M is for... Master (1)

The Master was the assumed title of a Time Lord who was a contemporary of the Doctor. As children they had played together, and they attended the Academy at the same time. The Master hailed from a wealthy land-owning family.

As children, prospective Time Lords were exposed to the Untempered Schism - a rent in Space / Time which was located on Gallifrey. It was claimed that some who looked into it were driven mad - and this seemed to be the case with the Master.

Whilst the Doctor longed to explore the Universe, the Master was determined to dominate it. Both stole TARDISes, but the Master made a better job of covering his tracks.

He would later return secretly to Gallifrey to steal information from the Time Lord files, and to erase data about himself from their records.

The Time Lords were able to monitor his movements for a time, however, and one of their number came to Earth soon after the Doctor had been exiled there to warn that the Master was also on the planet.

At some point in the past, the Doctor and Master had made enemies of each other, and the latter was now seeking revenge. If Earth was harmed in the process, so much the better as he had noticed the Doctor's liking for this world.

In appearance, the Master sported a neat pointed beard and had deep hypnotic eyes. Indeed, he had considerable hypnotic skills.

His TARDIS materialised at a circus, disguising itself as a motorised horsebox. He quickly brought the circus owner Rossini under his mental control, already knowing his true identity.

He had come to re-establish a link between Earth and the Nestene Consciousness. He stole a surviving Nestene control sphere from a museum and then infiltrated a plastics factory in which to create a new army of Autons. He adopted the name Colonel Masters. The managing director - a weak-willed man named Rex Farrell - was easily subjugated to his will. When one executive questioned his actions, the Master had him killed with a suffocating chair made of Nestene plastic. He also killed Rex's father when he found he was immune to his hypnotism - employing a hideous troll-doll to strangle him.

When UNIT searched local plastics factories, the Master hypnotised Jo Grant into returning to her HQ with a bomb. Luckily the Doctor recognised the signs of hypnotic fugue.

The Master had earlier used a radio-telescope to link the Nestene sphere to the Consciousness, in order to reactivate it. He abducted one of the scientists, but killed the other with a matter condensing weapon - shrinking his corpse to a few inches in height.

His plan was to use plastic flowers, distributed by disguised Autons, which would spit out a suffocating film when triggered by the radio telescope. Before then he attempted to kill the Doctor, disguising himself as a telephone technician to replace a 'phone cord with a Nestene one. Another attack ended when the Doctor indicated that he had stolen the dematerialisation circuit from his TARDIS, after finding it at the circus. Jo also let slip that UNIT were going to bomb his Autons, so he took them both hostage.

At the crucial moment, as the Nestene began to materialise, the Doctor was able to convince the Master that it would kill him along with the rest of the humanoids on Earth, and so he agreed to help the Doctor expel the creature back into deep space. Captain Mike Yates of UNIT shot and killed the Master, but this proved to be a hypnotised Rex Farrell wearing a mask. He had fled, but was stranded on Earth as the Doctor still held his vital circuit.

The Master next attempted to trigger a nuclear war, by hijacking a banned nerve gas missile known as Thunderbolt and launching it at a peace conference being held in London. For a base, he took over Stangmoor Prison, having earlier installed a device there which could remove criminal behaviour from the minds of convicts. For this, he had posed as Swiss scientist Prof. Emil Keller. The device actually contained an alien mind parasite, which grew stronger after every feeding - until even he could no longer control it. It killed by presenting its victims with their deepest fear, and for the Master this was being mocked and dominated by the Doctor. He had to hold back his desire to kill the Doctor as he needed him to help keep the parasite under control. The Doctor eventually used the missile self-destruct to destroy the parasite, but in a struggle the Master had been able to get his dematerialisation circuit back and was free to roam the universe once again.

However, he was soon captured by the parasitical organism Axos. Seeking the ability to travel through time, he was able to talk it into attacking Earth, where it would find the knowledge and power it sought.

Realising the planet was doomed, the Master was able to convince Axos to let him go free in order to help it spread Axonite - its method of feeding - across the globe. He used UNIT to do this, and also took the opportunity to take possession of the Doctor's TARDIS in order to flee the planet - Axos continuing to hold his own ship hostage.

