Characters / Doctor Who – Revival Series Masters

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The War Master (a.k.a. the "Yana" Master) (Tenth Doctor)

• Absent-Minded Professor: Apparently a life-long trait of Yana's. 
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Oh boy, is this in effect here. Yana is a genuinely kind person, unlike his utterly ruthless true self.
• Amnesiacs Are Innocent: When he didn't remember who he was, Professor Yana was a very decent Nice Guy, eager to help humanity. Once he got his memories back, he went full villain-mode the moment he remembered.
• Beard of Evil: During the Time War, keeping with some of his other incarnations. It's gone by the time he becomes "Professor Yana" and is still absent when he awakens.
• Breakout Villain: He only appears for about five minutes towards the end of "Utopia", but Jacobi left such an impression with his portrayal that this Master ended up getting his own Big Finish series with him as the Villain Protagonist.
• Cool Old Guy: Well, at first...
• Ditzy Genius: The Doctor is amazed that the Professor managed to cobble together a working system for a gravity footprint accelerator, built using a type of science that even he barely understands, all out of "food and string and staples".
• Dog-Kicking Excuse: He was already sabotaging Yana's lifetime of work within seconds of restoring himself, and clearly planned to kill Chantho. Her drawing a gun on him just gives him all the excuse he needs to say it was self-defense.
• Even Evil Has Standards: We officially learn how bad the Time War was by this Master's actions. The Time Lords brought him back to fight in the war, but the violence in the Time War was too much chaos for even the Master to take. And, so we're clear, the Master would be the first to pour gasoline over an innocent person and set them on fire just for the fun of it. When even he finds something too chaotic to take, we know it's bad.
• Evil Counterpart: While the War Doctor is at the heart of the Time War, desperately trying to stop it without endangering innocents, the War Master is trying to selfishly use the chaos of the conflict for his own ends.
• Evil Is Hammy: You can tell Jacobi is trying to make the most of his screen time.
• Evil Old Folks: This Master appears quite elderly by human standards.
• Fun with Acronyms: YANA = You Are Not Alone.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The Time Lords brought him back to fight on their side; it backfires horribly as he goes rogue and then goes AWOL when the conflict gets too much even for him.
• Good Counterpart: Yana is a thoroughly decent man dedicated to saving humanity, who's only mildly annoyed his genius didn't get some recognition, as opposed to the self-centred, power-hungry and insane Master.
• Hand Wave: He simply states that the Time Lords resurrected him to fight in the Time War, smoothing over both his death in the TV movie and the various contradictory events that happened afterward in the Expanded Universe.
• Holding Hands: With the Doctor, adorably.
• Kill the Cutie: Alas, poor Chantho. She got her revenge, but what with him being a Time Lord...
• Mirror Character: Yana is one to the Doctor when first introduced. He's a super genius with a nickname denoting an academic rank who has a cute female companion assisting him, and who uses his intelligence for the betterment of others. He and the Doctor naturally get along quite well, at least until he regains his memories.
• Near-Villain Victory: He almost killed the Doctor within about a minute of his true identity reasserting itself, while grabbing a useful tool in case the Doctor managed to somehow survive and follow him. The Doctor would have almost certainly been torn apart if it hadn't been for Jack's vortex manipulator, which the Master could not have known about.
• Nice Guy: As the Professor he was friendly to everyone and genuinely wanted to do good.
• Offing the Annoyance: In another nasty parallel to the Doctor. As "John Smith", the Doctor had enough residual awareness to accept Martha as part of his backstory. What little was left of the Master inside Yana despised Chan-tho, partly for never asking about the watch, but also for her Verbal Tic. First chance he gets, he kills her.
  Master: And you, with your "chan" and your "tho", driving me insane!
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He's annoyed by the idea of being killed by "a girl", but "insect" also counts as speciesist since the girl in question was an actual alien insect.
• Predecessor Villain: To the Saxon Master in Series 3, as the incarnation that immediately preceded him.
• The Professor: Yana admits it's an affectation, and that by the year one hundred trillion there hasn't been a university in over a thousand years. But he is definitely a genius, no question about it. This makes for a very interesting parallel to the Doctor, for Ace called his Seventh incarnation "Professor", to say nothing about the Doctor's legendarily awful schoolwork.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: (whispered) "I... am... the Master."
• Resurrected for a Job: The Time Lords brought him back to life complete with a new regeneration cycle to fight in the Time War. It backfired horribly; even he was scared stiff of the magnitude of the conflict, to the point that he fled to the end of time and used a Chameleon Arch to disguise himself just to hide from it all. Notably, however, the Time Lords did follow his example, ultimately deciding to end the universe rather than admit defeat.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Master's malicious personality was sealed in his fob watch as a result of the Chameleon Arch, leaving him in a new identity as Professor Yana.
• Terrible Ticking: The drums in his head, getting louder and louder with every passing moment.
• That Man Is Dead: "That is NOT my name! 'The Professor' was an invention."
• There Is Another: He appeared at a time when the Doctor thought he was the last of the Time Lords.
