Talk:The Master

Please note that, due to the templates set up to connect to specific sections of The Master, headings should not be changed.

The following templates exist for the different incarnations of the Master: category=The Master templates columns=2 The way we'll now connect to this page is to write something like this:
 * The Fourth Doctor faced his final challenge: a confrontation with atop the radio telescope. (TV: Logopolis (TV story))

which yields:
 * The Fourth Doctor faced his final challenge: a confrontation with atop the radio telescope. (TV: Logopolis)

If you need to make the the capitalised, then type. These links, be they, or whoever will go directly to the section of this article dealing with that version of the character.

Scoundrels' Club clean-up?
I think that the Master going to the Scoundrels Club should only be recorded for the incarnations who are said within the text to have visited the Club. It'd just be more accurate to what the story says that way, given that we can't say for certain that every single Master story is in the same continuity as Dismemberment. For example, I think it's very misleading to mention the Club in conjunction with the regenerations of Masters like Macqueen or Jacobi. Without knowing off the top of my head if Dismemberment directly states the Simm Master visited the Club, I even think that (unless the story says so) the CLub shouldn't be mentioned with regards to Simm! It's a strong piece of information for incarnations of the Master which the story indicates did visit the Club, but just because the story says that the Master goes there after "every regeneration" doesn't mean we should put it after every regeneration. CoT    ?  15:31, November 6, 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, this would be a straightforward application of the precedent of not putting "and at some point the Doctor went to the Brig's funeral" on, say, The Doctor (The Cabinet of Light), or "and like every human who died before 2014 he was briefly turned into a Cyberman by Missy" on, for example, Jamie McCrimmon. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  16:06, November 6, 2020 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, having read Dismemberment relatively recently, the only incarnations that are outright confirmed to have visited the Scoundrels club are Missy and the Deathworm Morphant. Obviously other incarnations have visited too, but I don’t believe exactly which incarnations that visited are ever specified. SarahJaneFan ☎  17:15, November 6, 2020 (UTC)


 * I have a copy of the book in my hands right now, so I'll skim through for anything that will help us.
 * Quote #1: "The Master had a tradition: whenever he changed body, he headed for the Scoundrels."
 * Quote #2: "This is my chair. I've sat in it wearing several different bodies and once as a snake without a murmur."
 * Epsilon  📯 📂 17:35, November 6, 2020 (UTC)


 * Yeah, so these are the only relevant quotes I can find. I feel it's implied that every Master has attended, but that's not watertight. Epsilon  📯 📂 18:39, November 6, 2020 (UTC)

"Inventor" or "Renegade"?
Writing up the section of Early exploits about the infamous James Dreyfus's incarnation of the Master, I had titled the section "Inventor" incarnation. However, User:BananaClownMan changed it to "Renegade" incarnation instead with no rationale given in the edit summary. I'd like us to come to an agreement here on what name we're going to use.

I think the name "Inventor" is clearly superior: "the Inventor" is an alias this Master, specifically, has actually been known to use (thus fitting the same pattern as "the Lumiet", "Missy" or "the 'Spy' Master". Whereas "Renegade"… yeah, if you peer at the dialogue in his first story with a magnifying glass, you can view it as positing that Dreyfus was the first Master to be a Renegade Time Lord. But he's clearly not the only incarnation of the Master to have been a Renegade. Heck, is our page image for Renegade Time Lord as of this writing! Yet are we not accidentally implying that "Renegade" is a descriptor that only applies to Dreyfus's Master, in the same way only Gomez called herself "Missy" or Dhawan (albeit briefly) "the Spy Master"?

But rather than change it back again without due process, I would like to see the other side voice its reasons, and the community come to some kind of consensus. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  18:11, November 6, 2020 (UTC)


