Master (The Stuff of Nightmares)

K9's Master, a traveller of the omniverse, was the Master of Nest Cottage, (AUDIO: The Stuff of Nightmares, et al.) also known as Baker's End in other accounts. (PROSE: Mrs Frimbly's Festive Diary, et al.) Accounts differed to K9's Master's identity, either being a Time Lord known as the Fourth Doctor (AUDIO: The Stuff of Nightmares, et al.) or an actor, Tom Baker. (PROSE: Mrs Frimbly's Festive Diary, et al.) According to prose piece by Paul Magrs however, the Doctor was Tom Baker when he met in 18th century England. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)

Settling down in Nest Cottage
In 2010, Mike Yates told the Brigadier about a man called Tom shortly prior to the wedding of Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane. Mike gave the Brig a jar of honey that he and Tom had made. (PROSE: Happy Endings) Around the same time, sometime after his adventures with "a skull from the end of time", the Fourth Doctor took up sojourn in a town in Sussex called Nest Cottage. (AUDIO: The Stuff of Nightmares)

The Doctor began to investigate a string of murders that were caused by stuffed animals. The animals came from a taxidermy factory, run by a passionate taxidermist called Percy Noggins. Upon meeting the Doctor, Percy sent a small army of stuffed animals to kill him, since he had deemed him a threat. The Doctor discovered the stuffed animals and Percy were being controlled by the Hornets, an alien race that wanted to take control of the Doctor's mind. The Doctor lured all the Hornets towards Nest Cottage, where the TARDIS' dimensional stabilisers put up a force shield to prevent them getting out and taking over the world. (AUDIO: The Stuff of Nightmares)

The Doctor later travelled to 1932 Cromer to investigate previous incursions of the Hornets on Earth, where he found a dancer called Ernestina Stott stealing some ballet shoes with the remains of feet inside them, owned by Mrs Fenella Wibbsey, curatress of the Cromer museum, both under the influence of the Hornets. Upon discovering the significance of the ballet shoes in his investigations, the Doctor learned they were the ballet shoes of a dancer called Francesca, just like Ernestina, and they were being used by the Hornets as a hive for their dormant swarm, which Mrs Wibbsey had been taking care of for years. The Hornets attempted to use Mrs Wibbsey to shrink the Doctor and Ernestina down, putting them inside a doll's house filled with deadly dolls animated by the Hornets, but the Doctor escaped and found a way to bring them back to normal.

After that, the Hornets tried to occupy Ernestina's body, making her their new hive, but the Doctor stopped them by removing the ballet shoes before they could take full possession of her. He confiscated the doll's house and the ballet shoes and placed Mrs Wibbsey under his protection in Nest Cottage as his housekeeper and regularly mesmerised her to prevent the Hornets from taking over her mind. (AUDIO: The Dead Shoes) However, the Doctor later discovered that Ernestina was still carrying the dormant Hornets inside her, who then made contact with her grandson, Percy Noggins, the taxidermist who cooperated with the Hornets in their scheme to control stuffed animals. (AUDIO: A Sting in the Tale)

The Doctor then travelled to 1832 Blandford to investigate the Circus of Delights, whose arrival coincided with disappearances in the village. During this trip to Blandford, the Doctor encountered a girl named Sally, whose father had prevented her from attending. He met Dr Adam Farrow, whose sister Francesca had run away with the Circus of Delights. Sally and Farrow accompanied the Doctor in his investigation of the circus, where the Doctor discovered that the Hornets were responsible for odd goings-on at the circus, led by the dwarf ringmaster, Antonio. It was discovered that the Hornets had been taking possession of members of the village, so they could feed off the negative emotions that the villagers produced, using the circus to draw more victims into their trap. Upon mesmerising Antonio, the Doctor found out that he had come into contact with the Hornets as a young boy, in Venice, 1768 when they came out of a blue box that had appeared from nowhere.

However, after the Doctor had extracted all the information he wanted from Antonio, the Hornets had completely left his body with the intent of making Francesca their new hive. The Doctor attempted to stop the Hornets occupying Francesca, but was unsuccessful, leading Francesca to cast herself off the high wire upon the command of her masters, killing her. After the Doctor's defeat of the Hornets in Blandford, the Doctor had taken the husk of Antonio back to Nest Cottage and placed a stasis field around it, and then used him as a garden gnome. The Doctor found out that the Hornets remained dormant in Francesca's dead body, which was stolen by Farrow and Sally. Eventually, her mummified feet and ballet shoes would make their way to the museum in Cromer. (AUDIO: The Circus of Doom)

The Doctor finally found the earliest infestation of the Hornets in the year 1039, in a nunnery in Northumbria, which was under siege by wild dogs, possessed by the Hornets, who met the Doctor for the first time from their perspective. While there, the Doctor discovered that the Hornets had recently come to Earth, and were now looking for their lost Hornet Queen who had hidden in the body of a pig trapped in the nunnery. They eventually achieved this and attempted to escape in the leading dog of the pack, but the Doctor tried to trap the Hornets in his TARDIS. While the Doctor was trying to retrieve the Hornets in the TARDIS, he eventually managed to confront them. He realised that they were unable to take possession of the nuns in Northumbria, because they couldn't inhabit the bodies of those who had consumed alcohol.

