Doctor Who history: The Master – How the show’s greatest villain was created

With the recent announcement of Season 8 being released on Blu-ray, we look back on the origins of the Master, and why, after seven seasons, the character quickly became one of Doctor Who’s greatest villains.

It’s strange to think that it took so long for Doctor Who to come up with one of its biggest villains. There were certainly times when the series came close. For example, back in Season 2, Peter Butterworth played a rather mischievous character called the Monk. Introduced in the story The Time Meddler, this Time Lord has distinctly different motivations from the Master – rather than wanting to take over the universe, he simply sees it as his duty to “improve” history wherever he goes, regardless of the consequences. The Monk only appeared twice in the TV series, which is a shame, as he worked rather well on his own terms.

Just a few seasons later, Edward Brayshaw played the War Chief – an extremely ambitious Time Lord who allied himself with a race of unnamed aliens to gain power. (Unsurprisingly, there’s a fan theory that the Master and the War Chief are different incarnations of the same Time Lord.)

But it wasn’t until Season 8 that producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks came up with the show’s biggest villain. They wanted a recurring foe for the Doctor, one effective enough to be the main antagonist for an entire season. They came up with a Time Lord villain – someone of at least equal intelligence to the Doctor, but one who used his power for evil. At the same time, just like the Doctor, they wanted his title to be something academic. Thus, they came up with “the Master”.

Casting

But who could play such a villain? After all, finding someone to play a role like the Doctor was a difficult challenge in itself. But for someone like the Master, Letts and Dicks needed to find someone who could portray a character who shared many of the same qualities as the Doctor, but was also the clear villain of the story. That would be a huge challenge for anyone.

Or it would’ve been, if Barry Letts didn’t already have an actor in mind for the role. Specifically: Roger Delgado. Delgado had not only had quite the career of playing villains, but he had even tried to appear in Doctor Who three times already at that point, with no success.

However, regardless of who he came close to playing in the past, it was his successful fourth attempt that was surely the best role for him – a villain that was equal and opposite to the Doctor. Even better, this villain would feature in every single story of his first season!

Roger Delgado

Roger Delgado’s casting was the best thing that could’ve happened for the character – and the fans. Because, along with Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks helping to shape the villain, as well as writer Robert Holmes introducing him brilliantly in his story Terror of the Autons, Delgado truly helped to define the role.

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He didn’t just play someone that was simply evil. He gave the character so much charm, and while you wanted to hate him, at the same time, he was always so incredibly likable, too. While there was always enmity between the Doctor and the Master, there was always an aspect of friendliness, too – something that was probably helped by the fact that Pertwee and Delgado were such good friends in real life.

Unsurprisingly, Letts and Dicks decided to use the character less as a villain with subsequent seasons. In Season 9, he only appeared in two of the five serials for that year, and in just one – Frontier in Space – in Season 10. The plan had been to write out the Master entirely in Season 11, in a story called The Final Game. Sadly, Roger Delgado died in a tragic accident while on location in Turkey in 1973.

There’s no question that Barry Letts, Terrance Dicks, and Roger Delgado helped to shape a legacy. It may have taken over seven years for Doctor Who to come up with an idea as simple as the Master, but it was worth the wait. Thanks to a fleshed-out character and a brilliant performance from Delgado, we were given an incredible start to the villain – a villain that would endure as well as the show that created him. And may the evil Time Lord continue causing havoc and chaos in the universe for decades to come.

Are you fond of Roger Delgado’s Master? Did you watch his episodes on their original broadcast, or much later? Do you think the character of the Master would have survived without his casting? Let us know in the comments below.