 * You actually hit the nail on the head with your opening statement in this debate there. When the Dreyfus!Master first appeared, "Inventor" was all that he could be called, like how "Yana" was what the Jacobi!Master could only be called due to his singular appearance, only being renamed the "War Master" after he got more stories. So, after the Dreyfus!Master made more appearance in the audios, I thought it appropriate to five his name an update. Since he was presented as the one who ran, and causing random mayhem is his shtick at the moment, I went with "Renegade Master".BananaClownMan ☎  18:23, November 6, 2020 (UTC)
 * The difference, here, though, is that Renegade Master isn't a phrase that has ever actually been used in official material to my knowledge. And as I said, "Renegade" doesn't especially convey "first one to become a Renegade" at first glance. You might perhaps have a stronger case with something like "Fugitive Master"/"Runaway Master", because he was the one who ran from Gallifrey, except that this runs into the issue that led me to split "Early exploits" the way I did, which is that other accounts describe a completely different fate for the Master following his flight from Gallifrey, depicting him as having been in a different incarnation at the time. --Scrooge MacDuck  ☎  19:38, November 6, 2020 (UTC)
 * "Renegade Master" is definitely too vague in my mind. -- Saxon (✉️) 20:03, November 6, 2020 (UTC)
 * To clarify, has Jacobi!Master been called "The War Master" diegetically? Or did you mean on packaging and suchlike? Najawin ☎  02:37, November 7, 2020 (UTC)
 * Not that I'm aware of, no. But he's certainly been credited and advertised as such in direct relation to valid stories, so I think it's a matter of time in the same way we didn't wait until The Name of the Doctor to acknowledge that Matt Smith's character was "the Eleventh Doctor".


 * Also like "the Eleventh Doctor", it's a moniker we could easily conjecture for ourselves, albeit spelling it "War" Master rather than the War Master. He's the Master from the Time War; implicitly the only Time War Master in some tellings, and, at any rate, certainly the incarnation most uniquely defined by his relationship to the War. Which is another point in favour of our usage of it being sheer common sense.


 * At any rate, howevermuch support "War" may or may not have, it's more support than "Renegade" has to show for itself --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  03:12, November 7, 2020 (UTC)

Adding a section for the War Chief in the biography
Tardis:Neutral point of view states that we should "give all media equal weight" and while the question of whether the War Chief and the Master are the same person is defintely contentious, this Wiki has decided on multiple occasions that the evidence presented was not enough to perform an outright merge of the pages. In other words, some valid sources agree that they are the same and some valid sources disagree. To merge them completely would be a violation of T:NPOV but I believe that Edward Brayshaw's War Chief not being acknowledged at all as a pre-Delgado Master in the biography is equally a violation of the policy for stories that treat The War Games as valid backstory to the character.

Luckily, a solution to this problem has existed for years now on pages for other Time Lords that have conflicting identities in certain stories. The Time Lord from Genesis of the Daleks is either Ferain or Valyes depending on if you believe Lungbarrow or Ascension and Bernard Horsfall's character in The War Games is either Goth or Pandad IV depending on if you believe The Legacy of Gallifrey or The Three Doctors. In all of these examples, we cover the disputed stories on both pages and merely note that according to other accounts the events mentioned were experienced by somebody else.

Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon pretty conclusively states that the Doctor and the Master were the only two Time Lords ever to steal a TARDIS while summarising the events of The War Games in the same breath. This is (or should be) enough to have a section on Brayshaw's character in the biography of this page, obviously with all neccesary "account" language with directing readers back to the main War Chief article. And of course, the "Behind the scenes" sections of both pages will still be there to explain the situation in greater detail. Borisashton ☎  23:52, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not familiar with Doomsday Weapon, but would this statement about only two Time Lords have any ramifications for the Monk? -- Saxon (✉️) 00:03, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah it’s also imply he’s the Master too. A better example really would’ve been the Terror of the Autons novelisation which refers back to the events of The War Games and implies the Master was a part of those events. SarahJaneFan ☎  00:09, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think the Terror of the Autons novelisation is what User:Borisashton was meaning to refer to, and it was a mere slip-of-the-keyboard that he mentioned Doomsday Weapon instead.


 * At any rate, as for the question of whether this implicates the Monk — not necessarily. Firstly because the Monk is not definitively a Time Lord in every account (see Talk:The Monk), but also and most importantly because the Terror of the Autons boo failing to mention the Monk could just as easily be read as "According to this account, The Time Meddler did not happen". Whereas when it goes out of its way to mention the events of The War Games, it explicitly makes "the War Chief was the Master" the only possible conclusion. This isn't a matter of implication, let alone speculation — it is sheer logic.


 * What to do about the Monk in light of abstract of mentions of "there were only two Renegade Time Lords" is a different question entirely from the very specific thing done by Terror of the Autons, and I think the evidence is so clear-cut when it comes to that, that I feel comfortable putting the burden of proof on the defence. Or in other words: Borisashton's proposal should henceforth be considered the default resolution, and new evidence/arguments would be needed to convince the Wiki to revert back to the current setup of not having a Brayshaw section.