The Hornets had managed to take possession of the Doctor, and piloted the TARDIS back to Earth, where they could escape. They escaped and encountered the younger Antonio in 1768. The Doctor searched for the Hornets in Venice for days, but he later realised that he was responsible for the Hornets' contact with Antonio, who would eventually set up his Circus of Delights. The Doctor then took the wild dog back to Nest Cottage, where it became his dog, Captain. (AUDIO: A Sting in the Tale)

The Doctor put an advertisement in a magazine to invite Mike Yates into his investigation of the Hornets. After the stuffed animals in the Nest Cottage came alive and both Mike and the Doctor were forced to retreat into the cellar, the Doctor decided to keep him up to speed, by telling him about all his encounters with the Hornets. (AUDIO: The Stuff of Nightmares) However, the Doctor later claimed that he couldn't remember putting the advertisement in the magazine. (AUDIO: A Sting in the Tale)

The Doctor wanted to finally defeat the Hornets by neutralising their queen. Therefore, with the help of Mike Yates and Mrs Wibbsey, he used Francesca's ballet shoes and his TARDIS' dimensional stabiliser to shrink themselves, so they were able to enter the hive of the Hornets, which happened to be a stuffed zebra housing the Hornet Queen herself. During the expedition into the hive of the Hornets, Mike had become paranoid and suspicious of Mrs Wibbsey, leading to his handcuffing her and directing her to the centre of the hive, resulting in a confrontation with the Hornet Queen. It was during this confrontation that the Hornet Queen revealed she had taken possession of Mike.

It was this revelation that the Doctor realised that it must have been the control of the Hornets that forced him to put that advertisement in the magazine, using what knowledge she had taken from the Doctor's mind so she could draw Mike to Nest Cottage, believing him perfect to take control since he had so many negative experiences. Since the Hornets were no longer restrained by the force shield, they took their opportunity to return to the Hornet hive, so the Doctor threatened all the Hornets by burning the whole hive. However, the Doctor realised that he could use the Hornet Queen's desire for the Hornet's royal jelly that they produced against her. He achieved this by filling Francesca's ballet shoe with royal jelly, and the Queen, overcome with the desire for the jelly, drank it out of the shoe.

The Doctor used the residual energy of the Hornets in the shoe and the sonic screwdriver's connection to the dimensional stabiliser to shrink the Hornet Queen so small she could only exist in the micro-universe. This weakened the Hornets and gave the Doctor the opportunity to escape, so he could increase their size again. This allowed the Doctor to reactivate the dimensional stabiliser, so he could put a force shield around the hive to contain all the Hornets in the stuffed zebra, sending them to the other side of the universe. This gave the occupants of Nest Cottage the chance to celebrate Christmas the following day. (AUDIO: Hive of Horror) The Doctor left Nest Cottage shortly afterwards to resume his travels in the TARDIS, leaving Captain with Mike. (AUDIO: The Relics of Time)

Returning to Nest Cottage
The Doctor returned to Nest Cottage to celebrate Christmas with Mrs Wibbsey, Mike Yates and Captain. While he stayed in Nest Cottage, someone stole the Doctor's spatial geometer, leaving behind a bag with five objects as clues. The first one, the tile from a Roman mosaic, led the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey to Celtic Britain. They were taken by Celtic soldiers who believed them to be Druids, and wanted to use them to assassinate the wizard in a neighbouring village, who was threatening them.