• Tomato in the Mirror:
  The Chameleon Arch: The drums, the drums, the never ending drum beat. Open me, you human fool, open the light, summon me and receive my majesty!
• Transformation Sequence:
  • Professor Yana's panicky fear and awe giving way to the cold, monstrous Master is just as dramatic, but told almost entirely in Jacobi's facial expressions.
  • While his regeneration is depicted in the same manner as the Doctor's in the revived series, it's shown to be more violent and psychedelic, with purples and greens instead of the Doctor's gold. Likewise, while the Doctor usually accepts the pain with grace (with the exception of Eight), the Master simply screams throughout the process.
• Villain Protagonist: Of his own Big Finish boxset no less.
• Waistcoat of Style: Invoked by RTD, who insisted he dress like this.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: "Killed by an insect... a girl. How inappropriate."
• White Sheep: Yana in comparison to the Masters.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: Shows a glimpse into what the Master could be if he renounced his villainous ways. Yana almost singlehandedly created a rocket that gave a chance for the last remnants of the human race to survive, all the while creating tech out of scraps and food remnants that even the Doctor finds astonishing.

The "Harold Saxon" Master (Tenth and Twelfth Doctors)

^{Click here to see his second appearance}

^{Click here to see his third appearance}

John Simm's Master is the second incarnation of the character to debut on the new series, and the first one to be the Big Bad in a season finale. A bouncy troll with a passion for pop music, utter decadence and beating his wife. Came Back Wrong in his second appearance, and eventually redeemed himself just a little bit when confronted with the Wrath of Rassilon. This Master enjoyed toying with his victims, and found that driving people to madness worked just as well as hypnosis, as with his companion-turned-wife, Lucy Saxon.

Also possibly one of the few Time Lords to have ever killed Rassilon and, more importantly, lived to tell the tale.

• 0% Approval Rating: Due to his tendency to act like The Caligula every time he conquers something. The Doctor and Martha's plan to defeat him in the Series 3 finale hinged on how badly everybody wanted him gone. In Series 10, when his TARDIS crashed into the Mondas settler ship, he naturally conquered the lower city... only for the people to rebel, forcing him to disguise himself since his TARDIS was damaged and they’d probably kill him otherwise.
• I Always Wanted to Say That: He's thrilled when he gets to say "So, we meet at last, Doctor!" again.
• Ambiguously Bi: While this Master is unambiguously attracted to women, having a passionate, albeit abusive relationship with his wife Lucy, and later hitting on Missy, the subtext between him and the Tenth Doctor could fill a book, with the Master half-jokingly asking if the Doctor was asking him out on a date and, later, somberly reflecting on a time when he and the Doctor were the best of friends.
• Ambition Is Evil: When he first arrives on Earth, he quickly takes over the UK, and then takes over the world and then sets his sights on conquering the entire universe. After his resurrection, he's at first only concerned with keeping himself alive, but soon devises and carries out a plan to turn every human being on Earth into a copy of himself.
• The Antichrist: In "The End of Time" — his resurrection by a shadowy cult is heralded by the entire human species having nightmares.
• Arch-Enemy: To the Tenth Doctor, being an especially personal enemy and built up as his Evil Counterpart. While this is par the course for the Master, but this Master is especially vicious in his hatred for the Doctor, up to killing himself twice (and Immortals Fear Death is in full effect here) out of sheer spite. Basically the only time he's actually unambiguously helped the Doctor was his Heroic Sacrifice at "The End of Time" - and even then, he had just as much reason to despise Rassilon and the Time Lords.
• Armchair Military: When the Toclafane invade, he directs them to swarm the Earth and massacre the population from the safety of the Valiant, his Airborne Aircraft Carrier in the sky. During the Year That Never Was, he controls the world with all the armies of the Earth and the Toclafane, but he rarely leaves the Valiant. A civilian says that he "never walks upon the ground".
• Assimilation Plot: Hijacking the Immortality Gate lets him turn most of humanity into duplicates of himself.
  The Master: Breaking news... I'm everyone. And everyone in the world is me!
• Ax-Crazy: While the Master always had a few screws loose, Saxon is certifiably unhinged. In "The End of Time", he pretty much loses all the screws.
  Missy: Oh, the way you burned. Like a sun — like a whole screaming world on fire.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: In Series 3, he almost always wears a suit, and you don't want to cross him.
• Bad Boss: One of the first things he does once elected Prime Minister is to gas his cabinet to death for little reason. He also abuses Lucy, his wife and accomplice, during his reign.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Played with in "The Last of the Time Lords". While the Doctor and his allies managed to defeat him and undo all his plans, he does have one victory over the Doctor when Lucy shoots him, and the Master refuses to regenerate despite the Doctor's pleading. Even he is surprised about it.
  The Master, dying in the Doctor's arms: "How about that? ...I win."
• Bad Samaritan: According to Lucy, the Master was very kind to her family, which makes it hard for her to think badly of him. Granted, given that she was aware of who he was by the time she said this, she might have been lying to and acting like he fooled her to get Vivien Rook's guard down.
