Talk:I Am The Master (audio story)

The Master
Hi, it seems that people put this incarnation as the Deathworm morphant one because Big Finish puts it "after the Keeper of Traken". But is there anything preventing him to be the one who lost the trakenite body in Dustbreeding?RingoRoadagain ☎  09:42, November 2, 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree that this is too speculative. Not only because it could be the Beevers-stripped-of-Ainely, but because we have no idea how much time passes for the Master between the last we see of Beevers, and the beginning of The TV Movie. After all, the Gordon Tipple Master at the beginning of the TV Movie is described as being "in his final incarnation", so it's always seemed plausible to me that there was an entire offscreen regeneration cycle in-between.


 * Even without resorting to that, there is the not-yet-Deathworm-Morphant-using Gordon Tipple Master to reckon with.


 * This sort of thing is precisely why "the Master" was merged, and I'd advocate that we make good on this and, in this instance, just link to the Master without any specific template. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  10:59, November 2, 2019 (UTC)


 * I agree with your statments. Actually I was thinking about its placement in the "Master stories" template. I listened to this short trip long ago but I want to be sure about there being no precision before trying to discuss how to handle it.RingoRoadagain ☎  16:05, November 2, 2019 (UTC)
 * I haven't heard this story yet, but have the revelations of Planet of Dust and Day of the Master been considered? (Also, it's not inconsistent that the Master is in his last incarnation for multiple bodies, because he keeps using non-regenerative means to steal others' bodies at this point in his life.) 17:33, November 2, 2019 (UTC)
 * It's extremely up-for-debate whether the Master's stolen bodies count as "incarnations". They're not regenerations. But working off the meaning of the word "incarnation", they do seem to be different incarnations. Regardless of whether he was a regeneration or another Ainely-style body-snatching, though, the fact remains that the Gordon Tipple Master is equally possible as a post-Keeper of Traken pre-TV Movie Master.


 * I'm unsure how Day of the Master would affect any of this. Whatever it is, it will, regardless, necessarily be an "according to one account" deal, if only because it's predicated on Beevers having been the Thirteenth Master of the original cycle, whereas Legacy of the Daleks begs to differ. But also probably for other reasons.


 * (How to handle Big Finish's insistence that the Master keeps reverting to Beevers, while still allowing for the fact that we want to have separate Ainely, Beevers and Roberts sections in the Master's bio, is an ongoing problem.) --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  17:44, November 2, 2019 (UTC)


 * My main point was not about the semantics of what's an incarnation or not.


 * How it is handled now: the Master stories template has a section for the Pratt/Beevers pre-Traken (let's say "Beevers I"), for Beevers post-Dustbreeding but pre-Roberts (Beevers II) and one for Beevers post-Roberts (Beevers III). We know from non narrative statements that this short trip is after Traken. The last Ravenous boxset does not talk about the context of this short trip i'm afraid.


 * If no new info comes up then I think we should instead put it in the "incarnation unclear" section instead of the Morphant/Mastermind/Beevers III one: much like we do with the "Old Master" Tipple incarnation. And, as suggested by Scrooge I don't think we should use a redirect template when talking about this story since we don't know which section we would have to redirect to. (As far as I know, it is the only story in which we don't know which of the three main decayed master it is, so it should not have any further impact)RingoRoadagain ☎  23:53, November 2, 2019 (UTC)

The way I personally look at "incarnations of the Master" is the same with the Doctor; what came after something resembling a regeneration. Here's a rundown; Delgado was one of the original regenerations > Pratt was the thirteenth incarnation > Ainley was the result of using the Source the enact a "pseudo-regeneration" (as the Fifth Doctor calls it "regenerating into a body" in The Light at the End) > Master #14 then either loses his Trakenite body to a Warp Core and "retro-regenerated" (for lack of a better word) into his decayed body, but that could also be counted as the fourteenth incarnation. Or he regenerated into his fifteenth incarnation after being shot by Ace. The Eight Doctor shows Master #14 surrendering to the Daleks, with the implicating being that he was executed, but it is never explicitly shown. > However it happens, the "Tipple Master", let's call him Master #15 for lack of evidence, starts body-jumping until his form decays and he is killed by the Ravenous. > The Master is then resurrected by his younger fifteenth incarnation, as well as his eighteenth and twentieth incarnations, and regenerated into his sixteenth incarnation, the first of his new regenerative cycle.

While Ainley's "wilderness years" exploits do leave confusion, my headcannon is that he loses his body to the Warp Core, goes around in his decayed body, but still being in his fourteenth "incarnation", until he manages to get his Trakenite body back, then loses his memory and ends up in First Frontier, thinking he has just escaped Survival, and regenerates with the aid of the Tzun. Until Big Finish, or a comic or book, address how the Master definitivly gets from Master to Doctor Who, the best thing to do is left that gap blank, and fill it appropriately after someone with a valid account address it.BananaClownMan ☎  10:52, November 3, 2019 (UTC)
 * I see. That mostly looks good to me, but I really don't feel comfortable not counting Roberts as an incarnation in his own right when (per Big Finish) he spends hundreds of years in that particular body, especially considering how little like his previous incarnations he acts while in said body.


 * Also, within your scheme of things I'd call Tipple #16, personally, because he really looks neither like Beevers, nor like Basil Rathbone — and only very faintly like Ainley. But personally, I also try to account for Jonathan Blum's suggestion in Time Rift that the post-Survival Master was already given a new regeneration cycle by the Time Lords. Can't use it on this Wiki as such because it's not a valid source, but for theorizing purposes, it's good enough for me.


 * Either way, let's not forget that Eight Doctor retcons about "Deathworms" aside, the TV Movie itself strongly implies that turning into the snake-thing is something a Time Lord can just do at the end of a regeneration cycle; the Eighth Doctor, asked if he can do that too, answers "Not until I die". So that seems evidence in favor of Tipple being the last of a separate regeneration cycle. But oh well. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  11:05, November 3, 2019 (UTC)