Doctor Who (11 page)

9

The First Master

“I have so few worthy opponents. When they're gone, I always miss them.”

—The Master, from “Terror of the Autons” (1971)

 

“There are so many great monsters, but I loved the original Master,” Peter Davison told me at Gallifrey One in 2011. “I didn't work with him, of course; I worked with Anthony Ainley. He did a great job, and so did John Simms. But Roger Delgado, he was the Master of my childhood. He was just so perfect, and he brought something new to the program, which I'd been watching since the first airing. I hope we get a new Master.
Doctor Who
has to have the Master, don't you think?”

There are different types of arch-enemies, and the best heroes tend to have more than one. In the past, the Doctor had encountered the Monk and the War Chief, but neither hit the right note to become a major recurring character. This new villain derived directly from Sherlock Holmes's opposite number. Although Professor James Moriarty remains the most notorious enemy of Doyle's famous consulting detective, he died in the same story wherein he debuted. He didn't have time to develop into an archenemy in the way we often expect now. One day Holmes simply explained to Watson that for several years he had been waging a hidden war against a criminal mastermind named Moriarty and that the villain had organized some of the cases that he'd solved. With this bit of retroactive history, Doyle quickly gave his readers a character who had a brilliant, calculating mind like Holmes, but who chose the darker path.

The Master debuted in a similar fashion. Though we'd never seen him before, he and the Doctor clearly had a history, much more personal than the relationship between the great detective and the professor. The creative team originally considered making this villain a female—perhaps evoking Irene Adler instead—but decided against it, believing that casting a man
enhanced the chilling sense of similarity to the Doctor. They also doubted whether the audience would accept a woman as such a powerfully evil force.

This male enemy would seem almost a physical manifestation of our hero's dark side. While the hero had a sonic screwdriver, this villain wielded a cylindrical device known as a tissue compression eliminator. The weapon, which resembled a magic wand, shrank its target, causing victims to scream as their organs compressed. The painful method of killing left doll-sized corpses as a bizarre calling card.

Like the Doctor, this villain wouldn't have a name but rather an academic title, one that also declared his ultimate goal. His catchphrase became, “I am the Master and you will obey me.”

Casting Evil

The role of this dark enemy went to Roger Delgado. Born in London to French and Spanish parents, he had acted onstage during the '30s and served in the war starting in 1940. He appeared in Charlton Heston's 1972
Antony and Cleopatra,
among other films, as well as numerous television programs. Producer Barry Letts personally selected Delgado for the role, believing he would imbue the character with the proper gravitas and sinister authority. Letts knew the audience would have no trouble believing he could match wits with the Doctor.

Sadly, Delgado gave few interviews before his untimely death, but he did speak to
Doctor Who Magazine
about his character:

 

I love playing villains. I am chosen by directors to play wicked men because I have a beard, a menacing chin, and piercing eyes. I was thrilled to be offered the part of the Master as I had tried three times to break into
Doctor Who,
but the scope offered by the part was way above any other I had considered.

I enjoyed this chap who was really more than just a Moriarty to the Doctor, and I could tell from fan letters that I was the man they loved to hate. There were even one or two kids who complained that I wasn't wicked enough!

 

Fans may have loved to hate the character, but Pertwee felt rather differently about the man who played him. “Roger was one of the most gentle men I've ever known,” Pertwee told his
Fan Club Newsletter
in 1975. “He was the most courteous person—he had a temperament, but always it was at himself in rehearsals. He would go absolutely berserk with anger if he couldn't get something right, but always at himself, never at anyone else. He was charming, polite, kind, and considerate.”

At this beginning of the program's eighth year, in the story “Terror of the Autons,” we hear the sound of a TARDIS landing. But instead of the familiar blue box, a horsebox trailer materializes and the Master emerges, dressed from neck to toe in black. Using hypnotic abilities, he quickly gathers henchmen and hatches his plans, while the Time Lords warn the Doctor about his presence on Earth.