 * Let's focus on Terror of the Autons and the War Chief for now, in that spirit. A second discussion/subdiscussion can, should, and will be opened about the other "only two Renegades ever" sources and what they mean for the Monk. But it's a different discussion and a lot murkier than this one, so let's get the clean War Chief business worked out first. Scrooge MacDuck ☎  00:15, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay, good. I was just making sure a huge can of worms wasn't being opened. I agree that this is a good idea. -- Saxon (✉️) 00:20, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I think there is definitely enough to place evidence to add a section for the War Chief into the biography --but I think it's also of note that there are no valid sources that actually indicate they are different individuals. While the account within Divided Loyalties (novel) indicates that "Magnus" and "Koschei" are different individuals --that is an account WITHIN an account. A dream sequence within the narrative of the book. I think the fact that it took place within a narrative WITHIN a narrative means that it shouldn't be addressed with mere "accounts" language. While it can and should be noted that a dream influenced by the Celestial Toymaker suggested that the War Chief was in fact a separate individual who grew up alongside "Koschei" and "Theta Sigma", all of the valid sources that address the War Chief are either neutral to them being the same Time Lord or actively indicate they are the same Time Lord. . NoNotTheMemes ☎  00:42, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually, this was true up until a few years ago, but PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords also refers to the War Chief (albeit briefly) as distinct from the Master. Although of course, this is all within the framing device of an in-universe history book which could be wrong about things.


 * But I think the beauty of Borisashton's proposal is that it sidesteps the issue completely by highlighting that we already handle explicitly contradictory things like Ferain vs. Valyes in a much better-balanced way than Master vs. War Chief. Scrooge MacDuck ☎  00:57, 9 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Oooh yeah --the Ferain vs. Valyes is definitely a much better argument. If we're trying to make a new case for it's inclusion, that's the best route to go down. NoNotTheMemes ☎  01:24, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

There’s actually an epilogue to Divided Loyalties that takes place out of the dream sequence and reveals what ultimately happened to each member of the Deca. Obviously still treating Koschei and Magnus as separate characters. So the whole “it was just a dream sequence so doesn’t necessarily count” theory doesn’t entirely work. SarahJaneFan ☎  01:02, 9 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Damn Divided Loyalties contradicting pretty much all established continuity for laughs! One day Gary Russell will pay... NoNotTheMemes ☎  01:24, 9 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Politely, are we forgetting the very definitive thread that said we are very much not allowed to equate The Master and The War Chief and when I asked Shambala for permission for someone to reopen the issue at a later date sans new evidence I was pointedly ignored? These edits are in blatant violation of T:BOUND, regardless of whether we want to have a new discussion of this issue. Indeed, sans new evidence, this entire discussion could be construed as in violation of T:POINT. But certainly the edits should be put on hold for the time being, as there was actual policy made stating we're not to equate the two we're attempting to reverse. Najawin ☎  06:32, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * As you say, Shambala ignored that request, she did not deny it. But also and more to the point, the thread in question was polluted by the business of the Monk. This discussion was a much more restrained proposal, as well as bringing in somewhat different evidence. (And if it wasn't clear, this was one of those discussions which should probably have been threads if we still had a Forum, but were had as talk page discussions instead in the meantime by necessity.) Scrooge MacDuck ☎  12:18, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Scrooge, nothing here is new evidence, it's simply a new perspective on the same evidence. These exact excerpts were brought up in that same thread, it's simply a subtly different focus. And while I, again, do want to reopen this discussion, I'm both somewhat uncomfortable with something as major as this happening on the talk pages and not the forum, as I didn't notice it for a week, and deeply uncomfortable with someone going ahead and editing in the information as if this matter was decided. I again strongly urge people to agree that until this discussion comes to a close, there should be no mention of the War Chief on this page. There's already policy here, which it was improper to ignore until this discussion was resolved (though I'm sure whoever did so did so in good faith). Najawin ☎  18:13, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I suppose that depends on how you define "evidence" — but I would point to User:Borisashton bringing up the precedent of Ferain or Valyes as a new piece of exemplary evidence, as it were. If it needs to be spelled out, I'm giving this a stamp of T:BOUND approval as far as reopening this discussion goes.


