him into an unstable individual into that mix (The End of Time), and damn, the Master has literally been betrayed and treated like shit by his own people HIS whole entire life. I mean, it all just blends perfectly together to me. And itâs why Iâm crying over this character.
THERE IS A REASON HE WANTS CONTROL AND ORDER. THESE THREE ARE WONDERFUL EXPLAINATIONS AS TO WHY RIGHT HERE! (Audio: Master, Novel: The Dark Path, and Episode: The End of Time.)Â
Iâm just...Iâm a mix of emotions over all this and this realization and I need to have a moment and lie down CAUSE DAMN. Yes, Iâm crying over a fictional character thatâs a villain. Thanks McIntee. Thanks all of Doctor Who writers actually.Â
Thoughts on Chibnall erasing Missy's character development?
I think at this point everyone probably knows how I feel about that, lol. Itâs just very disappointing, especially not even getting any acknowledgment of it. And itâs so boring too. Imagine having all those possibilities for new directions to take the character thanks to where we left off in S10, and ignoring all of it to do whatâs mostly just a rehash of Simm with a few Classic Who nods, and basically just using the character as a convenient infodumper and plot device. (Hey, on the bright side, at least the Master got to drive the story forward more than any of the actual main characters did.) Itâs extremely safe.
Look, whether I agreed with every choice they made or not, both RTD and Moffat did new things with the character, explored them in new ways. I hated most of what RTD did, but he was trying to give a fresh take on the Master and I can appreciate that. He put a lot of thought into what he was doing and really wanted to reinvent the character for modern audiences. Then Moffat did his version, fortunately much closer to my own interpretation, and we got Missy. Again, sheâs something different, a fresh direction for the character (and the show, being the first Time Lord to switch gender, at a point when the majority of the fandom was against the idea). Moffat does something new with her each season, with S10 fleshing her out more than any other incarnation of the Master. He didnât have to give her any more depth than just âwacky evil ladyâ---people already liked that version of her in S8, and Iâm sure she wouldâve continued to be very popular as simply a villain, because Michelle Gomez is delightful in the role---but S10 showed how much more you could do, while tying her development into the central theme of the season. Both RTD and Moffat waited for the right moment to use the character, when they had what they believed was a good idea, and tried to do something new.
In S12 though, instead of moving forward, the Master regresses back to Simm-like mania, forgetting all his character development so he can fulfill his role as just another of Doctor Whoâs iconic bad guys. Heâs a safe, generic version of a New Who Master in the way that, say, Dreyfus is a safe, generic version of a Classic Who Master. Fortunately, heâs played by Sacha Dhawan, so heâs still miles ahead of Dreyfus, but thatâs pretty much the only edge he has. Without Dhawanâs charm, thereâs very little to the character I find interesting. I mean, I was intrigued by his overt suicidal inclinations, but those are never properly justified or explored in S12 and I doubt they will be.
Erasing Missyâs development is bad enough---it makes one of my favourite arcs in the show feel pointless, it turns Twelveâs kindness into a mistake, it reinforces the depressing idea that people canât change, and much like the Timeless Child reveal does for the Doctor it gives the impression that the Master is just stuck in an endless repeating cycle instead of being a character who can grow and whose development matters---but the fact that weâre not even offered anything substantial in return just makes it worse. There were a million things they could have done with the Master and instead they went for the most boring option.
So Iâve always played the Master as horribly unstable, rejected by his home planet, fighting his ex-best friend for some semblance of control or victory over the one person he strives to be better than, slightly suicidal at the thought of always playing second best to the Doctor. But this takes it to a whole new level.
 The Masterâs life work, thousands of years of schemes and plans to be better, to WIN... Only to realize he never had a chance in the first place, the Doctor was special and he was the spare. Everything he secretly thought and wondered about came true and there was nothing he could do about it.Â
Not only that but he starts to look at the similarities between the Doctor and himself, knowing that someone who he resents is part of him fucks up his mind so deeply. His brilliance, thirst for knowledge and adventure, is that actually something he truly had and forged for himself or is that the Doctor bleeding into his personality. How much of him is actually the Doctorâs influence? I donât blame him for being suicidal, the Master wants control and dominance more than anything in the universe and it wasnât a possibility to begin with.Â
Wait can you explain to me why you don't think Fitz will be left behind. I know he's in spoilers but couldn't there be an issue with him going back as 2 of him will exist at the same time. Is it possible he stays behind but when the team goes back they'll rescue him from the prison? That would be a bummer because of all the beauty that has transpired in this arc, but it could very well be the "Sadness" Chloe mentions without it involving a death.
