M is for... Masters

Senior Civil Servant from the Ministry of Technology, who had special responsibility for an experimental power generation facility in Derbyshire. He was an old friend of its director - Dr Lawrence. When the project ran into difficulties, including unexplained power losses and nervous breakdowns amongst the staff, culminating in a mysterious fatal accident in the nearby cave system, UNIT had been called in to help investigate. With chief of security Major Baker claiming that foreign saboteurs were at work in the caves, and UNIT's scientific adviser claiming it to be the work of intelligent reptile creatures, Masters felt obliged to step in and oversee things himself.

Interested only in the huge budget and public opinion, Masters' choice was to close the project down. His visit coincided with the release from captivity of Major Baker, who had been infected with a virulent disease by his captors - the Silurians. They regarded the Earth as rightfully theirs, and wished to reclaim it from the ape descendants who had overrun it whilst they hibernated.

Masters returned to London before the disease could be identified. He infected many people on his train and at Marylebone station before dying from it himself.

Played by: Geoffrey Palmer. Appearances: The Silurians (1970).

• The first of three appearances by Palmer in the series, the others being The Mutants (1972) and Voyage of the Damned (2007). His character is killed off before the end in every one of his stories.
• His son Charles is a director who has worked on the revived series - Smith and Jones, The Shakespeare Code and Human Nature / Family of Blood in Series 3, and Oxygen and Eaters of Light in Series 10.