 * The implementation, though, did overstep somewhat. When I said earlier that "Borisashton's proposal should henceforth be considered the default resolution, and new evidence/arguments would be needed to convince the Wiki to reverse it", I meant for this to only govern the direction of this discussion — not that the change itself should already be implemented. For this we can "thank" User:NoNotTheMemes, a well-meaning but fairly inactive user who can certainly be forgiven for misunderstanding how this works — but misunderstand he did.


 * That being said, now that the work has been done, I personally think it would be pointless legalism to reverse it only to de-reverse it later — similar to how the wrongful actions of User:BananaClownMan kinda brought a de facto end to the Mark Seven merge discussion in an irregular timeframe, but in accordance with what the consensus did in fact happen to be. It wouldn't be as difficult to simply remove the section from this page as it would have been to unmerge merged pages, but I still think it's more trouble than it's worth. Though feel free to try to pick at this reasoning if you disagree, I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise.


 * But also: this discussion is indeed not over, and if someone has a new reason to bring up for why we shouldn't have a Brayshaw section on here, they may still do so and then we'll reverse the changes. I'm not sure what would be a reasonable timeframe to leave this open, but I think three or four weeks at the very least, and I shall create an announcement in Discussions to remedy the "not seeing the discussion" problem that User:Najawin apparently ran into. I definitely want the opposition to have its say, so long as it's got more interesting things to bring up than "what about the Monk?".


 * (Oh, and Najawin… the thing about the Forums is that we're no closer to having them back than we were two months ago and haven't heard from User:CzechOut in ages, on this or anything else. We cannot indefinitely postpone all discussion when we no longer have a clear deadline to look forward to, the way we thought we did in November.) Scrooge MacDuck ☎  18:27, 16 January 2021 (UTC)


 * At the very least I left a message on Czech's message wall just yesterday, when nobody has before to my knowledge. So it's possible that we might hear something in the near future. Najawin ☎  18:40, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

…Did you really? The latest message I can see there is still User:Chubby Potato's about duplicate arguments in template calls. Scrooge MacDuck ☎  19:03, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Message Wall, so Community Central, not TARDIS. Najawin ☎  19:06, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Aaah, I see. Good thought. Not a terminological distinction I'd seen made before, though, between "message wall" and "user talk-page", so forgive me for the misunderstanding! Scrooge MacDuck ☎  19:12, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Here, by the way, is the announcement. Scrooge MacDuck ☎  19:26, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * To clarify, before I weigh in on the merits, does the Terror phrasing of the events in War Games state that there was a stolen TARDIS? Najawin ☎  20:06, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

I seem to remember that infobox material needs to be uncontested, which is (eg) why we've replaced Time Lord with The Doctor's species in all the incarnation infoboxes. It seems to me that the compromise position here would be retaining the current article but removing all War-Chief-related information from the infobox (eg/especially the first appearance variable)? – n8 (☎) 22:27, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It's also a minor fix, I believe, to remove Brayshaw from the image rotation until this is resolved. Even if we keep the main article body as is. Najawin ☎  22:37, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Very good points. Brayshaw's satanically handsome self has been removed from Masterpic from the time being, and I've blanked the "First appearance" field, noting that it is not to be refilled. Do you two think we should also removed Brayshaw from the |other_actor= variable, however? Scrooge MacDuck ☎  12:32, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It's very much still contested info, so yes. Najawin ☎  16:58, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. To elaborate on my vague, inarticulate scruple, it had to do with the fact that it's not really an in-universe variable; how things are in-universe is contested between accounts, but the fact that one account says X is, from a real-world perspective, not a matter of "conflicting accounts". But that's splitting hairs, and, anyway, would also implicate the debut variable, come to think of it. Scrooge MacDuck ☎  17:01, 19 January 2021 (UTC)


 * While I am fine with War Chief info being removed from the infobox while the discussion is ongoing, I would like to see its return when it is over. The Ferain vs Valyes and Pandad IV vs Goth precedents still exist but I think the best way to proceed can be found in Romana II's infobox.


 * The Lying Old Witch in the Wardrobe states that "Romana" in Destiny of the Daleks is actually the Doctor's TARDIS, which would make Romana II's true first appearance City of Death. Many sources dispute Romana's non-appearance in Destiny but if we religiously stuck to the standard of uncontested info in infoboxes which Nate reminds us about above, the "First appearance" field would have to be City. The talk page discussion on the subject was not technically concluded but the wishes of SOTO in their final comment, the only admin at the time participating in the discussion, is matched by the current structure of the page. That being, the "First appearance" field lists the earliest appearance of the characer according to any source (Destiny) with a footnote in the "Appearances" field stating that some sources say City is her first.