• Beard of Evil: Averted in Series 3 and subsequent Tennant-era specials (unless one counts Perma-Stubble in the latter), to the point that the Tenth Doctor jokes about Lucy being his only beard in "Time Crash". A classic Delgado/Ainley-era goatee makes its return in Series 10.
• Beneath the Mask: Behind the Faux Affably Evil Laughably Evil act is a man who is both monstrous and suffering. 
• Berserk Button: Not obeying him. He breaks his cool and yells at the Doctor when the Doctor doesn't run as soon as the Master commands him to, and has quite the Villainous Breakdown when everyone on Earth starts helping the Doctor against him. He frequently yells variations of "You will obey me!" when things don't go his way.
• The Berserker: In battle, Simm's Master is consistently shown to be absolutely savage and ruthless, especially after he Came Back Wrong as a cannibalistic monster. Even after regaining his composure by the time of his return in Series 10, traces of his "Time War mode" seep through when he coordinates a Combined Energy Attack against a Cyberman.
  The Master: KILL IT! KILL IT! KILL IT!
• Beware the Silly Ones: Particularly in his first couple episodes, he goofs around, makes silly chit-chat, and dances to pop music. He's also one of the most dangerous beings in the universe, who gets farther than anyone else in devastating the Earth.
• Big Bad: He is the main villain of Series 3, getting elected Prime Minister as Harold Saxon and successfully taking over the world in the finale.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Partners with his own future regeneration in Series 10 finale.
• Big Bad Wannabe:
  • He is almost the Big Bad of "The End of Time", and even successfully turns almost all of humanity into himself. However, he is only a pawn to Rassilon, who undoes his work as soon as he arrives.
  • After being the Big Bad for "World Enough and Time" in Series 10, the Master is, by the next episode, forced into an Enemy Mine with the Doctor in order to survive the onslaught of the Cybermen he helped create.
• Big "NO!": When the Doctor is restored to normality in "Last of the Time Lords", he shouts this in panic.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When he takes over Britain as the PM, he seems like an eccentric but loveable leader. In reality he's an egomaniac who wants to grind the Earth into dust under his reign. At first, only those not influenced by the Archangel Network can see through the facade, but he soon reveals himself for what he really is to the world when he murders the President and unleashes the Toclafane.
• Board to Death: His first act as PM is to gas his entire Cabinet to death (after mocking and insulting them to their faces).
• Bookends: His last incarnation regenerated into him when he was shot by a girl, and was then seemingly killed by his wife. This incarnation would ultimately be Killed Off for Real when his future incarnation, also a woman, stabbed him.
• Bound and Gagged: He gets straitjacketed, collared and strapped to a Hannibal-style roller chair in "The End of Time".
• Breakout Villain: This Master is a confirmed fan-favourite, which may have contributed to his return in Series 10 in a multiple Master special.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He has a genius intellect on the same level as the Doctor himself, and uses it to take over the Earth. Once he has control, he's content to lounge around and have idle fun in his airborne lair.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Subverted. At first, it seems like his actions in public office have given the people of Britain enough faith in him to elect him Prime Minister, despite his obvious eccentric side (such as he displays in his conversation with President Winter). But then the Doctor figures out that, because of the Archangel Network, most of them don't have a choice, and that the Master has cheated his way to the top the whole time.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After being cremated and his ring being found by one of his cultists, the Master made a return in the 2009 Specials after being MIA in Series 4.
  • This incarnation came back in the first onscreen multi-Master story in Series 10.
• The Caligula: He was already insane to begin with, and making him Prime Minister put him into President Evil territory. But once he forcefully takes over the world, he becomes this: massacring humanity and ravaging the Earth just for the fun of it, dedicating his time to playing cruel games with his prisoners, and forcing his subjects to listen to his favourite pop music. In fact, John Simm based his portrayal of the Master on Caligula himself, having played him in another TV series.
  The Master: (upon conquering Earth) Shall we decimate them? That sounds good, nice word, "decimate". Remove one-tenth of the population!
• Came Back Wrong: Lucy Saxon interrupts the resurrection process in "The End of Time", resulting in louder drums, Horror Hunger, lightning powers, and a rapidly dying body. Oh, and it turned his hair blond. Apparently fixed by the time of his appearance in Series 10.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: When he threatens to blow up his fleet of rockets and destroy the Earth with him and The Doctor on it, The Doctor says he knows the one thing The Master could ever do is kill himself. Though he later refuses to regenerate after being shot so he won't have to spend the rest of his lives as The Doctor's prisoner.
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Watches Teletubbies and remarks that Earth is an amazing planet where creatures can evolve with televisions in their stomachs.
• Cast from Lifespan: The one drawback to his Darth Sidious powers in "The End of Time": using them accelerates the death of an already damaged body.
• Catchphrase: "It's good, isn't it? Isn't it good?" and "Oh no, you don't!"
• Character Check:
  • This incarnation's first appearance harkens back to the original/Delgado Master by not having a decaying body, pulling a Grand Theft Me, or having any worries about his mortality, and being only concerned with evil and power, unlike the previous incarnations from Pratt onward. In his second appearance, after his resurrection, he again has a decaying body.