Captured by UNIT, he negotiated his freedom by agreeing to help them fight Axos after it had abducted the Doctor. The Master was then tricked into thinking the Doctor had joined forces with him to abandon Earth to the parasite. When he learned that his fellow Time Lord was luring Axos into a time-loop trap, he fled to his own TARDIS and escaped.

During a secret return to Gallifrey, the Master had raided the Time Lords' most restricted files. One of these concerned an ancient super-weapon, which was to be found on the obscure planet of Uxarieus. This world was caught up in a conflict between a group of colonists from Earth and a powerful mining conglomerate - IMC - as to who had rights to the planet. The Master took advantage of the situation to pose as an Adjudicator from Earth, asked to come and arbitrate between the two factions.

He pretended to favour the colonists only if they could prove that Uxarieus had some historical significance - a means of learning about the ancient civilisation which had built the weapon. It was located in their underground city. The Master was shocked to find the Doctor and Jo already on the planet - despatched by the Time Lords when they discovered that he had stolen their files.

On learning that the Doctor had already visited the city and met the weapon's Guardian, he forced him to take him there - holding Jo hostage.

The Master offered the Doctor a share of the universe if he joined forces with him. The Doctor declined, and the Guardian was talked into destroying itself and the weapon. The Master fled - only to turn up on Earth once more.

This time he was posing as Mr Magister, the vicar of the English village of Devil's End. He had learned that an alien Daemon was in hibernation in the neighbourhood. This alien - Azal - was to be resurrected as the Master wished it to hand over its great powers to him. The Daemons experimented on many worlds. One of their number would be left behind to judge the success or otherwise - either passing on their powers or destroying the world as a failure. The Master led a local coven which he used to make contact with Azal. His adopted name - Magister - was the name for the leader of a black magic coven and was an alternative version of "master", which the Doctor spotted straight away, before he had even learned that he was present. He also blackmailed and manipulated the villagers into helping him - offering them power and influence once he achieved the Daemon's powers. When the creature was awakened, it decided to give its powers to the Doctor rather than him, however.

Once it had been destroyed, the Master attempted to flee in the Doctor's car "Bessie", but he used its remote control to bring him back. He was arrested by UNIT troops.

Despite all the death and destruction he had caused, the Doctor spoke up for him at his trial. He was eventually sentenced to life-long imprisonment, held in a one-man jail in a converted fortress on an island off England's south coast. The Doctor and Jo visited him there - but the Master deduced that he had an ulterior motive, wanting to know the whereabouts of his TARDIS in order to escape his own imprisonment on Earth. The Master had no intention of giving up his ship, as he was already working on a scheme to free himself. He had easily duped the prison governor - Colonel Trenchard - into believing he was a government agent, sent here under cover to identify foreign saboteurs at work in the English Channel. A recent spate of ship sinkings was actually the work of the Sea Devils - Earth's original inhabitants who had a hibernation shelter beneath the seabed just off the island.

The Master was able to get Trenchard to smuggle him into a nearby Royal Navy base to steal electronic equipment with which to communicate with the submarine reptiles. Once he no longer needed the governor, he had the Sea Devils attack the prison to free him. Trenchard and his guards were massacred.

Once again the two Time Lords were obliged to join forces as the Master recognised that his old enemy had greater electronic skills, and he needed him to help complete a device which would pinpoint and activate all the Sea Devil shelters across the globe. The Doctor sabotaged it, however.

Escaping to the surface, the Master hypnotised one of the sailors who rescued them and put a mask of his own face on the man. The trick allowed him time to steal a hovercraft and flee once again.

The Master next set himself up as the Greek scientist Prof. Thascalos, based at the Newton Institute near Cambridge. Here he had built the TOMTIT device - Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time. To his assistants Dr. Ruth Ingram and Stuart Hyde, this was a form of matter transmitter, but he was secretly planning to establish control over Kronos, a Chronovore. These awesomely powerful beings existed outside Time. Kronos had been captured by the people of bronze age Atlantis, and the Master wished to bring it forward to the 20th Century to harness its powers.