Hi Anon,
Hope yo donât mind, Iâm going to make this my âFitz isnât going to die or be left behindâ Post because Iâm getting this ask a lot. Â
First, there is not another Fitz still out there. With where the story is at now he has caught up with the team in the year 2091. He took the long way to get there and slept nonstop for 74 years.  Once the team leaves there isnât still a version of Fitz frozen somewhere with nothing to wake up too.
When the team goes back to the past they will start a NEW timeline.  This will allow the Timeline they just escaped and the people we got attached too (Flint) to carry on but also allows for the team to stop that future from happening in the new one. Â
The entire team is in this new timeline together.
The new timeline was already set to be started because Enoch sent the team to the future because of Robinâs âpropheciesââŚalready interfering with that timeline. Â
Deke mentioned the Multiverse theory which is how this all works. Its not going to be like Back To The Future and when they team goes back to the past the future changes and Biff rules the world.  In the NEW timeline they go back too FItz is with the team. His counterpart in stasis has already run its course in the timeline they just escaped. Â
Time has still passed on earth while the team is in the future.  Iâm betting there will be some sort of jump to the when the team returns too and when Fitz left with Enoch.  This allows the writers to clear the decks if you will and even have the event they are trying to stop into motion when they return. Â
Even if that Fitz in stasis is in play there is no way the team can get to him.Â
Enoch had him in a Chronicon vessel orbiting a distant planet for his protection.
Enoch is the one who can summon such a ship and one way or another he doesnât look to be making the trip back to the past. My guess is he stays with that timeline because he needs to continue to observe humanity there (I like Enoch and will be way bummed if he turns out to be evil).
Shield doesnât have a Spaceship that would allow them to get to him.
Story wise it doesnât make sense to me either:
They built to the engagement and hopefully wedding in 12 for 5 seasons.  If they werenât ready for it to have happened they wouldnât have done it, Fitz and Jemma could have waited to propose to each other until they writers were ready for it. Â
I donâ think the writers are THAT cruel. They are well aware of how frustrated a lot of the Fandom was with Fitzsimmons and they know âtaking that awayâ would be far too much for many fans. Â
They already did this with Philinda in a way.  IE they had Phillinda have some major movement between Coulson and Robo MayâŚand now is still dealing with the fall out from that. Â
The Fitz in stasis intended on proposing to Jemma the first chance he got so IF they did this, and took all the time to dedicate to getting stasis Fitz back from deep space, they are still getting to the same place with a lot of unnecessary drama. Â
That is not where the story is going.  This season is about the team coming back together and stopping the future theyâve escaped.  Theyâve set up progression for Fitzsimmons not regression.  Plus there a other arcs that need to be dealt with IE Coulsonâs deal. Â
Going the route of them getting Fitz from prison throws away a ton of set up and character development. Â
Even if you take the character development aside, the events of Rewind secured the team a base in the Lighthouse and Liberated the Zephyr for them.
My take on the âSadnessâ that Chloe keeps referring too is its something to do with Coulson, that his secret and the terms of his deal with the Rider will come to light and that will be sad. Especially for her character Daisy. Â
Why does no one ask, Master Who?: A Character Study Series
This was one subject I was excited to cover, especially after just recently getting into Russian folklore. And of course since this is technically the first master (as according to the fandom, EU content, and The Sound of Drums ), this had to be the one to cover first (especially because of the symbolism present here that I feel is so important to beginning our journey exploring who the Master is.)
Though the young first Masterâs name is never revealed to us in the show, how did we get the name Koschei? Let me direct you to the way of the Extended Universe.
May I introduce you to a series of wonderful books?Â
Letâs start with the one that introduced the name Koschei for the Master:
1. The Dark Path by David A. McIntee (published March 1997)
A wonderful novel that features one of the earliest encounters with the Master and the Doctor, greatly expanding on their personal histories on Gallifrey. This story in particular is iconic because itâs one of the many origin stories explaining how/why he became the Master. I honestly donât wanna spoil it for those who have yet to read it, but I did leave a spoiler review on my main blog awhile back.Â
This book is important, however, because this is where the Koschei name began. As the book states, this is the name he was going by before he decided to take the title; The Master, by the end of the book.Â
2. Divided Loyalties by Gary Russell (published October 1999)
2 years later, this book was released. Itâs another fantastic novel which is iconic for showing the begins of the Deca and giving us a glimpse into the childhoodâs of the Doctor, the Master, the Rani, and so on. I also donât want to spoil this for those who havenât read it. Honestly, itâs an experience, and Iâve posted about it a lot on my main.Â
However, it also features the Master using the name âKoscheiâ, but in the Academy! And when alluding to the characters fates at the end, it even mentions what happens in McInteeâs âThe Dark Pathâ.Â
Bonus: It is also the book that gives us the Masterâs house as being Oakdown, hence most of the fandom calling the young Master; Koschei Oakdown.Â
So, still....Why the name, Koschei?Â
What is the significance of it? Where did it even come from?
