Doctor Who?

Question

Does anyone remember a character called "The Master" from Dr. Who series of early 1970's vintage? I cannot remember much about him, other than that as a child, I thought he was very scary. Can anyone give me further details? I wonder whether "The Master" will be resurrected for the next series of the new Dr. Who???

Answer 1

he was a renegade time lord, the main enemy of Tom Baker.

From Wikipedia:


Origins
The producers conceived the Master as a recurring villain, a "Professor Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes". He first appeared in Terror of the Autons (1971). The Master's title was deliberately chosen by producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks as evocative of supervillain names in fiction, but primarily because, like the Doctor, it was a title conferred by an academic degree.

A would-be universal conqueror, the Master's stated goal is to control the universe (in The Deadly Assassin his ambitions were described as becoming, "the master of all matter."), with a secondary objective of eliminating the Doctor. Unlike the Doctor, the Master's TARDIS has a functioning chameleon circuit, allowing it to change its external appearance to better fit in with its environment. The Master's favoured weapon is his Tissue Compression Eliminator, which reduced its targets to doll-size, usually killing them in the process. The Master also had a fondness for disguise, and sometimes operated under aliases which were variations on his title, such as "Colonel Masters" (in Terror of the Autons), the Reverend Mr. Magister (in The Dæmons) and Professor Thascales (in The Time Monster).

In the three seasons following Terror of the Autons, the Master (as played by Roger Delgado) appeared in eight out of the fifteen serials. Indeed, in his first season the Master was involved in every adventure of the Doctor's, always getting away at the last minute before he was finally captured in The Dæmons. Delgado's portrayal of the Master was as a suave, charming and somewhat sociopathic individual, able to be simultaneously polite and yet murderous almost at the same time.[1]

Delgado's last on-screen appearance as the Master was in Frontier in Space, his final scene being the confusion outside the TARDIS with him shooting the Doctor, perhaps accidentally, then disappearing with the panicking Ogrons. Delgado wanted the Master to make one more appearance, in a story titled The Final Game (also planned as the Third Doctor's last story), in which the character would be killed off, with an ambiguity as to whether he had in fact died to save the Doctor. Tragically, before that serial could even be scripted, Delgado was killed in a car accident in Turkey on June 18, 1973, while on his way to shoot footage for the French comedy The Bell of Tibet. The story was replaced by Planet of the Spiders (1974).

[edit]
Quest for new life
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Geoffrey Beevers as the Master (from The Keeper of Traken).With Delgado's death, the Master disappeared from the series for several years. In his next appearance, in The Deadly Assassin (1976), the Master appeared as an emaciated, decaying wreck (played by Peter Pratt under heavy make-up). Although Time Lords have the potential to postpone death by completely renewing their bodies, the ability can only be used twelve times. The Master had used up all twelve of his regenerations, and was nearing the end of his thirteenth and final life. It is not clear if the Master had any regenerations between the Delgado incarnation and the Pratt one, or which incarnation the Delgado Master was.[2]

Given the severity of his situation, this Master was much darker than Delgado's version. No longer considering his clashes with the Doctor a game, his goal was survival at all costs, manipulating people from behind the scenes. He attempted to seize control of the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole kept on the Time Lords' home planet of Gallifrey, in an attempt to give himself a new cycle of regenerations. After being defeated by the Doctor, the Master disappeared from the series once more.


Anthony Ainley as the Master (from The Five Doctors).In 1981, the Master became a recurring villain again. In The Keeper of Traken, the Master (Geoffrey Beevers under different heavy make-up) briefly gained control of another ancient power source, using it to transplant himself into the body of a Trakenite named Tremas (the father of Nyssa), overwriting Tremas's original mind in the process. Now played by Anthony Ainley, the Master appeared on and off for the rest of the series. Apart from his regular goals, extending his life — preferably with a new set of regenerations — was an extra prize he was determined to get.

