Theory:Timeline - Decayed Master

This page lists appearances of played by Geoffrey Beevers and Peter Pratt in the order in which he experienced them. It relies on much speculation to fit semi-contradictory sources together, and should absolutely not be seen as representative of this wiki's general policy.

The last incarnation of the Master in his first regeneration cycle, this incarnation spent much of his life in a decaying state, before finding various ways to steal bodies from various sources, including the Source and Deathworm Morphant. Each body he steals appears to come with a new set of personality traits and so are often considered to be separate incarnations.

Facing UNIT

 * PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks
 * By one account, the Master is severely deformed by his own Tissue Compression Eliminator and left in a moribund state on Tersurus, leading into The Deadly Assassin.


 * By other accounts, this is not the Thirteenth Master. (COMIC: Doorway to Hell, AUDIO: The Two Masters, Sympathy for the Devil, Master Thief)

Fighting his future self

 * The Thirteenth Master is attacked by on Tersurus, and left in a decaying state. The Cult of the Heretic then switch the Masters' bodies. (AUDIO: The Two Masters)


 * AUDIO: Vampire of the Mind
 * Set betwee the flashbacks in The Two Masters the main narrative, with the Master in the body of his future incarnation.


 * AUDIO: The Two Masters
 * The Master hires the Transhuman Sisters of the Unholy Protocol and the Dragonhunters to kill the "Bald Master". After the Seventh Doctor switches the Masters back, the "Decayed Master" is put back on his path to The Deadly Assassin.


 * TV: The Deadly Assassin
 * The Master allies with Goth to use the Eye of Harmony and the Sash of Rassilon to restore his body, but he is defeated by the Fourth Doctor.

Targeting Jago and Litefoot

 * Fleeing from Gallifrey after his plot with Goth is foiled, the Master attempts to follow the Doctor's TARDIS through the transduction barrier, but this results in him being stuck in London during the 1890s. (AUDIO: Masterpiece)


 * AUDIO: The Museum of Curiosities
 * The Master successfully hypnotises Inspector Quick.


 * AUDIO: Jago & Son


 * AUDIO: Maurice


 * AUDIO: The Woman in White


 * AUDIO: Masterpiece
 * The Master's plot to drain Jago and Litefoot's energies are thwarted by the Sixth Doctor, and he is forced to flee.

Surviving in the universe

 * AUDIO: Trail of the White Worm
 * Ending leads directly into The Oseidon Adventure.


 * AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure


 * PROSE: Harvest of Time
 * The Master is captured by the Sild.


 * AUDIO: The Light at the End
 * The Master not yet met Nyssa, setting this before The Keeper of Traken.


 * AUDIO: The Evil One


 * AUDIO: Requiem for the Rocket Men


 * AUDIO: Death Match
 * Follows on directly from Requiem for the Rocket Men.


 * PROSE: Special Occasions: 1. The Not-So-Sinister Sponge
 * The Master's plan to ally himself with the Daleks and the Cybermen is foiled by Romana II.


 * COMIC: The Abominable Showmen / The Five Masters


 * AUDIO: Animal Instinct
 * The Master spends several hundred years in stasis. He has set a trap for the Doctor and is surprised when River Song turns up instead. He meets River for the first time.


 * TV: The Keeper of Traken
 * After failing to become the Keeper of Traken due to the interference of the Fourth Doctor, Adric, and Nyssa, the Master regenerates himself by stealing the body of Tremas.

Restored by the Tzun

 * PROSE: First Frontier
 * After escaping Cheetah World with his Kitling, Shadow, the Master is transmigrated to Earth, but a release of Artron energy knocks him back thirty-two years in time. Arriving in 1957 America, he makes contact with the Tzun Confederacy and arranges a deal between them. They retrieve his TARDIS from the planet Antari Three, and provide him with a cure for the Cheetah virus, making him a pure Time Lord once again. After his body is repaired, the Master is able to regenerate after being shot by Ace. Recovering from his regeneration, the Master escapes by leaving a booby-trap for the Doctor in a nuclear warhead.


 * PROSE: Housewarming


 * PROSE: Happy Endings
 * The Master steals the Loom of Rassilon's Mouse to experiment with flesh looming as part of his attempt to create an indestructible clone body from the remains of Anthony Rupert Hemmings.


 * By one account, the Master still has a Trakenite body when he returns to his decayed state, (AUDIO: Dust Breeding) suggesting that either the Tzun-restored body eventually wears away or the regeneration merely gave him another Trakenite body.

