Category: Doctor Who

It was widely considered a weird move when David McIntee introduced a new incarnation of The Master in the novel First Frontier who was deliberately written with the assumption that, were Doctor Who still a TV show and not a novel series at the time, he would be portrayed by Basil Rathbone. After all, Rathbone was far too famous to be on Doctor Who, and also he had been dead for 25 years at the time.

By the time of the BBC “War Doctor Adventures” line, of course, it made sense to introduce another incarnation of the character in his “War King” persona. Though the exact details of the choice were, if anything, even harder to understand…

Master, The – Enemy of The Doctor and rival Time Lord. The Master and the Doctor had once been friends [OS: The Sea Devils], before the Master turned Renegade. Motivated primarily by greed, the Master’s plots typically involved selling his services to invading aliens as a covert agent [OS: Terror of the Autons], or seeking powerful weapons with which to extort the galactic powers [OS: Colony in Space]. His last incarnation is left badly disfigured and near-death in a fight with Susan Campbell (neé Foreman) [PDA: Legacy of the Daleks]. Having exhausted his regeneration cycle, he became obsessed with cosmic powers including the Eye of Harmony [OS: The Deadly Assassin], the Source [OS: The Keeper of Traken], the Xeraphin [OS: Time-Flight], the Flames of Karn [OS: Planet of Fire] and the regenerative powers of the Cheetah People [OS: Survival], finding enough partial success to extend his lifespan and usurp the body of the Trakenite scientist Tremas. He eventually returns to his original modus operandi by working as an agent of the Tzin, who pay him for his service by using their technology to grant him a new regeneration cycle [NA: First Frontier]. Some time later, a possibly reformed Master serves as Time Lord president during the Time War [WDA: The Ancestor Cell], but becomes corrupted by the War Lords, adopting the title of War King [BF: Liberation]. Some time between the fall of Arcadia and the end of the war, the Master becomes aware of the War Doctor‘s plans to end the war, and uses the power of the Sword of Rassilon to escape the Temporal Event Horizon of the war [TDA: The Gallifrey Chronicles]. He eventually resumed his criminal ways, making several attempts to sell Earth to invading aliens [US: The House-Guest], ultimately making a deal with the Morthrai [US: Loving the Alien]. To this end, the Master opened a Warp Shunt to the Morthrai homeworld using his TARDIS. He was apparently killed when the Doctor destroyed both TARDISes via Time Ram to close the Warp Shunt.

The editors of wikia or fandom or whatever would like to remind you that wild-ass speculations in excerpts from unlicensed reference books like the one quoted below are not considered canon for the purpose of scholarly reference.

From The Universal Databanque: A Compleat Encyclopaedia Of Doctor Who For The Exhaustively Nerdy, 2011 Edition:

War Lords – Enemy of the Time Lords who fought in The Great Time War. Known to Faction Paradox as The Enemy [PDA: The Taking of Planet 5]. The War Lords have at various times hinted that they are a future incarnation of Humans [US: The Terrible Zodin] or a parallel universe version of the Time Lords [WDA: Sometime Never]. These claims are obfuscations of the truth that the War Lords are not a race, but a philosophy, and any species can become War Lords by embracing the belief that conflict, not progress, provides structure to the Web of Time. Use of the Key to Time to defeat enemies put the user at particular risk of becoming a War Lord [US: The Key To Time]. Most War Lords suffered from photophobia and could be incapacitated by bright lights. War Lords only occasionally pursued outright conquest, instead working from the shadows to intensify existing local conflicts [NA: Timewyrm: Exodus]. The War Lords usually acted through intermediaries.  The first conflict between the Time Lords and the War Lords came when The Doctor informed his people of a plot by the War Lords to abduct humans to serve as an army [OS: The War Games]. The Time Lords sealed the War Lord homeworld off from the rest of the universe in a Time Loop, but they later escaped. The conflict escalated when the Doctor used the Key to Time to erase the memory of Zodin the War Queen and hide her on Earth [US: The Key to Time]. Other races manipulated into serving the War Lord cause include the Daleks [BF: The Juggernauts] and the Zog [PDA: Players]. Varnax and The Master were corrupted by the War Lords, but did not fully become War Lords themselves. By the end of the War, the Doctor believed that his own people were on the verge of becoming War Lords [HV: The Fall of Arcadia]. The entire War Lord race was destroyed or locked away along with the Time Lords when the Doctor ended the war by means not known, but possibly involving the Key to Time [US: War of the Doctor], the Pandorica [BF: Other Wars], or the Rassilon Sanction [TDA: The Gallifrey Chronicles]. The War Lord command ship was later released from the Time War by The Toymaker [US: Endgame]. Known War Lord leaders include The War Lord, The War Chief, and Zodin the War Queen.

By “finish off” last week, I apparently meant, “Do the last one in the series, but not actually finish having done all of them, because I skipped one.”

While I’m at it, might as well finish off the 50th Anniversary book series.

8×01 June 20, 2003
DALEKS VS CYBERMEN (Serial 115)

Setting: San Francisco, 2003
Regular Cast: Rowan Atkinson (The Doctor), Scarlett Johanssen (Alice)
Guest Cast: Anthony Stewart Head (The War Chief), Cam Clarke (Voice of the Daleks), Peter Cullen (Voice of the Cybermen), Dominic Keating (Captain Carter)

Plot: Extrapolating the War Lords’ course back to Earth, the TARDIS detects a ship in stationary orbit over the dark side of the moon. Sneaking aboard, the Doctor discovers that the ship belongs not to the War Lords, but to the Cybs. The Doctor is surprised, as he thought the Cybs did not have space travel in this time period. These Cybs, who still refer to themselves as “Cybermen”, are from a research expedition which left Mondas hundreds of years ago. They had planned to rendezvous with their planet and are now low on power. Before they are forced to flee, the Doctor and Alice learn that the Cybermen have detected a power source on Earth and are planning to make a covert landing to claim it. The Doctor locates the energy source on Earth and arrives to find that the US Navy has recovered a Dalek ship from the Pacific Ocean. The War Chief, passing himself off as a scientific adviser, helps the Navy gain access to the ship. The Doctor assumes the War Chief means to awaken the Daleks, but the War Chief actually wants to give Dalek weapons to humanity to make them more warlike. When several seamen turn out to be under Cyber-control, the Doctor awakens the Daleks himself, hoping they can be convinced to leave Earth rather than let the technology fall to either humans or Cybermen since their own resources are so limited that they have to revert to more primitive, tank-style battle suits. Most of the humans are killed in the ensuing battle, but the Daleks and Cybermen fight to a standstill, and decide to negotiate. The War Chief and the Doctor briefly join forces to keep the two sides fighting. Before he leaves, the War Chief convinces the Navy to sterilize the Dalek ship by exposing the nuclear reactor of the recovery vessel. This causes the Cybermen to malfunction, but the Daleks are able to channel the radiation and use it to launch their ship. In orbit, the Dalek ship destroys the Cyber-fleet, but is itself destroyed by a fault in its engines which the Doctor had concealed by sabotaging the internal sensors. After the TARDIS leaves, one Cyber-ship turns out to have survived, and salvages the Dalek auxiliary engine, allowing them to leave the solar system and survive in deep space.

It is, in its way, the obvious choice. Though kudos to the Eruditorum Press Discord for suggesting that Carol Channing would’ve made a good Absolam Daak.

Out of ideas, so here’s some more random art.