Doctor Who mythology: How Russell T Davies made the Master a Time Lord again

For a long time, the Master had effectively stopped being a Time Lord completely, as explored in both the TV series and in Big Finish’s many audios. We look at why that was, and how the New Series made him a Time Lord again.

(Image Courtesy Big Finish Productions)

While the Master has often been thought of as an evil Time Lord in Doctor Who, for a long time, he was hardly a Time Lord at all. We look back on why that was, how former showrunner Russell T Davies made him a Time Lord again, and why it was one of his best decisions.

Now, I’m sure many of us – if not all – remember how major Utopia was for Doctor Who mythology. The return of the Master – done in one of the most satisfying ways possible – is one of the New Series’s most iconic moments. We may have known that he was coming back at the time, but we didn’t know how.

But Russell T Davies did more than simply bring the character back. In a way, he made a rather crucial change to the character: he made him a Time Lord again. For the first time in a very, very long time.

If you don’t know much about the Classic Series, that might sound like a strange thing to say. After all, the Master had not only been established as a major enemy to the Doctor for a long time. But even in the New Series, it’s been established that the Doctor and the Master grew up together on Gallifrey.

However, as far as being a Time Lord was concerned, the Master had only truly been one for a very short period of time. In two crucial ways, he had actually stopped being a Time Lord very early on.

A radical change

With Roger Delgado’s incarnation, the Master was established as being a Time Lord that was equal and yet opposite to the Doctor. The same level of intelligence, the shared history, even a similar sense of style. In some ways, the Master was a basic idea, but he was also one that worked.

However, in 1976 – just five years after his creation – the Master was radically reinvented. After the death of original actor Roger Delgado, the Master was completely changed from a classy and charming megalomaniac to a horrifically scarred and deformed creature, one that was on his last life and desperate to survive.

And this is the key point: just five years after his first appearance, the Master had essentially stopped being a Time Lord, at least partially. With his ability to regenerate now gone, the character had to resort to other means to survive…

Multiple possessions

Considering there were several Masters in the Classic Series, you might be surprised that the Master had lost his ability to regenerate so early on in the series. But the character had found another way to survive – namely, possession.

In 1981, the Master returned towards the end of Tom Baker’s final season in The Keeper of Traken. Initially appearing as disfigured as before, towards the end of the story, the Master used a power source he had gained to possess the body of Tremas – the father of Nyssa, who would shortly become the Fifth Doctor’s companion.

This incarnation was portrayed by Anthony Ainley, and would become one of the most iconic incarnations of the Classic Series, appearing in a large number of stories across the Eighties. So it’s actually rather ironic that he wasn’t an incarnation of the Master in the usual Time Lord sense, essentially being nothing more than a shell for the Master to wear and completely unable to regenerate. (Although the Time Lords did offer him a complete new life cycle to him in The Five Doctors.)

Even when we were introduced to a brand new Master in the TV movie – seven years after the end of the Classic Series – it was through possession rather than through regeneration that we saw a new Master. With the Master taking on the form of a liquid snake (it should be noted that, in the movie, at least, there was no explanation for this), he possessed paramedic Bruce, played by Eric Roberts. The last time we saw the Master officially on-screen before the New Series, he was sucked into the TARDIS through the Eye of Harmony.

A Time Lord again

When Russel T Davies decided to bring the character back – over a decade after his previous canonical TV appearance – he made sure to make it clear from the start that the Master was a Time Lord again. The clearest way he could show this was with a regeneration in his first episode.

What Davies achieved here was a simple move, but also a brilliant one. With just the briefest of explanations – the Time Lords had “resurrected” him for the Time War, as Simm’s Master told Tennant’s Doctor in The Sound of Drums – Russell T Davies got rid of a lot of baggage, and simplified the character considerably. Once again, the Master was a Time Lord in every sense, the equal and opposite to the Doctor – exactly as it should be.

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What’s more, the fact that the explanation was so brief was a huge bonus, at least for the expanded universe. For example, while the explanation could have referred to the character’s fate in the movie, it was so vague that it allowed Big Finish to explore it in considerable more detail, and gave us the brilliant incarnation played by Alex Macqueen. Chronologically before Jacobi, Simm and Gomez, more and more has been revealed about Macqueen’s Master over time, which has given us a glimpse of a Master getting ready for the Time War.

And all of this mythology – both on and off-screen – is all thanks to Russell T Davies. Ultimately, it was his decision to bring the Master back – finally – as a true Time Lord. It was for moves like this that made Davies the perfect showrunner to bring Doctor Who back in the first place – acknowledging the past while simplifying things to make it accessible to a new audience. A simple move that brought a greatly loved character back to their roots at last.

Were you glad that the Master was brought back as a true Time Lord in 2007 and able to regenerate again? Or would you have liked to have seen an extension of what we had seen before – a man desperate to continue his own existence at any cost? Let us know in the comments below.