Reduced to an old body

 * AUDIO: Dust Breeding
 * The Master has been stripped of his Trakenite body by the Warp Core, and is reduced back to his decaying form. After the Seventh Doctor destroys the Warp Core, the Master is flung into time and space.


 * AUDIO: Master
 * After living a peaceful life for ten years, the Master is offered a choice by Death.

Swallowing the deathworm morphant

 * PROSE: The Eight Doctors
 * According to one account, the "Tremas" Master travels to Skaro in order to goad the Daleks into killing him, as part of his plan to steal the Doctor's body using a Deathworm Morphant. He sends his TARDIS into the space-time continuum to keep it safe until he can recover it.


 * According to another account, a different incarnation of the Master was captured by the Daleks in the Valley of the Kings to be placed on trial on Skaro. (AUDIO: Mastermind)


 * PROSE: The Novel of the Film
 * The Master sends a psychic message to the Seventh Doctor before he is executed by the Dalek Prelature, asking him to retrieve his remains and return them to Gallifrey.

Ghost in the machine

 * PROSE: The Eight Doctors
 * Directly after Doctor Who, the Master leaves one final trap for the Doctor, in the form of a crystalline structure that erases the Doctor's memories. By this account, the Master remains trapped inside the Doctor's TARDIS, where he will stay for the rest of the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures. The Gallifrey Chronicles suggests that this Master is an "echo" of the real Master.


 * PROSE: Sometime Never...
 * The Master's essence has the appearance of the Master from NOTVALID: Scream of the Shalka.


 * PROSE: The Deadstone Memorial


 * PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles
 * The Master is still trapped inside the Eye of Harmony.

Fight for the Glory

 * As his essence is left wandering the Time Vortex after passing through the Eye of Harmony, the Master is saved by Esterath to take part in the fight for the Glory, and is resurrected into the body of a deceased vagrant after Bruce's body decays beyond recovery. The Master's connection to the TARDIS brings him to Wormwood, where he witnesses the Doctor's fight against the Threshold. (COMIC: The Glorious Dead)


 * COMIC: The Fallen
 * The Master observes the Doctor combat Donald Stark.


 * COMIC: The Glorious Dead
 * Forming an alliance with Sato Katsura, the Master turns Earth into a dystopia to anger the Doctor into fighting him for the Glory. After besting the Doctor, the Master learns that the real contest was between Sato and the Doctor's companion, Kroton. When Kroton wins, he removes the Master's influence from the TARDIS and place the Master somewhere that he can not escape, implied by later releases to be the Eye of Harmony.

Escaping the Eye of Harmony

 * PROSE: Forgotten
 * The Master escapes the Eye of Harmony by influences the dreams of Edward Grainger.


 * PROSE: Prologue
 * Set during Forgotten. The Master is prevented from killing the infant Edward, by the Doctor, Violet and the adult Edward. His Deathworm Morphant loses its serpentine appearance, and becomes an "unearthly green glow".


 * The Master escapes by possessing the body of Violet's fiancée, Richard. (PROSE: Forgotten)


 * AUDIO: Mastermind
 * Following on from Forgotten, the Master survives by possessing various bodies until he is imprisoned in the UNIT Vault. Upon hypnotising UNIT officers Ruth Matheson and Charlie Sato, the Master retrieves his TARDIS and escapes from the Vault.

Reaching the end

 * AUDIO: I Am The Master
 * Set after The Keeper of Traken. The Master has his TARDIS and recalls stealing multiple bodies, setting this after Mastermind.


 * AUDIO: Planet of Dust
 * Dying and at the end of his life, the Master recalls his time trapped in the Eye of Harmony and how he was drawn back in after his escape in Bruce's body, until he found a way to escape permanently, setting this after Mastermind. He is killed by the Ravenous, leading directly into Day of the Master.


 * AUDIO: Day of the Master
 * The "Deathworm Master" is resurrected by the "Bruce" Master, the "War" Master and Missy, posing as CIA agents, who use CIA technology to grant him a whole new regeneration cycle. He regenerates into a new body, implied to the "Bald" Master.

Currently unplaced

 * These entries are placed here due to being part of ongoing storylines that have yet to offer sufficient enough evidence to be placed in a specific part of this Doctor's timeline, unless further evidence arises in the stories to come.

Awaiting placement

 * These entries are placed here until a suitable position in the timeline can be determined based on the available evidence.