  • The unexplained Lovecraftian Superpowers he had in the TV movie are also never brought up.
• The Chessmaster: He was responsible for nearly everything happening in Series 3 of the revival, and had carefully implemented every plan to build up towards his grand moment in "The Sound of Drums".
• Clint Squint: He squints his eyes a lot, as part of his generally over-the-top facial expressions.
• Clone by Conversion: He hijacks a piece of alien techonology and uses it to transform every human being into a copy of him. The only ones spared (that we see) are Wilf and Donna, because Wilf was with the Doctor and Donna is, technically, only half-human.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: When posing as Harold Saxon, he acts humorously oblivious and off in his own little world, as shown by his interactions with the Cabinet and the US President. Part of it is an act, and part of it isn't: when he reveals himself as a bloodthirsty villain, he acts much more competent and aware, but still has some of his silly habits.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The aging process he inflicts on the Doctor is clearly extremely painful, which he does while standing and talking calmly to him.
• Comical Angry Face: Invoked by the Master when he explains to his Cabinet the difference between "funny" and "not funny". A smile is "funny" whilst the angry face is "not funny".
• Compelling Voice: How he managed to get himself elected Prime Minister.
• Conqueror from the Future: He puts his own spin on it by conquering humanity using their own descendants. He has to construct a Paradox Machine to stop his army from cancelling itself out.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • His immediate precessor, the Yana Master, was a cold, menacing figure who spoke with tremendous hatred and gravitas. The Saxon Master is much more lively, animated, and emotional with a Faux Affably Evil demeanour, a taste for theatrics, and moments of introspection.
  • The new series' previous season finales featured the Daleks and the Cybermen, both of which were species of identical cyborgs with almost no emotions or personalities, and both had straightforward plans of outright invading and conquering the Earth. Then came this Master, who was a human-looking individual villain that often acted silly and had plenty of personality, and his plan involved a much more stealthy and subtle infiltration of Earth. (Although, interestingly enough, part of his plan involved using the Toclafane, who were a species of identical cyborgs. Although even then, they had much more personality than their predecessors.)
• The Corrupter: He persuades Martha's family to betray her and the Doctor through making them think that they were doing it for Martha's safety, he recruits Lucy Saxon (and later breaks her spirit), uses mild mind control to make the whole country elect him, then had them hunt down the Doctor, Martha, and Jack for no legal reasons, blackmails Professor Docherty into betraying Martha by holding her son prisoner, and while he wasn't directly behind humanity's transformation into the Toclafane, he is implied to have had a hand in arranging it and he definitely used it to his advantage. After his death, he even has a cult entirely devoted to him.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: The Doctor believed his talk of "drumming" was a symptom of insanity — until he heard the drumming in his head for himself. The Master was close to tears when he realized that the drumming that had tormented him for centuries was real.
• Deadpan Snarker: Can be VERY sarcastic at times.
• Demoted to Dragon: In the "He will knock four times" arc, after it's revealed that he has been tricked into working for Rassilon.
• Depending on the Writer: Under Russell T Davies, he's extremely Axe-Crazy, sexually predatory, and obsessive, talking about the sound of drums implanted in his head by the Time Lords. His story implied this was the reason for his initial insanity. When picked up again by Steven Moffat, he becomes a more composed and ironic individual with a personality much closer to the original Delgado incarnation, even dressing in that character's iconic standup collar/goatee/widow's-peak/eyeliner combo, and being the butt of a joke about this. His sexuality also comes off as pathetic and nerdy rather than attractive, as he attempts to hit on his future self and gets rejected. The drumming is never mentioned, though it remains in his Leitmotif. However, he remains very much misogynistic to the core, and is less... caring than his next regeneration. One might assume that after the Time War, The Drums were no longer pounding in his head, which likely did wonders for his mental health.
• Devil in Plain Sight: It's obvious to the audience, even if they didn't know that he was the Master, that something is off with Harold Saxon, what with his bizarre mannerisms and barely-disquised contempt for others. But almost everyone adores him regardless (granted, they are being mentally influenced by the Master's hypnotic network).
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Lampshaded. "Dying in your arms... happy now?" To no-one's surprise, it didn't stick.
• Domestic Abuser: Lucy has bruises in "Last of the Time Lords", implying this. Him taking her to the end of the universe to break her spirit strongly implies no small amount of emotional and psychological abuse as well; by the end of the episode, she guns him down with a deadened look on her face, a testament to how much damage the Master had done to her.
• The Dreaded: The look on the Doctor's face when he finds out who he is says it all. The peoples of Earth soon learn to fear the very mention of his name.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means: Earth under the Master's rule is turned into a total hellhole, and is effectively closed off to other spacefaring races. Worse, he plans on creating a "New Time Lord Empire" with rockets fitted with black hole converters to begin his universal conquest.
• Emperor Scientist: He takes over the world using a low-level brainwashing field and an army he brought from the future, and rules from a flying fortress that he designed himself.
