User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151008023030/@comment-26845762-20191115033002

I'm of the opinion that making Ainley and others subsections of Beevers isn't particularly helpful for readers or for our overall archiving of Dr Who. The problem with the current singular [The Master] page, IMO, is that it forces all stories involving the Master to be covered in a single, linear "History" section.

Relevant to this discussion, there is an unmentioned story which features for a time the Ainley Master reverting to Crispy before gaining his body again. "Being knocked unconscious by the temporal acceleration hadn’t given him the chance to immerse himself fully in the healing pool of the Source of Traken, and now the fleeting initial effects had worn off... with all that that entailed. Once again, he was forced to deal with the familiar side-effect: the acceleration of his decay and devolution, his inevitable, final end. Within his ink-black suit staggered the withered, emaciated creature that was all that remained of his Time Lord body, Tremas’s form long rotted and gone."

- The Quantum Archangel

He gets better.

In all accounts of the Master is there still a distinct enough difference between their various forms? Regardless of whether "Crispy" is wearing the same body that once housed Delgado, there is still a clear dividing line between the two. Ainley isn't a different regeneration, yet there is still a clear difference between him and Crispy. Same with Roberts, especially in recent years now that Roberts has had several stories by himself.

If the Master were as an overall entity covered not in an entirely linear fashion but according to each distinct "form", "incarnation" in the general non-Time-Lord-sense (for as a result of desperate survival the Master isn't always a Time Lord)... well, at the very least it would solve the problem of I Am The Master (because the story could just be placed in the "undated events" section of "The Master (The Deadly Assassin)".

A thought.