The Master
The Master is a recurring character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He is a renegade Time Lord who is the greatest individual enemy of the Doctor.
The creative team conceived the Master as a recurring villain, a "Professor Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes." He first appeared in Terror of the Autons (1971). The Master's title was deliberately chosen by producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks as evocative of supervillain names in fiction, but primarily because, like the Doctor, it was a title conferred by an academic degree.
A would-be universal conqueror, the Master's stated goal is to control the universe (in The Deadly Assassin his ambitions were described as becoming "the master of all matter"), with a secondary objective of eliminating the Doctor. His most distinctive ability is that of hypnotising people by fixing them with an intense stare, often accompanied by the phrase, "I am the Master, and you will obey me." The original (and most common before 1996) look of the character was similar to that of the classic Svengali character; a black Nehru outfit with a beard and moustache. The Master has owned at least two TARDISes, one of which was described as a more advanced model than the Doctor's. Unlike the Doctor's, the Master's TARDIS has a functioning chameleon circuit, allowing it to change its external appearance to better fit in with its environment. A favoured weapon of the Master is his Tissue Compression Eliminator, which reduces its targets to doll-size, usually killing them in the process.
When Doctor Who was revived in 2005, it was initially claimed in the episode "Dalek" that all the Time Lords except the Doctor were killed in a Time War with the Daleks. The Doctor stated that if other Time Lords had survived, he would have been able to sense them telepathically. However the Master's return is foreshadowed in "Gridlock", when the Face of Boe gives the Tenth Doctor a message; "You are not alone."
In "The Sound of Drums", it is revealed that the Time Lords resurrected the Master to serve as a soldier in the Time War. However he fled the war in fear before its end, hence his ignorance of its outcome. He disguised himself as a human via the same process the Doctor himself used in "Human Nature" — a Chameleon Arch that stores his Time Lord nature and memories in a fob watch and allows him to become biologically human — and hid at the end of the universe as benevolent scientist Professor Yana. Events conspire to bring the Doctor to the same point in "Utopia", and Martha Jones inadvertently causes Yana to question the "broken" fob watch that contains his Time Lord essence, allowing the Master persona to take hold once more. He is mortally wounded during a struggle with Yana's assistant, Chantho, regenerating into a new incarnation portrayed by John Simm. The Master then steals the Doctor's TARDIS and arrives in the present, having been forced to arrive there by the Doctor.
Following his escape from the end of the universe, he arrives on Earth 18 months before the 2008 election, prior to the fall of Harriet Jones. The Master uses his hypnotic powers to assume the identity of Harold Saxon, a high-ranking member of the Ministry of Defence. He proceeds to gain a wife named Lucy Saxon, fakes a past life history, designs UNIT's airborne aircraft carrier, the Valiant, and manipulates Martha Jones's family. Crucially, he helps launch the United Kingdom's Archangel satellite network, which allows him to gain control of the country's mobile phone networks and insert subliminal messaging, subtly hypnotising the population into voting for him as Prime Minister. It also has the effect of preventing the Doctor from sensing his presence.
After becoming Prime Minister, he has the Doctor and his companions marked as wanted terrorists and fakes a first contact situation with an alien race called the Toclafane (a false name, according to the Doctor, as Toclafane are the Time Lord equivalent of the bogeyman) which takes place on the Valiant. Unable to use the TARDIS, the Master has cannibalised it and has built a Paradox Machine. As several Toclafane orbs materialize for the planned first contact, the Master orders them to assassinate the President of the United States who was leading the welcoming ceremony. Two minutes after first contact, the machine rips a hole in space, releasing six billion Toclafane upon Earth, whom the Master casually orders to kill one-tenth of the human race. Martha's family, Captain Jack Harkness, and the Doctor — who is aged the equivalent of 100 human years by the Master — are all captured; Martha teleports to safety, vowing to return.
In "Last of the Time Lords", the Master rules the Earth for a year, forever tormenting Martha's family, Jack Harkness and the aged Doctor while he turns whole nations into work-camps and bases for a fleet of war rockets. When he is ready to wage war on the rest of the universe, he captures Martha to inaugurate the event with her execution. However, she has been spreading the story of the Doctor across the world; the Doctor has tapped into the telepathic link the Archangel Network has set up and the mental feedback of all of humanity thinking "Doctor" simultaneously allows him to draw power from it, which restores him to his rightful age and allows him to easily defeat the Master. The Master threatens to destroy the Earth and everyone on it - including himself and the Doctor - but the Doctor calls his bluff and returns them both to the Valiant. After the paradox machine is destroyed and time is reversed, the Doctor intends to keep the Master with him on the TARDIS, saying "now I'll have something to care for," but is thwarted when Lucy Saxon fatally shoots the Master. Unwilling to be imprisoned and rehabilitated by the Doctor, he refuses to regenerate again; since his death emotionally hurts the Doctor, the Master views this as a victory. The Doctor then cremates him on a pyre.
Toward the end of the episode, a female hand with long, bright red fingernails, sarcastically referred to in the accompanying podcast as "the hand of the Rani", picks up the Master's green and silver ring from the remains of the pyre, while the sound of insane laughter rings in the background, leaving the possibility of a further "Doctor Who" production team bringing back the Master, however, Russell T Davies has said in the podcast for "Last of the Time Lords" that this will not be picked up on in the 2008 series.