• Establishing Character Moment: While it's not the first we've seen of him, as he had a scene at the end of "Utopia", his first personal scene in "The Sound of Drums" sees him meet with his cabinet. He goes from serious, to silly, to vicious, to silly and murderous as he slaughters the entire cabinet while mocking them. And then, once they're dead, he begins to tap on the table, one-two one-two, drumming out the Terrible Ticking in his head. This scene neatly sums up most of his character.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In "The Doctor Falls", he is disgusted by Missy's newfound kindness towards the Doctor, so much so that he tries to kill her for good because he can't stand the thought of himself becoming at all sympathetic.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • He has the Tenth Doctor's youth, off-the-wall energy and love of Earth pop culture — and gears it all towards causing as much misery as possible. He even pinches Four's fondness for jelly babies and Three's red-lined jacket.
  • Additionally, with his bleached-blond hair, scruffy appearance, casual clothing, gaining strange powers that will kill him over time, and being separated from the Doctor through a portal, it's hard to believe that his appearance in "The End of Time" isn't meant to evoke Rose Tyler. We weren't kidding about the Foe Yay.
  • And then, in an unusual twist, he ends up being this to Missy, his future self, in "The Doctor Falls".
• Evil Genius: His intelligence rivals the Doctor's, such that he is able to build a hypnotic network to control the world, and convert the TARDIS into a paradox machine.
• Evil Gloating: While he makes an effort at first to be more of a No-Nonsense Nemesis, he ultimately simply cannot help himself and eventually falls back hard on old habits. He ends up keeping the Doctor alive and captive so he can basically do this for an entire year simply so he has someone to brag to about how great his plan is.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humour: In contrast to Ten's outlandish personality, this Master really enjoys his work. Especially shown with his literal decimation of Earth's population set to "Voodoo Child".
• Evil Is Hammy: He's extremely hammy, playing it up as much as he can. Probably best shown when he sings along to a Scissor Sisters song while dancing.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Joshua Naismith thought he could use the Master to achieve his desire to make his precious daughter immortal. The Master cheerfully played along until he could use Naismith's plans for his own benefit, with Naismith and his daughter being among the billions converted into "the Master Race". To his credit, Naismith tried his best to avert this trope, restraining the Master and refusing to so much as touch the Master's work without having it checked, but, of course, the Master was way ahead of him.
• Evil Is Petty: Takes time out of world domination to fit in some domestic abuse, casual sexism, racism and homophobia and psychological torture of the Doctor. He's probably the most spiteful version of the Master, willingly screwing himself over to get one up on the Doctor on two separate occasions. He even refused to regenerate to spite the Doctor, then shot his own future self in the back to prevent her from joining the Doctor against the Cybermen.
• Evil Laugh: To the point of becoming The Hyena at times.
• Evil Overlord: Rules Earth with an iron fist during The Year That Never Was.
• Expy: In addition to him being an example of The Caligula trope, John Simm said that he partially based his performance as the Master on his own earlier portrayal of the actual Roman emperor in a TV miniseries.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: He has the face of a handsome, fun-loving man, but in reality he's an inhuman (in all senses of the word) sadist and killer.
• Fake Russian: In-Universe while posing as Mr. Razor in "World Enough and Time", just to screw around with Bill.
• Fantastic Racism: He calls Jack and (post-metacrisis) Donna "freaks". He's also very cold towards humans in general, referring to them as "stunted little apes" and the "stupid, stinking human disgrace".
• Fashionable Asymmetry: His Series 10 Badass Longcoat has some funky-looking lapels◊.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Master considers permanent death preferable to being imprisoned by the Doctor, hence why he refuses to regenerate after getting shot.
  The Doctor: [begging] Regenerate, just regenerate! Please, please! Just regenerate! Come on—
  The Master: And spend... the rest of my life, imprisoned, with you!?
• Faux Affably Evil: Simm's Master practically made it an art form. One moment he could be dancing around, listening to something like "Voodoo Child", and the very next moment, go back to the cold-hearted bastard that is the Master. Best seen in his 2017 return, where he kills Missy for good just out of spite, all while pretending to be okay with dying.
• Fisher King: Under his rule, the Earth changes drastically, and not for the better.
  Martha Jones: "I travelled across the world — from the ruins of New York to the fusion mills of China, right across the radiation pits of Europe; and everywhere I went I saw people just like you, living as slaves."
• Foil:
  • He's very similar to the Tenth Doctor in many ways, from his intelligence and charisma to his fondness for blonde human companions, but while Ten's ego is tempered by his care for others, this Master is a sadistic Narcissist.
  • He's also one for Martha Jones in Series 3: While Martha accepted that the Doctor would never love her the way she loved him, and left to live her own life. The Master, by contrast, has such a bloated ego that he demands the Doctor's attention in their twisted love/hate relationship. While Martha left the Doctor for herself, the Master let himself die just to devastate the Doctor and gain his attention one last time.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • His presence on present-day Earth before the Series 3 finale means Professor Yana will become the Master again, regenerate, and travel back from the end of the universe.
  • We don't see him return for the third and final time until after he's changed into Missy. That guarantees he's going to die when he comes back. We also don't see him regenerate, but we know he will.