The Doctor was alerted to the Master's proximity when he suffered a nightmare featuring him - indicating a Time Lord psychic link. UNIT had orders to track him down as their number one priority, and the Doctor created a device which could trace his TARDIS operating. Instead, it picked up the activity of TOMTIT, and the Doctor realised that the Master was once again using an alias based on his own title, "thascalos" being Greek for teacher - or master. He attempted to stop the Master travelling back to ancient Atlantis by materialising his TARDIS around his old enemy's - but one ship landed within the other, and the Master was able to dematerialise with the Doctor's TARDIS still on board. He lured the Doctor out and ejected him into the vortex, but Jo employed the telepathic circuits to bring him back. Once in Atlantis, the Master seduced Queen Galleia and was able to overthrow her husband King Dalios. When she rebelled against him, he summoned Kronos but was unable to control it. It destroyed the city. Taking Jo hostage in his ship, she created a time ram by colliding his TARDIS with that of the Doctor. Both ships were saved, and Kronos vowed to torment the Master forever. Once again, the Doctor pleaded leniency for him - and Kronos allowed him to escape.

In the mid-26th Century, a mysterious third party was attempting to engineer a war between the rival Earth and Draconian Empires, which dominated the Milky Way galaxy. The Doctor and Jo saw that pirate raids being blamed by each side on the other were really being carried out by Ogrons, who stole the TARDIS. They ended up captives on Earth, and the Doctor was sent to a lunar penal colony. He was about to be killed trying to escape when an official from the dominion world Sirius IV arrived in time to save him. This proved to be the Master in disguise, using a stolen police security spacecraft.

It transpired that he was using the Ogrons to provoke the war, but was in turn employed by the Daleks to do so. They intended to weaken the two Empires then move in and take over the whole galaxy. The Master had been promised control over the Earth, but secretly intended to take fuller advantage of the situation once the Daleks had taken over. To aid the deception, the Master had created an electronic hypnotic device which preyed on the fear centres of the brain - making people see what they feared most.

On first meeting Jo Grant, the Master had easily hypnotised her. Now, she had developed techniques to prevent this and he failed to use the device on her.

The Doctor stole it and used it to cause panic amongst the Ogrons, under cover of which he and Jo escaped into the TARDIS. Humans and Draconians had already learned the truth of the plot and so the war would never happen. The Master had shot and wounded the Doctor in the confusion. His schemes wrecked once again, the Master left the Ogron planet where he had established his base.

Played by: Roger Delgado. Appearances: Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos, Colony In Space, The Daemons (1971), The Sea Devils, The Time Monster (1972), Frontier In Space (1973).

• Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo de Roberto was born in Whitechapel, in London's East End, on 1st March 1918 - son of a Spanish father and Belgian mother.
• Whilst best known for villainous roles in series such as The Avengers and a few of the Hammer movies, he also played the odd hero - e.g. in the radio serial The Slide, which formed the basis for Fury From The Deep, and he was one of The Three Musketeers in the 1954 TV adaptation. 
• He was also a friendly journalist in Quatermass II (a role taken by Sid James in the movie version).
• Reasoning that the Doctor was like Sherlock Holmes, with the Brigadier his Watson, Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks decided that they needed a Moriarty figure to act as a regular humanoid villain, now that the Doctor was exiled to Earth. Dicks came up with the name "The Master" - an academic title like "Doctor", whilst Letts knew who to play him. He had acted opposite Delgado and knew his work well.
• Delgado established aspects of the character which are still in evidence today - such as the matter condensing weapon (also known as the Tissue Compression Eliminator or TCE), hypnosis, and the use of disguises. His Master also liked aliases based on his own title.
• Letts and Dicks admitted that having the Master in every story of Season 8 was a mistake, so he would feature less often in subsequent seasons.
• Aware that he was not being offered work as directors and producers thought he was working on Doctor Who full time, Delgado asked to be written out of the series. A final confrontation was planned for Season 11, which would have seen the Master apparently sacrifice himself to save the Doctor. Letts and Dicks had a theory that the Master was really a manifestation of the dark side of the Doctor, which is why he could never bring himself to kill him.
• On 18th June 1973, on his way to a filming location in Turkey, Delgado was involved in a car crash which took his life. His ashes were scattered in the Garden of Remembrance at Mortlake Cemetery in SE London.