Favorite Characters: The Delgado Master (Doctor Who)

The original, a gentleman foe for a gentleman Doctor. Of the Masters I’ve written up so far, the Roger Delgado incarnation is the first I’d place under Favorite Characters rather than a Character Highlight. Yes, the Three era overused him at times, but he made for an excellent adversary.

It’s not until Two’s final serial that we learn that he’s actually called a Time Lord, or that we meet any others of his species beyond him and Susan. “The War Games” puts the Doctor back in their crosshairs, and Three is born directly out of that encounter. It’s the Time Lords who then exile him on Earth, so it’s only fitting that the Three era introduces first renegade Time Lord besides the Doctor that we’ve met.

Enter the Master. Like the Doctor, the Master isn’t content to stay put on stodgy, staid Gallifrey, and he doesn’t really hold to the Time Lord policy of noninterference. Unlike the Doctor, when he interferes, it’s only for his own benefit, never anyone else’s. Every time he shows up in a story, it’s a guarantee that he’s working some sort of angle. He may be after power or wealth, he may want to tear something down purely because he knows the Doctor is protecting it, or he may just back a bigger, badder alien force in town after assessing that it’s his best chance of survival.

Many of the Master’s core traits, those that will resonate across their regenerations, are established here. He loves a multistep plan, carefully orchestrating every phase like a well-played game of chess. He often has contingencies within contingencies and protects number one above all else. His allegiances are always fluid; he makes all sorts of unsavory allies during his time on the show, but he’ll turn on any of them in an instant once they’re no longer expedient or if he gets a better offer.

Many of his skills also carry over, to varying degrees, into future regenerations. There’s his scientific and technical knowhow, of course. He does the “Master of disguise” thing on the regular, though he usually can’t help dropping little clues in there—most of his aliases involve some translation of the word “Master.” And he uses hypnosis more than many of the incarnations that follow him. It’s a major tool in his toolbox, to the point that, when I hear the words, “I am the Master and you will obey me,” it’s Delgado’s voice I hear.

Even though they originated in this incarnation, a lot of these qualities are just considered “quintessential Master” now. So what does the Delgado Master bring that’s uniquely his own? Without a doubt, it’s his debonair aspect. Slick as a Bond villain and coolly calculating as Moriarty, he feels tailor-made to be a foe for the dashing Third Doctor—which, of course, he is. Whether they’re bluffing each other over stolen TARDIS components or simply exchanging chilly pleasantries while never letting one another out of their sight, this Master and this Doctor fit together in a way that just makes sense. It makes the Delgado Master a wonderful opponent for Three, but it also allows you to see those first glimmers of how those two could have been friends once. Though that’s not an easy dichotomy to pull off, Roger Delgado and Jon Pertwee make it look so.