• Foreshadowing: "Harold Saxon" sounds way too awesome for a British person, who would have to be extraordinarily lucky to have both the group modern Brits are descended from, and the last Anglo-Saxon king in his name. While it isn't entirely unrealistic, it sounds more like an outsider trying way too hard to appear as a British person.
• For the Evulz: Most of his actions are simply because he is a sadistic monster.
• Freudian Excuse: When he looked into the Untempered Schism as a child, the double heartbeat of the Time Lords, a sound like constant drums, was put forever into his head, driving him to madness. He later finds out that Rassilon did it to him on purpose as a plan to escape the Time War, leading him to seek swift vengeance on the Time Lord President.
• Friendly Enemy: Averted; while previous incarnations (as long as they weren't stuck in a decaying body) were friendly or showed a desire to reconcile with the Doctor (as long as he joined him), this one has no affection for the Doctor; it's especially heartbreaking during Ten's era since at that point they were the only two Time Lords left, but not even that could mitigate this Master's hatred of his old friend — much to Ten's sorrow. Twelve (who no longer suffers Survivor's Guilt due to the events of "The Day of the Doctor"), however, has nothing but contempt for this incarnation, and the feeling is mutual. When Missy decides to stand with the Doctor for friendship's sake, he kills her permanently — that's how much this Master hates the Doctor, he'd put aside his fear of death (every Master's most defining trait) rather than stand with his old friend.
  The Master: I will never stand with the Doctor!
• Future Me Scares Me: Simm's Master, upon revealing himself to Missy, states he's worried about his future, seeing her go soft after a Heel–Face Turn.
• Gas Leak Cover-Up: Officially, Harold Saxon went "mad" and was removed from office. Due to the paradox machine being reversed, only Lucy, the Doctor, Martha's family, Jack, and others on the Valiant remember the events of the Master's year in power.
• Genius Sweet Tooth: What is it with Time Lords and jelly babies? (This was intentional — this Master was designed to co-opt many of the Doctor's traits, after all, the better to disturb the Doctor.)
• Girl-on-Girl is Hot: He says that his wife and his masseuse "getting to know each other" would be "fun".
• Glamour Failure: After he comes back wrong, his flesh sometimes disappears for a split-second at a time, exposing a glowing skull.
• Glorious Leader: Swept into office thanks to a subtle brainwashing signal, at which point he takes over the world and tells his citizens to "rejoice!"
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • For Series 3, up until the finale.
  • In Series 10 it's revealed he played a role in the creation of the Mondasian Cybermen, or at least the ones on board the Exodus colony ship.
• Guyliner: In "The Doctor Falls", he practices putting on eyeliner in preparation for becoming a woman.
• Hated by All: It really says something when even your own future self comes to view you with contempt.
• The Heavy: In "The End of Time". Rassilon is the Big Bad, but it's the Master, as his Unwitting Pawn, who drives the plot until Rassilon's machinations come to fruition.
• Hidden Depths:
  • In "The End of Time", when the Doctor asks how many people the Master has killed, the Master stops dead with a troubled look on his face, as if he's trying to come up with an answer to the Doctor's question, implying that the number of bodies in his wake may, on some level, affect the Master more than he lets on.
  • Despite his loathing for the Doctor and cruel treatment of him, there are times when the Master seems to recall his onetime fondness for his old friend, although such reflections never manage to overcome his hatred for the Doctor. In "The End of Time", the Master reflects on his childhood alongside the Doctor, somberly reflecting on a time when the two were best friends before mournfully remarking "look at us now", showing a hint of regret over how much their paths had diverged. Later, when the Doctor makes a heartfelt offer to have the Master travel with him throughout the universe, the Master seems almost tempted to accept before carrying on with his plans.
  • In "The Doctor Falls", although he callously shrugs it off afterwards and leaves to save his own skin, the Master's expression and body language show that, despite his claims to the contrary, the Doctor's desperate speech about taking a stand simply to be kind and because it's the right thing to do did strike a chord with him, even if his selfishness and sense of self-preservation ultimately won out. Its possible however, that the Doctor's words are what helped his next incarnation make her eventual Heel–Face Turn
• Hidden Villain: For series 3 and in "World Enough and Time", he's using a fake identity and his plans are unknown until the end.
• Hijacked by Ganon:
  • On the receiving end in "The End of Time" courtesy of Rassilon, who dismisses and undoes his plans with a literal flick of his wrist.
  • Returns after an absence of seven years as the Big Bad in Series 10, though the Cybermen are the last ones standing.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Twice. The first time, he's killed by the woman he romanced into being his wife because he thoroughly abused her and completely destroyed her outlook on life. Then he's killed by one of his own incarnations because, although she says she loved being him, she knows he'd never stand for her joining the Doctor — but he is so adamant about that very point he kills her back before she can do it.
• Horror Hunger: In "The End of Time", he Came Back Wrong and started eating more or less everything made of meat that he ran across. Including humans.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: In his first appearance, he became the beloved Prime Minister of Britain, and then took over the entire world and ruled on high for a whole year. In his second appearance, he's forced to roam England as a homeless thing with a broken body. He soon gets another upper hand, though, as weasels his way into using a billionaire's technology to assimilate everyone on the planet.