They travelled to this village, and on the way found dead husks, drained of their life essence. In the village, the Roman Emperor Claudius was posing as the wizard, who desired to escape from Rome and the troubles of being emperor. During an attack by the Celts from the village, the Doctor managed to stop them from fighting by using a voicemail message of Mike Yates from the Nest Cottage telephone he had with him. After the battle ended, Claudius attempted to usher the Doctor inside the back reaches of his tent, but failed, and the Doctor escaped before the tent vanished, but not before removing the remains of his spatial geometer that Claudius had taken. (AUDIO: The Relics of Time)

Next, the Doctor found an altered version of a poster painted by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. This led the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey to Paris in the 1890s where Lautrec's concierge had tried to frame Lautrec as a murderer of street girls, by making him doubt his own sanity. To do this, she slashed his paintings and killed Henri's muses and models, and stored their remains in his house, unbeknownst to him. With the help of Henri's muse, La Charlotte, they discovered the bodies and uncovered the truth of Henri's innocents. From this revelation, they found out that the murders were due to the action of Lautrec's concierge, in part to cover up his need to feed on those girls life force.

In an attempt to lure the Doctor, the concierge kidnapped Lautrec and took him to a cemetery, where her dematerialisation chamber was. The concierge almost captured the Doctor in his time craft, but the Doctor forced his way out. However, La Charlotte was killed before they all could escape. The Doctor then retrieved another part of his spatial geometer that was left behind. (AUDIO: The Demon of Paris)

The third object, a storybook with images of the Doctor and Mike Yates in it, drew them to a cave in eastern Europe, where the Doctor met a story teller, Albert Tiermann on his way to tell his stories to the king. But the materialisation of his TARDIS caused a blockage in the road on his route to the king. They were all forced to remain in a nearby hotel owned by Frau Herz until the morning. Albert had discovered the Doctor's copy of his storybook, containing stories he hadn't written yet. Since he was suffering from mental block, and had to tell a new story to the king on pain of death, he had a desire to obtain the book.

That night, an Ice Queen whom Albert had previously met in his childhood visited him, and further persuaded him to take the storybook. The following morning, Albert's coachman had been killed, and in an attempt to take Frau Herz hostage, the Ice Queen killed Hans, Albert's footman. The Doctor pursued the Ice Queen to a cave nearby, full of dead husks drained of their life force, where Albert revealed that all his stories were created for him by the Ice Queen, in her elaborate plan to lure the Doctor here.

The Ice Queen returned to the hotel, and threatened to kill Mike. It was then revealed that the hotel was really the dematerialisation chamber, and was in disguise for forty years, unbeknownst to Frau, all for this moment. Direct threats from the Ice Queen to Mike did not hold the Doctor, so he tricked the Ice Queen into believing he was going to accompany her, allowing Mike, Albert and Frau to escape. Then, at the last minute, the Doctor escaped, leaving the Ice Queen empty-handed. But Mike had discovered more of the spatial geometer in the draws of the hotel. The Doctor deposited Albert and Frau near the king's palace, and allowed Albert to keep the storybook, and used it to write his stories in the future. (AUDIO: A Shard of Ice)

The Doctor ran into a trap in New York City in 1976. A meteorite landed in Central Park and bestowed super-powers to local resident Alice Trefusis. The Doctor investigated the comic book cover showing the event. When the Doctor, Mike and Mrs Wibbsey arrived, Alice was with her boyfriend Buddy. As soon as the Doctor arrived, he felt weak and drained of energy. Mrs Wibbsey and Buddy had taken a now unconscious Alice to the ageing film star Mimsy Loyne's apartment. Alice began to use her superpowers to combat crime and stop accidents, using the alias "Starfall".

While this was going on, Mike and the Doctor came upon a dead body drained of energy, similar to the dead bodies from the previous time zones. It was at the scene where police arrested the Doctor and Mike, believing them to be involved in the death. However, while in prison, Alice rescued the Doctor and Mike, taking them to Mimsy's apartment. Buddy and Mrs Wibbsey then found a cult working in the apartment block, chanting around the final piece of the spatial geometer. This was used to create a telepath debilitator to confuse the Doctor, causing his weakness. Mimsy captured the Doctor, but was foiled when Alice broke up the chanting cultists necessary for the debilitator. During the confrontation with Mimsy, the Doctor took the remaining spatial geometer component. In frustration, Mimsy kidnapped Mrs Wibbsey, outright. The Doctor informed Alice that her powers would fade, but Buddy still had inspiration for his new comic book story. (AUDIO: Starfall)

Following the last item, a golden heart pendant, the Doctor and Mike went straight to Sepulchre, which took the form of a stately home, where they found Mrs Wibbsey, who had been there for three weeks and seemed to be possessed by some intelligence. The Doctor brought the telephone from Nest Cottage, and listened to a voicemail left by Ernetina Stott, regarding the burning down of the Cromer Palace of Curios museum. While they were exploring, the Doctor, Mike and Mrs Wibbsey found that their host, the Demon, no longer needing any disguises, sprang the trap on the Doctor, and transported them all to a dark cavern, using a mysterious green flame. He revealed he was actually working for the Hornets that had regenerated inside of Mrs Wibbsey, who had been present within her since their last encounter with them. The Demon locked the Doctor in a sarcophagus, and started the process to extract all of knowledge of space and time from the Doctor's mind, using it to create the Atlas of All Time for the Hornets, which they could use it to locate their Hornet Queen.

