Theory:Timeline - Decayed Master

This page lists appearances of played by Geoffrey Beevers and Peter Pratt in the order in which he experienced them. It relies on much speculation to fit semi-contradictory sources together, and should absolutely not be seen as representative of this wiki's general policy.

The last incarnation of the Master in his first regeneration cycle, this incarnation spent much of his life in a decaying state, before finding various ways to steal bodies from various sources, including the Source and Deathworm Morphant. Each body he steals appears to come with a new set of personality traits and so are often considered to be separate incarnations.

Timeline

 * Previous known page: "UNIT enemy" Master

Body decayed

 * PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks
 * According to this account, the "Decayed" Master is, in fact, the "UNIT enemy" Master, his body damaged beyond the point of regeneration after being shot with the TCE by Susan Foreman while under a psychic attack.


 * According to a second account, the "Decayed" Master was the result of the Thirteenth Master attempting to regenerate beyond the twelve-regeneration limit. (PROSE: Meet Missy!, The Doctor vs the Master)


 * PROSE: The Dead Travel Fast
 * Having experienced a failed regeneration, the Master is dying from Artron decay. He is stealing the life force of other living creatures in order to sustain himself.


 * AUDIO: The Two Masters
 * According to a third account, the Thirteenth Master is attacked by on Tersurus, and left in a decaying state by an energy net. The Cult of the Heretic then switch the Masters' bodies, and the "Decayed" Master hires the Transhuman Sisters of the Unholy Protocol and the Dragonhunters to kill the "Bald" Master. After the Seventh Doctor switches the Masters back, the "Decayed" Master is put back on his path to The Deadly Assassin.


 * AUDIO: Vampire of the Mind
 * Set during The Two Masters, with the Master in the body of his future incarnation.


 * TV: The Deadly Assassin
 * Having recently become a decayed husk, the Master allies with Goth to use the Eye of Harmony and the Sash of Rassilon to restore his body, but he is defeated by the Fourth Doctor.

Targeting Jago and Litefoot

 * Fleeing from Gallifrey after his plot with Goth is foiled, the Master attempts to follow the Doctor's TARDIS through the transduction barrier, but this results in him being stuck in London during the 1890s. (AUDIO: Masterpiece)


 * AUDIO: The Museum of Curiosities
 * The Master successfully hypnotises Inspector Quick.


 * AUDIO: Jago & Son


 * AUDIO: Maurice


 * AUDIO: The Woman in White


 * AUDIO: Masterpiece
 * The Master's plot to drain Jago and Litefoot's energies are thwarted by the Sixth Doctor, and he is forced to flee.

Surviving in the universe

 * AUDIO: Trail of the White Worm
 * Ending leads directly into The Oseidon Adventure.


 * AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure


 * PROSE: Harvest of Time
 * The Master is captured by the Sild.


 * AUDIO: The Light at the End
 * The Master not yet met Nyssa, setting this before The Keeper of Traken.


 * NOTVALID: Legacy


 * NOTVALID: Sonic Adventure
 * Follows directly on from Legacy.


 * AUDIO: The Evil One


 * AUDIO: Requiem for the Rocket Men


 * AUDIO: Death Match
 * Follows on directly from Requiem for the Rocket Men.


 * COMIC: The Abominable Showmen


 * COMIC: The Five Masters
 * Follows on directly from The Abominable Showmen.


 * PROSE: Special Occasions: 1. The Not-So-Sinister Sponge
 * The Master's plan to ally himself with the Daleks and the Cybermen is foiled by Romana II.


 * AUDIO: Animal Instinct
 * The Master spends several hundred years in stasis. He has set a trap for the Doctor and is surprised when River Song turns up instead. He meets River for the first time.


 * TV: The Keeper of Traken
 * After failing to become the Keeper of Traken due to the interference of the Fourth Doctor, Adric, and Nyssa, the Master regenerates himself by stealing the body of Tremas.

Restored by the Tzun

 * PROSE: First Frontier
 * After escaping Cheetah World to 1957 America, the "Tremas" Master makes contact with the Tzun Confederacy and arranges a deal between them that allows him to use their technology to give him a new regeneration cycle. After he is shot by Ace, the Master is able to regenerate into a new body and escapes by leaving a booby-trap for the Seventh Doctor in a nuclear warhead.


 * PROSE: Housewarming


 * PROSE: Happy Endings
 * The Master steals the Loom of Rassilon's Mouse to experiment with flesh looming as part of his attempt to create an indestructible clone body from the remains of Anthony Rupert Hemmings.


 * The Master is eventually reduced to a decayed state once again. (AUDIO: Planet of Dust)

Reduced to an old body

 * AUDIO: Dust Breeding
 * The Master has been stripped of his Trakenite body by the Warp Core, and is reduced back to his decaying form. After the Seventh Doctor destroys the Warp Core, the Master is flung into time and space.