  • Again in Series 10. It's implied he was in charge of the lower decks/cities of the lower deck(s) and then botched things that badly he was forced into an elaborate disguise.
• Humanoid Abomination: Upon his resurrection in "The End of Time". His return is even heralded by portentous nightmares that afflict the entire human race.
• Human Sacrifice: He has devoted followers on Earth. They are willing to give their lives to restore his.
• Humans Are Bastards: He claims this, and points to the Toclafane as evidence. "The human race. Greatest monsters of them all."
• Hypocrite: During his first cabinet meeting as PM, he berates all his cabinet members for betraying their own parties, and rewards them appropriately. This despite the fact that he has no remorse about having betrayed his own people and his former best friend in the past. Nor even the implication that his Cabinet Members defected in part of the influence of his Archangel Network, meaning The Master is punishing them for doing what he brainwashed them to do in the first place.
  • Arguably one towards his own future self. Despite having spared the Doctor's life when attacking Rassilon, he still murders Missy in order to prevent her standing with the Doctor.
• Hypocritical Humour: When the Doctor takes out a security camera, the Master refers to him as a "public menace", complete with mocking faux-outrage. Remember, this is while he's taking over Britain via brainwashing so he can devastate the Earth and slaughter its inhabitants.
• Immortals Fear Death: At the end of "Last of the Time Lords", the Doctor calls his bluff on destroying the Earth with both of them still on it for this exact reason.
• Incoming Ham: His intro at the end of "Utopia". Seconds after regenerating, he cheers and dances about the TARDIS.
• In Love with Your Carnage: He was already obsessed with the Doctor, but he's very intrigued when he learns how the Time War ended. "What did it feel like, though? Two almighty civilizations, burning — ooh, tell me, how did that feel?"
• Interim Villain: The only non-Dalek Big Bad of the revival's first four years.
• Internal Homage:
  • As much as this incarnation mirrors the Tenth Doctor — invoked intentionally by the Master, who openly covets Ten's youth — he owes as much to the Third Doctor. Like Three, the Master finds himself stranded on Earth with a non-functional TARDIS. Like Three, he bides his time by tinkering with machines and working alongside Earth governments toward his own stated goal of getting off that rock. (Professor Yana built a rocket, Harold Saxon builds an airship.) His jacket even has a red inner lining.
  • His appearance in "World Enough and Time" is a homage to the Roger Delgado/"Tremas" incarnations, regrowing the goatee and wearing a long black coat. The colouring scheme is one meant to invoke the Twelfth Doctor's, with dark red lines on the inside of the coat.
• In the Hood: Wears a hooded sweatshirt for the entirety of "The End of Time", though he only wears the hood over his face twice.
• Ironic Name: As mentioned above in Foreshadowing: his name "Harold Saxon" invokes not only the inherited ethnicity of the inhabitants of the island of Britain (i.e. the Anglo-Saxons), he also shares the name with Harold Godwinson, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Harold Godwinson is now mostly characterized in history as a Tragic Hero defending the nation from foreign invaders. "Harold Saxon," by contrast, is the foreign invader.
• Irony: Like his previous incarnation, he complains after having been killed by a woman. Well, not only is his next incarnation a woman, but she is the very same person who stabs him and causes him to regenerate into her. And the incarnation after that is constantly thwarted by the Thirteenth Doctor, a woman.
• It Amused Me: He often finds doing evil to be quite fun and funny.
• It's All About Me: The reason the Doctor can initially defeat him is because he knows the Master can't destroy the world without killing himself, which is the one thing he can't do. Taken to a new level when he turns the entire human race into copies of himself — and assumes the Doctor's prophecy refers exclusively to him.
  The Master: That's what your prophecy was, Doctor! ME!
• Jabba Table Manners:
  • In "Last of the Time Lords", he sips the tea that Martha's mother made for him, only to sloppily spit it back out, pour the rest on the table, and smash the cup, presumably because it wasn't quite to his liking.
  • While suffering from his Horror Hunger, he eats like a savage animal.
• Jerkass: Only the Peter Pratt incarnation is just as nasty, and even that version of the character wasn't as petty and needlessly cruel as this Master, who has the added "bonus" of being a Politically Incorrect Villain to boot.
• Just Between You and Me: Defied. Shortly after regenerating, he notices that he feels tempted to tell the Doctor about his plans, but quickly decides that he should try to keep them to himself for once. True to form for the Master, however, his ego and vanity eventually does get the better of him, making him play it straight later, taking time to explain his involvement with several of the problems the Doctor has had to deal with throughout Series 3, but only because he thinks he has really won this time.
• Kick the Dog: He takes great pleasure in mistreating the Doctor, Martha's family, Jack, and Lucy during the Year That Never Was.