In many of his appearances opposite the Fifth Doctor, the Master showed his penchant for disguise once again, on one occasion operating under a disguise for no clear plot reason. The character's association with playful pseudonyms also continued both within the series and in its publicity: when the production team wished to hide the Master's involvement in a story, they credited the character under an anagrammatic alias such as "Neil Toynay" (Tony Ainley) or "James Stoker" (Master's Joke).

Ainley's portrayal was closer to Delgado's, but his Master's tendency to burst out into peals of malicious laughter was criticised by some fans as being too over-the-top. However, this was more a function of the scripts and direction that Ainley received than of his own interpretation of the character. Visitors to the recording of the story Planet of Fire recall Ainley giving a serious, understated performance in an initial take only to be overruled and asked to go more "over the top" for the final one. The Ainley Master also showed a knack for returning from death or eternal imprisonment, although how precisely he survived those seemingly final fates was never explained.

Some fans consider the Ainley Master's final appearance, in Survival, as what Ainley had originally meant him to be: a vicious character with a penchant for black humour and subtle malice, mocking with laughter the tears of the Seventh Doctor's companion Ace at the passing of her new friend Kara.

[edit]
Life after death
The Master also appeared in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie that starred Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. In the prologue, the Master's current body (played for mere seconds in the final edit by Gordon Tipple) was exterminated by the Daleks. The reason for this action is not explained in the film, nor the reason why the Daleks would grant the Master's request that the Doctor retrieve his remains and return them to Gallifrey. In the Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow by Marc Platt, the Doctor is given this task by the High Council of Time Lords.


Eric Roberts as the Master, from the Doctor Who telemovie.The Master, however, managed to survive (through means unexplained in the finished film) his consciousness embodied in the form of a small, snake-like, amorphous entity. This entity escaped the TARDIS after either a chance malfunction, or a trick of the Master's, forced the vessel to crash land on Earth in 1999.

The novelisation of the film by Gary Russell posits that the modifications and alterations that the Master has made to his body over the years in attempts to extend his lifespan had allowed this continued existence, and the implication is that the "morphant" creature is actually another lifeform that the Master's consciousness possesses. This interpretation was made explicit in the first of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks and also used in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip story The Fallen (DWM #273-#276). In The Fallen, it was revealed that the morphant was a shape-shifting animal native to Skaro.

The morphant form was unsustainable and required a human host, and it possessed the body of Bruce, a paramedic (played by Eric Roberts). However, Bruce's body was also unsustainable. The Master once again attempted to access the Eye of Harmony (this time by means of a link in the Doctor's TARDIS) to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations, but was sucked into the Eye and apparently destroyed. Roberts' Master was easily the most flamboyantly (critics use the word "campy") evil of all the Masters, to the extent of dressing in ceremonial Time Lord robes. To date, he is the only Time Lord to speak with an American accent.

[edit]
The future
It is not known if the character will reappear in the Doctor Who series revival. The Master did not appear in the 2005 series, and the Ninth Doctor said in The End of the World, that all the other Time Lords had been destroyed in a Time War. It remains to be seen if the Master is in fact among the dead. In the Doctor Who Confidential episode "The Dark Side", current chief writer and producer Russell T. Davies said that he thinks the Master may return, but it would take a writer who can do it properly.

Answer 2

Roger Delgado portrayed The Master from 1970 - 1973

Unfortunately he was killed in an car accident in Turkey in 1973

I have written several biographies of him, check out the BBC site h2g2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2 just type in Roger Delgado in the search box

Apparently there are rumours that the Master will return in the next series

Answer 3

The Master was a Time Lord like the Doctor but he had gone bad 9the doctor and he used to be friends!). He liked to shrink people when he killed them. He often used aliens to help him with his evil plans though when things went wrong he and the doc had to form an uneasy alliance.
He first appeared in Terror of the Autons and was played by the brilliant actor Roger Delgardo. After his death he was played briefly by Peter Pratt in the classic story the Deadly Assassin. Later he returned in the Keeper of Traken and was played by Anthony Ainley. For me Delgardo's master was the best. He was really sinister and one of the best baddies in TV history. I for one really hope he returns.