Top Five Magnificent Bastard Moments: The Pratt/Beevers Master (Doctor Who)

 *Spoilers.*

I was remiss to refer to this Master in his Character Highlight post as the Geoffrey Beevers Master. I’d forgotten that Beevers only played him in “The Keeper of Traken.” Prior to that, when the Master had appeared as even more of a husk in “The Deadly Assassin,” he was voiced by Peter Pratt, so both of them have some ownership over this regeneration. Impressively, despite only appearing in two serials, I still found enough Magnificent Bastard moments for a full Top Five—this Master did not come to play.

 

Framing the Doctor (Series 14, Episode 10 – “The Deadly Assassin: Episode 2”)

The desiccated Master has a plot to revive himself, one that involves assassinating the Lord President of Gallifrey. Now, he already has an assassin who can get this done for him. There’s no need for him to tinker with the Matrix to lure the Doctor back to Gallifrey and bait him into position so he’s in the single most incriminating spot when the president is killed. His assassin even points this out to him—they can use any old patsy, so why go through all the trouble of getting the Doctor there and blaming it on him? Well, anyone who knows the Master already knows the answer to that one! As he explains, his hate is the only thing that’s keeping him going in his decayed state. It’s not enough for him to restore himself: he also has to destroy the Doctor in the process.

 

Using the Rod of Rassilon (Series 14, Episode 12 – “The Deadly Assassin: Episode 4”)

The Master steals the Rod of Rassilon in order to unlock the Eye of Harmony, the black hole that powers the Time Lords’ navigation through the Time Vortex. Doing so will restart his regeneration cycle—and, you know, give him enough power to become the supreme ruler of all the universe (after all, Master gonna Master.) However, exposing the Eye of Harmony has catastrophic effects on Gallifrey, and his quest to save his own life threatens to rip the entire planet apart. Before the Doctor is able to stop him, he causes a great deal of seismic destruction.

 

Taking Over Kassia (Series 18, Episode 22 – “The Keeper of Traken: Episode 2”)

Hidden in his TARDIS, which is disguised as a Melkur statue, the Master gains the sympathy and the affection of the goodhearted Kassia, who visits and tends to the Melkur. This gives him ample opportunity to manipulate her into helping him. When it’s finally time to execute his plan, he gives her a “gift” that turns out to be a control band—when she wears it, she becomes his eyes and ears, allowing him to witness what’s happening all over Traken. It also enables him to use the Melkur’s deadly powers through her, and he uses her to kill Seron. Total bastard move.

 

Killing Kassia (Series 18, Episode 23 – “The Keeper of Traken: Episode 3:”)

The Master’s latest plan to restore himself is to gain access to the Source, an immense power that can only be wielded by the Keeper of Traken. After using Kassia and positioning her to be named Keeper herself, he swaps places with her at the exact moment of transformation, materializing his TARDIS in her place to seize the Source for himself. Yet another instance of the Master killing someone the second they outlive their usefulness to him.

 

Stealing Tremas’s Body (Series 18, Episode 24 – “The Keeper of Traken: Episode 4”)

When the Master fails to harness the power to regenerate his own body, his obsession pushes him to an even worse act: taking someone else’s. He’s already killed Kassia, and now he traps her widow and merges his decayed body with Tremas’s, taking him over. A despicable act by a desperate Master.

Character Highlight: The Beevers Master (Doctor Who)

*Some spoilers.*

Okay, so this write-up is here mainly at the behest of my completist nature. The Master’s thirteenth incarnation is only in, like, two serials, and in both of them, the fact that he’s even there is an eleventh-hour surprise reveal. What I’m saying is, while the Geoffrey Beevers Master appears to be involved in a surprising number of ancillary stories in other media, the show itself doesn’t gives us a whole lot to say about him. I’ll do my best.

I’ve talked before about the Master’s furious drive to stay alive at all costs, and this regeneration is where it starts. Clearly, something goes terrible wrong for the Master between the last time we see him in his Roger Delgado incarnation and where he debuts as the Geoffrey Beevers version. When we next see him pop up, his body is in a critical state of decay. It’s not really explained how this happened, or how it affects the Master physically (i.e. how much pain he’s in,) but we know that he’s on his last body—he can’t regenerate out of this one.

(Note: In real life, Delgado died unexpectedly, and rather than immediately bring the character back in a new regeneration, the show waited some time before giving us a new Master story with Beevers.)

So there he is, without any regeneration energy to get a new body, or even heal the one he currently has. But the Master clings to his existence any way he can. Gone are the days of trying to take over worlds and aligning himself with the most powerful baddies around (until he double-crosses them, naturally.) Instead, this Master is focused squarely on restoring his present body, and he concocts multiple schemes to try and do so. This is a slight variation on the Master’s typical survival-at-all-costs M.O.—his initial aim is to bring his body back to health and ride out his final regeneration for as long as possible. But when that fails, he turns to a new plan, one he’ll repeat later: if he can’t heal his own body, he’ll just have to take someone else’s.

Another noteworthy aspect of this Master is the fact that his present state forces him to change a lot of usual tactics. His decayed body stands out in a crowd, to say the least, so it’s much harder to assume an alias and deceive people out in the open. He has to stick to the shadows, pulling strings out of sight and biding his time until his moment comes. For someone who loves drama as much as the Master, that probably really burns him. But the Master has always been tenacious, and so he finds a way to keep going, no matter what.