A quick turnabout by Mike Yates set Mrs Wibbsey in the sarcophagus instead, and the Atlas was reshaped only to contain Mrs Wibbsey's knowledge of time. The Doctor convinced the Demon to cooperate with him, and they reconfigured the sarcophagus' functions to transport anyone in it to anywhere in the Atlas. Therefore, using what little remained of the Atlas, the Doctor transported the sarcophagus and the Hornets to the Cromer Palace of Curios, where it caused the museum to burn down with a green flame, quickly destroying the Hornets. However, the Doctor was able to rescue Mrs Wibbsey, but with the loss of the Hornet, it caused the destruction of the Atlas and Sepulchre. The Doctor, Mike, and Mrs Wibbsey escaped in one direction, using the TARDIS to go to Nest Cottage, and the Demon escaped in another direction, free to roam the universe. While the Doctor, Mike and Mrs Wibbsey tried to celebrate a second Christmas at Nest Cottage, someone knocked on the door, and Mrs Wibbsey screamed as the unknown visitor tried to break in. (AUDIO: Sepulchre)

As they broke down the front door, it was revealed that they were Robotov robots, who were instructed to take the Doctor. When attempting to resist them, Mike was knocked unconscious, and the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey were captured by the robots and were transported to the far future by a wormhole. The Doctor was brought before the Tsarina, the wife of the Tsar, the figurehead of the Robotov Empire, an empire entirely ruled by sentient robots, and requested the Doctor help her three-year-old son, Alex, the cyborg heir to the Robotov throne. The Tsarina believed that the Doctor was "Father Gregory," a former ally of the empire, but betrayed them to their enemies.

After improving Alex's condition, the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey were invited to a banquet with the Tsar and the Tsarina. However, it was interrupted by a raid instigated by enemies of the Robotovs, and they abducted Mrs Wibbsey. When she was taken to their base, she met the real Father Gregory, who looked exactly the same as the Doctor, and he revealed that he was the one who brought them to the future. However, the Doctor arrived to rescue Mrs Wibbsey, where he discovered that Gregory had allied himself with the Skishtari and during the raid, implanted a Skishtari egg in Alex's chest to be released at the heart of the Robotov Empire. However, realising the error of his ways, Gregory removed the egg from his chest, and saved Alex's life by transplanting his own heart for Alex's, which killed Gregory. Attempting to save Alex, he and his guardian, Boolin, escaped in a shuttle with the egg, and travelled through the wormhole. Attempting to pursue them, the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey arrived back in Hexford, but in the year 1861. (AUDIO: Tsar Wars)

As they explored Hexford, the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey discovered that they arrived ten years after the shuttle arrived in Hexford, and the shuttle crash caused an accident which resulted in Boolin losing his memory, and Alex becoming facially disfigured. After the accident, Reverend Dobbs took care of them, making Boolin his servant, and Alex his ward. Eventually, Alex discovered the Skishtari egg, and used it punish people who upset him.

When the Doctor found Alex and Boolin, Boolin began to remember his lost memories, and when he attempted to persuade Alex to acknowledge his identity as an heir to an intergalactic empire, Alex refused to believe it, and used the egg to consume Boolin. When Alex ran away from them, the Doctor tried to pursue him and convince him to give up the egg. However, when Reverend Dobbs arrived, Alex went into a rage and lost control of the egg, which consumed them all. (AUDIO: The Broken Crown)

When the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey awoke, they were in a vast cavern, where they came across a young man who sounded like Alex called Aladdin, who said he was sent into the cavern to uncover a magic lamp for a mysterious magician. As they all looked for the lamp, the chamber filled with gas and they fell asleep. When they awoke, the Doctor's scarf had vanished and they met the Magician, who looked like Boolin. After further explorations, the Doctor became separated from the group. While exploring on his own, he found his scarf had become animated and it began to talk to him. He followed the scarf and rejoined with Mrs Wibbsey, Aladdin and the Magician, and they found the lamp. When Aladdin rubbed it, the Scarf emerged and allowed Aladdin three wishes. They scarf revealed that the situation they were in was a projection made by Alex's mind to represent the quest for the Skishtari egg, and the characters were the victims consumed by the egg in Hexford. With the Doctor's assistance, Aladdin remembered his former life as Alex, and wished to stop the projection, and be released from the egg back to Hexford.