Eventually, a face-to-face confrontation occurs. Like Holmes and Moriarty in their first meeting, the two respectfully and politely threaten each other, the Master remarking that he will regret having to kill the hero because “You see, Doctor, you're my intellectual equal. Almost.” “Terror of the Autons” ends with the Master escaping UNIT but not Earth. The Doctor sabotages the villain's TARDIS, waylaying them both on the planet. The war has begun.

As the adventures progress, we learn a bit more about their relationship. The Doctor reluctantly admits that the two attended “the academy” on Gallifrey together, and during the story “The Mind of Evil,” the two enemies must temporarily join forces. Seeing how easily they fall into a partnership gives us a glimpse into what they must have been like years before.

The Master's schemes were more majestic than those of other monsters that plagued the program. In “The Time Monster,” he tries to control a creature born outside physical reality, native to the space-time vortex through which all TARDIS ships travel. In “Colony in Space,” the villain uncovers a doomsday weapon that could wipe out solar systems. In “The Claws of Axos,” he again joins forces with the Doctor, this time against the cunning Axons.

Peeling the Layers

Pertwee and Delgado, friends off-screen, developed an even closer relationship through
Doctor Who.
In a 1993 reunion special,
Return to Devil's End,
Pertwee commented on their friendship.

 

He was one of my greatest personal friends. One thing I've said many, many times before is that Roger Delgado was the bravest man that I ever knew because he was basically a coward. And I don't mean that in a derogatory fashion, he was just a naturally very, very nervous man. Roger was frightened of his own shadow, yet look at that face. I mean, he terrified the bejeezus out of anybody.

 

Many felt Delgado's positive influence, in particular John Levene, who portrayed UNIT Sergeant Benton, and who spoke, also in
Return to Devil's End,
of how the actor helped him find his footing on the show.

 

I had a bit of a problem with my own decision as to whether I was a good actor or not. Not that I necessarily needed to be good, but I used to worry the other cast by saying I don't think I can handle certain scenes. And one day we were on the set of “The Daemons” here, and I said to Roger, “You know, we have a couple of scenes together,” and he said, “John, just let the day take its own course. Just play it as you feel it.”

I always remember the scene where he said, “the resourceful Sgt. Benton.” He made me feel very important and made me like myself a little better.

 

Indeed, in multiple stories the Master remarked on the resourcefulness of UNIT and of Sergeant Benton in particular. He even regarded the Brigadier as a worthy opponent. These touches kept the Master from devolving into a one-dimensional villain, along with the character's Doctoresque sense of humor—suggesting the Brigadier take precautions against a nuclear explosion by placing “sticky tape on the window” and once remarking flippantly,
“I don't know, rocket fire at long range . . . Somehow it lacks that personal touch.”

The Third Law

“The universe needs me and I need all that it has to offer. I am the Master! That is who I am, what I am, and what I need to be!”

—The Master, from the Big Finish audio play
Master
(2003)

 

Barry Letts and Robert Sloman, a playwright, journalist, and friend of Letts's wife, wrote the five-episode story “The Daemons,” closing the eighth year. Letts had originated the concept of the story as an audition scene written for the character of Jo Grant, eager to take the Doctor into a different kind of danger. He thought a story of supernatural evil would nicely shake up the usual science fiction style of the show. At the time, the BBC frowned on producers and other production staff writing for their own shows, so Letts and Sloman used the pen name “Guy Leopold.” Sloman's son was named Guy, and Letts's middle name was Leopold.

The plot revolved around the Master taking up residence in the village of Devil's End, posing as a vicar named Mr. Magister, the Latin word for his name. Originally, the Master was to perform a ceremony at the altar of the church to summon a demon named Azal. He would demand this demon's power, becoming an invincible conqueror. The Doctor, used to scientific realities, would find himself unnerved by the magical forces he couldn't predict.

But script editor Terrance Dicks feared this plotline would induce religious viewers—not keen to see the Master conducting a demonic ritual in a church—to target the show, which was already criticized on occasion for frightening younger viewers. The church setting became a church crypt and then an underground cave that merely resembled a crypt. Rather than call Azal a genuine demon, the narrative explained that he was an alien from the planet Daemos, roughly sixty thousand light-years from Earth.