The answers lie in a character from Russian Folklore...
Koschei the Deathless (aka the Immortal)
As the wiki describes: âHe is an archetypal male antagonist in Russian folklore. The most common feature of tales involving Koschei is a spell which prevents him from being killed. He hides his soul inside nested objects to protect it. For example, the soul (or in the tales, it is usually called "death") may be hidden in a needle that is hidden inside an egg, the egg is in a duck, the duck is in a hare, the hare is in a chest, the chest is buried or chained up on a far island. Usually he takes the role of a malevolent rival father figure, who competes for (or entraps) a male hero's love interest.â
Sounds kind of familiar, right?
Itâs very symbolic to who the Master becomes:
Someone always managing to cheat death, and never being really killed off.
Being the constant rival of the Doctor, sometimes abducting his companions.
In some tales, Koschei can cast a sleep spell, almost like how the Master hypnotizes others.
Not to mention, having a fascination with the Russian culture as shown especially in Dhawanâs era.Â
Why does no one ask, Master Who?: (#3 - Oh No, Heâs Crispy!)
Why does no one ask, Master Who?: A Character Study Series Masterlist
Our next topic to cover in the subject of the Master is his Anakin Skywalker---er, I mean, sudden change in appearance and re-appearance when he surprises us all in the Fourth Doctorâs era. I think this is where his now signature long running gag for âcoming back from the deadâ without any explanation truly began.Â
So, because of the tragedy that happened to Roger Delgado, the Master as a character was kept out of stories for quite awhile until the 4th Doctorâs era in 1976â˛s episode, âThe Deadly Assassin.â An episode not only remarkable for bringing back the Master in a MUCH darker state, nearing the end of his regeneration cycle, but the fact this episode began a lot of the mythos of the Time Lords and Gallifrey as we know it. Played by two different actors for two different episodes years apart, the fandom has dubbed the Peter Pratt and Geoffrey Beevers Masterâs as the Crispy Master or Decayed Master, due to his decaying form looking like he was fighting with a Jedi for control of the high ground and lost (Still too soon? Okay.)Â
In âThe Deadly Assassin,â the Masterâs disappearance is explained to us when he comes up with a clever plot, sending the Doctor back home to Gallifrey in order to uncover a mystery into the future premotionions of the Lord Presidentâs death (and of course heâs behind it.) This Master is FAR more dark than his previous self, hell-bent on only his survival, even if it means taking the rest of Gallifrey with him to achieve it. Only his hate and need for revenge keeps him going. Although it may seem the Master has finally lost, this is only when we start to realize how great of a survivor he can be when it comes to death.
Making a return in âThe Keeper of Traken,â heâs still focused on attaining a body that can handle the presence of a Time Lord. Although he isnât able to obtain the Doctorâs, using his cunning, the Master ends up stealing the body of Tremas of Traken, finding a way to extend his life a little longer.
Important Character Traits for Crispy!Master:
High sense of Self-Preservation. He doesnât care what it takes to stay alive. This is the first time we see it with the Master, even if heâs going completely against the Doctor to do so.
Known for being the most ruthless of the Masterâs incarnations (and thatâs saying something.)
His physical state of being rotten and decayed can be used as a metaphor for how evil he is as an individual. As Geoffrey Beevers remarked; this is what the Master is like without his smooth looks and charm: as he put it, "the essence of the creature.â
However, in Big Finish, thanks to Beevers himself, and the writers, Crispy gets more of a development. Despite being just ruthless because of his current situation, âbeing faced with his own mortality also gives him plenty of poetic and calm moments.âÂ
The Many Explanations for his Crispy State:
Geoffrey Beevers remarked that this is what the Master is like without his smooth looks and charm: as he put it, "the essence of the creature". This seems to be a running theme with this Master. The first Crispy Master is the ugliest and cruellest of all, while the second Crispy seems to have "healed" a little and is a step back towards Delgado behaviour (how much of the "healed" appearance is intentional and how much of it is due to the limitations of Beevers' makeup compared to Pratt's mask is unknown).
There are also many more explanations of how the Master became decayed on the TARDIS Wiki.Â