 * AUDIO: Master
 * After living a peaceful life for ten years, the Master is offered a choice by Death.

Trial on Skaro

 * PROSE: The Eight Doctors
 * According to one account, the "Tremas" Master travels to Skaro in order to goad the Daleks into killing him, as part of his plan to steal the Doctor's body using a Deathworm Morphant.


 * According to another account, a different incarnation of the Master was captured by the Daleks in the Valley of the Kings to be placed on trial on Skaro. (AUDIO: Mastermind)


 * PROSE: The Novel of the Film
 * The Master, in a healthy body, sends a psychic message to the Seventh Doctor before he is executed by the Dalek Prelature, asking him to retrieve his remains and return them to Gallifrey.

Fight for the Glory

 * As his essence is left wandering the Time Vortex after passing through the Eye of Harmony, the Master is saved by Esterath to take part in the fight for the Glory, and is resurrected into the body of a deceased vagrant after Bruce's body decays beyond recovery. The Master's connection to the TARDIS brings him to Wormwood, where he witnesses the Doctor's fight against the Threshold. (COMIC: The Glorious Dead)


 * COMIC: The Fallen
 * The Master observes the Doctor combat Donald Stark.


 * COMIC: The Glorious Dead
 * Forming an alliance with Sato Katsura, the Master turns Earth into a dystopia to anger the Doctor into fighting him for the Glory. After besting the Doctor, the Master learns that the real contest was between Sato and the Doctor's companion, Kroton. When Kroton wins, he removes the Master's influence from the TARDIS and place the Master somewhere that he cannot escape, implied by later releases to be the Eye of Harmony.

Trapped in the Eye of Harmony

 * PROSE: Sometime Never...
 * The Master speaks to an amnesiac Eighth Doctor through a screen in his TARDIS. The Master's face is described as "wise and whimsical, with hard eyes and a beard flecked with grey". These descriptors are lifted straight from PROSE: Scream of the Shalka, where they are used to describe the incarnation of the Master played by Derek Jacobi in that story. Likewise Justin Richards noted in DWM 338 that the conversation between the Doctor and Master here is intended to tie in with the events of Scream of the Shalka.


 * PROSE: The Deadstone Memorial
 * The Master once again speaks with an amnesiac Eighth Doctor, this time through a mirror in the TARDIS.


 * PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles
 * The Master is still trapped inside the Eye of Harmony, and claims to be an echo of his original self.


 * PROSE: Forgotten
 * The Master escapes the Eye of Harmony by influencing the dreams of Edward Grainger. After failing to possess a newborn Edward, the Master escapes into the night in a green mist form.


 * PROSE: Prologue
 * Having possessed the body of Richard, the Master visits the White Rabbit with Violet who recounts the events of Forgotten which took place the day before.


 * Richard and Violet walk home from the pub together, when Richard's eyes glow green revealing that he had been possessed by the Master the whole time. (PROSE: Forgotten)

Reaching the end

 * AUDIO: Mastermind
 * Following on from Forgotten, the Master survives by possessing various bodies until he is imprisoned in the UNIT Vault. Upon hypnotising UNIT officers Ruth Matheson and Charlie Sato, the Master retrieves his TARDIS and escapes from the Vault.


 * AUDIO: I Am The Master
 * Set after The Keeper of Traken. The Master has his TARDIS and recalls stealing multiple bodies, setting this after Mastermind. The Master spends several centuries ruling the Gloxian Empire.


 * AUDIO: Masterful
 * The "Decayed" Master recognises the "Bruce" incarnation as one of his past bodies, setting this after Mastermind, and claims to have spent "millennia" in his decayed body.


 * AUDIO: Planet of Dust
 * Dying and at the end of his life, the Master recalls his time trapped in the Eye of Harmony and how he was drawn back in after his escape in Bruce's body, until he found a way to escape permanently, setting this after Mastermind. He is killed by the Ravenous, leading directly into Day of the Master.


 * AUDIO: Day of the Master
 * The "Deathworm" Master is resurrected by the "Bruce" Master, the "War" Master and Missy, posing as CIA agents, who use CIA technology to grant him a whole new regeneration cycle. He regenerates into a new body, implied to the "Bald" Master.


 * Next page: Fourteenth Master

Currently unplaced

 * These entries are placed here due to being part of ongoing storylines that have yet to offer sufficient enough evidence to be placed in a specific part of this Master's timeline, unless further evidence arises in the stories to come.

Awaiting placement

 * These entries are placed here until a suitable position in the timeline can be determined based on the available evidence.


 * PROSE: The Eight Doctors
 * Directly after Doctor Who, the Master's voice can be heard mocking the Doctor after he springs “one final trap" left in the TARDIS.


 * NOTVALID: The Comic Assassins Meet The Deadly Assassin