Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151008023030/@comment-30325516-20191108141601

The placement of I am the Master is completely ambiguous. I believe that some people speculated that despite Big Finish’s intention that it comes after Keeper of Traken it actually took place beforehand as he considers stealing a body and some believed it seemed as though he hadn’t done it before.

I don’t recall having that belief when I listened to the story myself, but I’ll have to give it another listen just to check.

Technically speaking, if we assume that a post-Traken setting is indeed accurate, it could in theory take place in a number of gaps where the Master is back in his crispy form:

Between The Five Doctors and The Velvet Dark - The Time Lords stripped him of his Trakenite body after his failure in The Death Zone and then in the Velvet Dark he steals a little bit of Regeneration energy from every incarnation of the Doctor to regenerate back into Ainley again.

Between Planet of Fire and A Town Called Eternity - The Master is crispified at the end of Planet of Fire, then uses the Fountain of Youth to heal his injuries in A Town Called Eternity.

After Dust Breeding

Between Mastermind and Planet of Dust