After arriving back in Hexford, the lamp turned into the egg, and Alex wished, at the Doctor's request, that they travel to Christmas Day, 2010, the day they were taken by the Robotov robots. Reunited with his TARDIS, the Doctor took Boolin and Alex into the future, back to the Robotov Empire, while Mrs Wibbsey remained at Nest Cottage. (AUDIO: Aladdin Time)

Unfinished business at Nest Cottage
After a few months of travelling, the Doctor arrived back in Hexford several months after he left Mrs Wibbsey. When he returned, he found that Mike Yates, UNIT, and his second incarnation had taken up residence there to investigate strange goings-on in the skies above Hexford. Upon arrival, a Skishtari spacecraft had appeared above Hexford, intent on retrieving the egg, which the Doctor had buried under Hexford in 1861. The Doctor also discovered that the Second Doctor had been assisting the Skishtari by planting alien trees which made Hexford invisible to the rest of the world. The Skishtari spacecraft began to remove Hexford from the ground, and drag it through a wormhole to the future. The Doctor attempted to use the TARDIS to prevent this, but failed, leaving the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey in the TARDIS, while everyone in Hexford had been taken to the future by the Skishtari. (AUDIO: The Hexford Invasion)

After spending several months locating Hexford through time and space, the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey found it. Just as they arrived, the Robotov soldiers attempted to infiltrate Hexford, knowing it contained a Skishtari egg. However, the Second Doctor kidnapped Mrs Wibbsey, and took the Skishtari egg as it began to hatch. He took the egg to the Skishtari mothership, where he revealed that the Second Doctor was a clone created from the DNA that the Skishtari took from the Doctor after their last encounter, specifically designed to retrieve the egg. Suddenly, Alex appeared and revealed he was now the Tsar of the Robotov Empire. He attempted to pacify the creature in the Skishtari egg, since he was mentally linked with it when he lived in Hexford for ten years, and ordered the creature to kill the other Skishtari. After that, Alex took the Skishtari away with the Robotov invasion force, and both Doctors united to pilot the Skishtari ship, followed by Hexford, through the wormhole back to England, 2011. After depositing Mrs Wibbsey back in Nest Cottage, the Doctor left in the TARDIS. (AUDIO: Survivors in Space)

Eventual return
After Hexford was returned to its rightful place on Earth, (AUDIO: Survivors in Space) the Master left for two years, leaving Mrs Frimbly to look after Baker's End. On Christmas Eve of the second year, he sent a "robot dog" to look after her, though Frimbly initially acted with hostility towards the dog. The Master finally returned on Christmas Day, much to the dog and Mrs Frimbly's delight. (PROSE: Mrs Frimbly's Festive Diary)

Undated events
In Baker's End, the Master owned books that he had delivered from an alternate dimension's Ebay. In these books, there were tales of Baker's adventures, including the time he had trapped a Sinisterest Sponge in his space machine, then had left and forgotten about it in the downstairs bathroom, and it tried to eat his housekeeper Fenella Frimbly. Other adventures included meeting the Eye-Spiders of Perigross, finding a Sphinx in an alien desert, a trip to the Neuronic Nightmare world, meeting the blue baboons who rode on ships that resembled spoons, and being at the edge of the universe, next to the Thousand and One Doors to Elsewhere. (PROSE: Mrs Frimbly's Festive Diary)

Behind the scenes
"What if… he wondered expansively… what if his Doctor Who hadn't regenerated after all? What if he had quietly retired to a village somewhere deep in the English countryside, rather like Sherlock Holmes had? What if he had a dog and a tetchy housekeeper? What if he had a companion come to visit him during the long winter nights? Someone for him to share spooky stories with…? What if that was the way he could return to Doctor Who? As a storyteller sitting comfortably by the fire…? Unwinding macabre tales of terror like infinite strings of multi-coloured wool…? That sounded like just the sort of thing I’d love to write, and so that is more or less what I wrote."
 * Paul Magrs described in a 2019 blog post how he wrote the Master of Nest Cottage based on a suggestion from Tom Baker:

- Paul Magrs


 * As a result of this approach, the placement of the Nest Cottage stories in the Doctor's timeline is somewhat difficult. In the first series, Hornets' Nest, the Doctor referenced some stories from series fourteen and fifteen, as well as the fact that he has a robot dog waiting in the TARDIS; if this is taken to be K9 Mark II, this could indicate that the Nest Cottage stories are set just before series sixteen, a gap also used by Big Finish Productions.