Doctor Who: Geoffrey Beevers – Big Finish’s Classic Master

Geoffrey Beevers’s only TV appearance as the Master was in 1981’s The Keeper of Traken. But it wouldn’t be his last performance in the role… (Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC. Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

We take a look at Geoffrey Beevers’s interpretation of Doctor Who’s greatest villain, and how it’s developed substantially through Big Finish’s many audios.

In 1981, during Tom Baker’s last season of Doctor Who, the Master finally returned, after a gap of over four years. New producer John Nathan-Turner wanted to bring the character back in a big way, and so the character featured very heavily in the Fourth Doctor’s final two stories.

Geoffrey Beevers took over from Peter Pratt as the decaying incarnation first seen in The Deadly Assassin. This body was horrifically scarred and desperate to extend his life, by any means necessary.

More from Winter is Coming

• For All Mankind finally gives us information in Episode 405, “Goldilocks”
• Watch a stunning VFX breakdown of The Wheel of Time season 2
• Of course Steve Toussaint (Corlys Velaryon) thinks Eve Best (Rhaenys Targaryen) should rule Westeros
• Confirmed: The Last of Us season 2 will air in 2025
• Final season of Star Trek: Discovery will have “a lot of action, a lot of adventure, a lot of fun”

As a result, this incarnation was cruel, sinister and openly evil. It wasn’t revealed how the Master became this way, who was radically different to Roger Delgado’s charming and classy incarnation.

The Keeper of Traken was Beevers’s only story as the Master on television. Because the Master’s return was kept a secret, we don’t even see him properly in the role until the reveal at the end of part three.

When the story finished, the Master took over the body of Tremas, the father of Nyssa, one of the Doctor’s companions. In some ways, his incarnation is a lot like Derek Jacobi’s was on television: primarily there to help set up a brand new and very different interpretation.

However, while The Keeper of Traken remains to be the one and only time Beevers played the role on-screen, it’s been far from the only time that he’s played the role at all…

The 2003 story Master was one of only two appearances that Beevers’s Master made in the 2000s.

(Photo credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

A brief return

In 2001, Beevers was cast in the Seventh Doctor audio story Dust Breeding. Playing a character called “Mr Seta”, the story shocked everyone when it was revealed that Seta was in fact…the Master!

I know, I know. That seems like such an obvious twist now. But despite the super obvious anagram, the twist did work, for several reasons.

For one, after nearly two years of audios, this was the first time that Big Finish had ever included the Master in their audio stories. Fans had been hoping that Anthony Ainley would come back, but sadly, this wasn’t to be. So Big Finish made the brilliant move of bringing Beevers back, instead.

Another reason that this worked so well was that Beevers’s wife, Caroline John, was also in the story. Fans of the Classic Series know her best as Liz Shaw from Jon Pertwee’s first season as the Doctor.

However, in Dust Breeding, John really was playing a completely different character: in this case, Madame Salvadori. So if a former companion was playing a completely new role, it was certainly easy to believe that the same was true for someone who had only appeared once in the series before.

What was particularly interesting was that, while Beevers was technically playing the same incarnation, he was also distinctly after Ainley’s Master, too. The reason given was that the body he had possessed had essentially been ripped from him by a powerful alien force, leaving him exactly as he was before.

So his return was certainly surprising, but paid off very well. It also gave the Seventh Doctor at least an incarnation of the Master to fight against.

Well, for a couple of years, anyway. Because while Beevers did return just two years later for the audio play Master, for several reasons, the character wasn’t used by Big Finish again until Trail of the White Worm with the Fourth Doctor…almost a decade later, in 2012.

Beevers appeared with fellow Master Alex Macqueen in the epic Seventh Doctor story, The Two Masters.

(Photo credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

A fleshed out era

Thankfully, he has continued to play the role many times since that story. Unsurprisingly, these have often been in audios with the Fourth Doctor, set between The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper of Traken. These are well worth listening to, particularly for the fact that the Master meets Leela in many of these.

But we’ve also had some stories set even later than the TV movie with Beevers, too. The Companion Chronicle Mastermind, perhaps one of the best Master stories ever, features the idea that whenever the Master possesses a new body, it will degrade back into the Beevers incarnation. Which is a very interesting idea, and allows for a little more fun with the timeline of the decayed Master.

But there’s even room for Big Finish to tell stories with this Master before he was deeply scarred. Without giving too much away, the Seventh Doctor audio story The Two Masters explained exactly how the Master became so horrifically burnt. It even features a scene of Beevers before that explicitly happens.

Along with showing that Big Finish believes that the Pratt/Beevers incarnation is entirely separate from Delgado’s, (there’s quite a popular fan theory suggesting otherwise,) it also allows Big Finish to tell more stories with this incarnation. Perhaps even allow the writers to tell different kinds of stories with his Master.

A potentially different take?

Unsurprisingly, many stories that feature Beevers’s Master are primarily about finding a way to survive and extend his own life span. So stories featuring his incarnation when he was considerably more healthy could allow him to focus much more on plans of universal domination, as most other incarnations do.

We could even have the Beevers Master facing the Third Doctor in Big Finish’s Third Doctor Adventures. That would definitely be interesting to hear, particularly as the Master was such a major part of Jon Pertwee’s era.

Regardless, it’s quite amazing what Big Finish have done for Beevers’s incarnation. Across various ranges, we’ve heard him in various Doctor Who stories, spin-offs and specials. He was even the incarnation that featured in the fiftieth anniversary audio special, The Light at the End.

Despite a long gap between a couple of stories, over the past decade, Big Finish have really helped to flesh his incarnation out. In some ways, they’ve done exactly the same for him as they did for Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor: take his character from just having a single appearance and giving him the era he deserves.

Are you a fan of Geoffrey Beevers as the Master? Have you listened to his stories? If so, which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below.