 * Replicating the same idea with The War Games as the Master's first appearance with a footnote stating that some sources say it was Terror of the Autons seems very viable to me. Borisashton ☎  21:01, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Could someone please give us some quotes from the Terror of the Autons novel that suggests the Master was present in The War Games? I saw the two on the War Chief's talk page, but, without much context anyway, they seem flimsy at best. All they tell me is that the Master would have the same punishment for similar crimes as the War Chief and that the Master escaped the Time Lords at one point. They don't mention the events of The War Games at all other than the Doctor reminiscing that he was not so lucky in escaping the Time Lords himself. I can see that there may be a possible connection there but I think I need a bit more context before I see it as anything other than speculation.

Also, I know we aren't focussing on Doomsday Weapon, but I thought I had better include more of the conversation in which the Keeper talks about The War Games and the Master "in the same breath". Bear in mind that the conversation is mainly about TARDISes not the Master and the Doctor, and the Keeper is recalling their one and only off-planet adventure.

The old Keeper seemed to drop off to sleep again for a moment, then he suddenly woke up with a start. ‘I had to travel once. There were tens of thousands of humans from the planet Earth, stranded on another planet where they thought they were re-fighting all the wars of Earth’s terrible history. The Doctor’—he interrupted himself—‘l told you about him, didn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said the young Time Lord, now used to the old Keeper forgetting what he had already said. ‘You mentioned the Doctor and the Master.’

‘No, it wasn’t the Master,’ said the old Keeper in his confused way. ‘The Master never does anything good for anyone. He’s thoroughly evil. Now what was I saying?’

The Young Time Lord reminded him. ‘Humans on a planet refighting the wars of Earth’s history.’

To me, that suggests more that the Master wasn't involved in the events. LauraBatham ☎  02:05, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I second this. Can we investigate this a little further, and provide quotes? In the absence of a clear link, the only proof here seems to be omission, and thus discontinuity. 17:39, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I do also agree that if there is a clear conflicting account here which states the War Chief was the Master, in the way that Wardrobe says Romana was the TARDIS in Destiny, that a footnote would be a good way to go. But let's first have a look at the quotes provided above, and any other evidence that is claimed to prove this definitively within a valid source. 17:47, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I see nothing in the quote provided by Laura which "suggests the Master wasn't involved in the events"; looking closely at the extract, it is simply that the Master is not who the Keeper had begun his sentence about.


 * At any rate: @SOTO as I have said before, I think it would be an unreasonable burden of proof to want something more than a story which simultaneously says "The War Games happened" and "the Master was the only other Time Lord who ran away". The Monk is another thing, because you can take the text to say "According to this account, The Time Meddler never happened", but it would in IMHO be faintly bizarre, and more than speculative, to call this "discontinuity" — to construe Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon as trying to assert an alternative version of The War Games where there was no renegade Time Lord with Brayshaw's face.


 * As for the quotes in Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, I have elaborated on that subject at Talk:The War Chief. The big smoking gun is this exchange:

"The Doctor: "Is [the Master's] TARDIS still working?" Adelphi: "I’m afraid so. He got away before it could be de- energised." The Doctor: "Then he was luckier than I.""

- DWatTotA


 * Which occurs after the narration states that the Master had a pattern of being responsible for starting interplanetary wars (which is, of course, what the War Chief was attempting to do in TV: The War Games). I don't think there is a non-counterintuitive reading of that quote other than that the Doctor and Master were both present on the occasion when the Doctor's TARDIS was "de-energised", but the Master got away quicker than the Doctor could.


 * Again as I stated at Talk:The War Chief: the relevant precedent is the Panopticon thread where we decided that we accepted "the Weapon" as an alternative to "the Moment" despite the contradictions and despite the lack of a singular, neatly-trimmed, quotable sentence saying "the Doctor used the Weapon to end the Time War". The weight of logical implication in PROSE: The Eyeless is inescapable. And likewise, absent the expectation for the use of the name "War Chief" (an expectation which I deconstructed on that talk page), these quotes couldn't be clearer about saying "Edward Brayshaw escaped and became the Delgado Master". Scrooge MacDuck ☎  17:56, 20 January 2021 (UTC)