Azal and his people the Daemons had technology that only seemed supernatural, an idea taken from science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke's Three Laws, the third being: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.” An ancient race, the Daemons traveled across the universe, interacting with sentient races of many worlds. They visited Earth roughly one hundred thousand years ago and inspired many myths about supernatural creatures.

But these science fiction explanations still weren't good enough for the BBC, which said that
Doctor Who
was not allowed to reference God in the script on the chance that viewers would find it blasphemous. Despite this, it was still acceptable to reference the Devil, for the Master to masquerade as a vicar, and for the Doctor to claim he was a wizard.

Despite the BBC's concerns, “The Daemons” became an instant classic and attracted over eight million viewers for each episode. Months later, on December 28, 1971, BBC One rebroadcast the five-part story in its entirety, the first repeat of a
Doctor Who
adventure. This attracted 10.5 million viewers, the highest rating the show had received since 1965.

“The Daemons” also features Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's most famous moment. Confronted by a living gargoyle, a deadly creature animated by Azal's power, the Brig, not showing a hint of concern, calls over a man named Jenkens and nonchalantly says, “Chap with the wings there. Five rounds rapid.” Jenkens fires, and this hilariously fearless moment captured many fans. Years later, Nicholas Courtney titled his memoirs
Five Rounds Rapid!
Terrance Dicks had initially cut the line but brought it back at Letts's request.

“The Daemons” also enabled later writers to delve into supernatural themes without disrupting the Doctor's insistence on rational explanations for seemingly supernatural events. In “Pyramids of Mars,” the Fourth Doctor explains to Sarah Jane Smith that Egypt's ancient deities were actually aliens known as the Osirans, whose powers dwarfed those of the Time Lords. In the Seventh Doctor TV story “Battlefield,” our hero fights the witch Morgaine le Fey and another demon-like entity. In the 2007 episode “The Shakespeare Code,” the Tenth Doctor fights three witches, explaining at several points how their magical powers are just a different form of science hidden behind superstitious ritual. The Tenth Doctor episode “The Satan Pit” directly referenced the planet Daemos, as the Doctor wondered if he'd met the very creature that had inspired the Daemons' preference for devil-like forms.

Endings

The Master had debuted at the beginning of 1971 and had starred in all five stories that year. “The Daemons” ended with UNIT capturing the villain at last. “We decided his regular appearance was a mistake,” Pertwee said in the third issue of his
Fan Club Newsletter,
“because I was always defeating him, which just made him look stupid. I think sometimes the Master should have defeated me temporarily at the end of a story—such as in ‘The Sea Devils,' but on a grander scale.”

During his interview with the
Jon Pertwee Fan Club Newsletter,
the actor revealed an idea discussed behind the scenes. “It was suggested by Nick Courtney that the reason we didn't kill each other was that fundamentally we knew there was some connection between us. Then we wanted it to turn out by a Time Lord giving the game away that we were, in fact, brothers, which would have been a rather clever idea.” But the creative team decided not to pursue this.

After appearing only occasionally over the next two years, Delgado decided to leave the role of the Master behind and focus on other work. Discussing it with Letts and Dicks, the actor had a choice between vanishing and leaving it open for his character to return at some later date or ending the Master in an epic final battle. Delgado eagerly chose the latter.

Around the same time, Pertwee had decided to leave the program after his fifth year as the Doctor, so a plan formed. The final story would involve yet another confrontation with the Master and would end with his death. But it would be ambiguous whether the villain had been destroyed by his hubris or if, at the last minute, he had sacrificed himself to prevent the Doctor from dying instead. Either way, the Doctor would survive, but would be so injured that he had to regenerate his body. Pertwee and Delgado would leave at the same time, marking the end of an era together. The adventure would be called “The Final Game,” a reference to Arthur Conan Doyle's “The Final Problem,” in which Holmes and Moriarty first meet and then seemingly die in battle.