Doctor Who: Who is the Unbound Master?

December will see the War Master face the Unbound Master! But who is he? Where does he come from? And how does he fit into existing Doctor Who audios?

One of Big Finish’s more exciting announcements recently is the very unexpected special guest character in upcoming box set The War Master: Anti-Genesis. Featuring the War Master’s biggest plan yet, the box set will also feature another Master entirely. But not one from our own universe.

Played by Mark Gatiss (but initially credited as Sam Kisgart), this isn’t the first story that has featured this unique incarnation of the Master. The character originally appeared in Sympathy for the Devil, one of the stories in the Doctor Who Unbound range that explored “what if?” stories with different Doctors in different universes.

Gatiss’s Master was very old-school in style. Like Roger Delgado, he could often be very charming, especially in his later appearances. But he was also as clearly ruthless and deadly in his own way, too.

Mark Gatiss most recently starred in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield along with Lisa Bowerman and David Warner, back in 2016 and 2017.

(Photo: Doctor Who: The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield cast.. (L to R) Lisa Bowerman, David Warner and Sam Kisgart. Image Courtesy Big Finish Productions.)

Stuck on Earth

In Sympathy for the Devil, the story featured an alternative third Doctor, played by David Warner, who had been exiled to Earth as punishment by the Time Lords, just like the Third Doctor we know did in Spearhead from Space. However, there was one crucial difference: this Doctor had arrived too late, and as a result, had never been UNIT’s scientific advisor. All the invasions and attacks that UNIT faced in the Third Doctor’s adventures we know? They had to face all of them without him in this universe.

Which brings me to the Master. During this time, the Master had been up to a lot on Earth. But he had also ended up stuck here, too. He had been looking for an escape for a long time. More than that – he had been bored. Even the Master was extremely frustrated by the fact that the Doctor didn’t arrive on Earth when he was meant to.

Towards the start of Sympathy for the Devil, the Master regenerated after a crash, giving us Gatiss’s new incarnation. After years of living on Earth, working for several governments and creating his own brainwashed army, he decided that it was time for him to leave. Ideally in the Doctor’s ship.

But despite his attempts to steal the Doctor’s TARDIS, he was instead stranded on Earth. Right before a huge disaster was about to begin…

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”

The War

It’s unknown what exactly happened next. But by the time we saw him next in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield: The Unbound Universe, the universe had changed. A huge war had spread across it, one even more devastating than the Time War we know. By the end, there wasn’t much of the universe left. And the Master was responsible for that.

As you can tell, this Master is as ruthless as the incarnations of the regular Doctor Who universe. If wiping out most of the universe to end a war wasn’t bad enough, he also easily sacrificed thousands of lives just for the chance to escape from his own universe into ours. So, naturally, he replaced the Doctor as Ruler of the Universe.

Of course, he had some help. In this case, from the Doctor. Because not only did the Doctor know that he was a terrible fit for ruling the universe. Not only did he hate the bureaucracy of it. But, the irony was, he knew the Master would, too.

That was the last time we saw this Master: finally getting what he wanted, and realizing that he was going to hate it. When he returns in The War Master: Anti-Genesis, how much will things have changed in his universe? And against another Master as ruthless as he is, will he survive? It’s going to be exciting to find out.

Have you listened to any stories featuring Mark Gatiss’s incarnation of the Master? Do you think he’s a strong incarnation of the classic villain, despite being from another universe entirely? Let us know in the comments below.