• Knight of Cerebus: His debut journeys into territory strikingly darker than Doctor Who tends to go. He slaughters a tenth of all humanity, turns the Earth into a brutal nightmarish Crapsack World (though it all gets undone later), and tortures and traumatizes the Doctor's human friends for a year. He also introduces the Toclafane: the last of humanity, reduced to childishly sadistic murderous cyborgs, who go back in time to kill their own ancestors. They're one of the bleakest concepts put to script in the entire show.
• Lack of Empathy: In stark contrast to the Doctor's All-Loving Hero status, this Master doesn't care about the emotions or needs of anyone besides himself.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The shamelessly misogynist Saxon Master meets both his (temporary, of course) death and the wound that ensures his regeneration at the hands of women. Even better, said temporary death was courtesy of the Master's own abused wife, while the regeneration-inducing wound was the work of his own future female incarnation.
• Latex Perfection: His "Mr. Razor" mask. You'll never see it coming.
• Laughably Evil: Zig-zagged. Initially, he's hilarious, Joker-style. Look at the hammy way John Simm delivers his lines when he's gassing the Cabinet ministers to death. After the Toclafane appear, though, you just hate him too much to laugh. Then when he returns in "The End of Time" he becomes so over-the-top he's hard to take seriously at all, shouting "DINNER TIME!" while devouring people and having conversations with himself after turning every human into him.
• Leitmotif: Four quarter notes to imitate the drumbeats that drove him mad. The full theme is "The Master Vainglorious", and is about as psychotic and gleefully evil-sounding as you'd expect.
• Light Is Not Good: In "The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords", he's Faux Affably Evil, presents himself as a kindly leader, is always making jokes, eats jelly babies, watches Teletubbies, and dances to pop music.
  • In "The End of Time", while he's more vicious, his hair is now blond, his resurrection is accompanied by a great light, and his powers manifest as shooting lightning.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: He goes to great lengths to preserve his own life, and it's because of this trope that the Doctor called his bluff in series 3.
  "Never dying! Never dying! NEVER DYING!"
• The Mad Hatter: In his first and second appearances, although not quite as insane as the Doctor thought — while he remains a homicidal maniac, the drums in his head turn out to have a very tangible origin. When he turns up for the last time, he's rather more calm and suave — though still an absolute dick.
• Madness Mantra: "The drums, the drums, the never-ending drumbeat..."
  • Also, briefly, "Never dying! Never dying! NEVER DYING!"
• Mad Scientist: He has shades of this, as he is both insane and able to develop technology far advanced of humanity.
• The Man Behind the Man: Is the one who financed Professor Lazarus and his experiments.
• The Man Behind the Monsters: He looks human, and in the Series 3 finale he commands the Toclafane, which are metallic floating spheres. It's actually an inversion though as the Master is a Human Alien and the Toclafane are future humans who mutilated themselves in order to survive.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: As Prime Minister, and later as dictator of the Earth, he gives himself the very best of clothes and luxuries. After his regeneration, this falls pretty low on his list of priorities, and he lives as a crazed hobo before finding some wealthy people to manipulate.
• Mask of Sanity: He wears one when he poses as Harold Saxon, although he still comes of as a Cloud Cuckoo Lander.
• Meaningful Name: "Mister Saxon" is an anagram for "Master No. Six", as he is the sixth incarnation of the Master to appear onscreen.^note  Maybe. Depending on how you count. It requires either counting the two versions of the Decayed Master as one character, or assuming Gordon Tipple is Ainley's incarnation recasted. And it certainly breaks down if you count the War Chief. Though according to Russell T Davies, this is just a coincidence.
• Meta Guy: If he's not deliberately subverting his own Villain Ball tendencies, he's lampshading them, or something else.
  • His first words to the Tenth Doctor:
    "Now then, Doctor, [...] why don't we stop and have a nice little chat where I tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me, I DON'T think!"
  • When he's pointing out that the Doctor and his friends' faces are all over the news:
    "No, seriously, you're on telly! You and your little band, which by the way is ticking every demographic box, so congratulations on that."
  • When he finally captures the Doctor:
    "We meet at last, Doctor! [laughs gleefully] Oh, I love saying that!"
  • When he starts the countdown for launching his invasion of the rest of the universe:
    "I never could resist a ticking clock!"
• AM/FM Characterization: He loves to blast music like Rogue Traders' "Voodoo Child" and Scissor Sisters' "I Can't Decide", showing both how much fun he finds his evil deeds and how, despite his vocal hatred of humans, he does like some parts of their culture, which is also reinforced by his interest in Teletubbies. Both songs also reflect his villain state as well, with "Voodoo Child" repeating the phrase "here come the drums", and "I Can't Decide" having lyrics meaningful to the Master and the Doctor's relationship.
• Malevolent Mugshot: Erects giant statues of himself across Earth during the Year that Never Was (and carves himself into Mount Rushmore, though we only hear about that).
• Mind Control: How he tricks the population of the UK into electing him Prime Minister.
• Motor Mouth: He has a tendency to talk very fast when he's particularly gleeful, smug, or manic.
• My Future Self and Me: The Series 10 two-part finale featured the first ever multi-Master TV story, with Simm's Master meeting his future incarnation, Missy.
• Narcissist: He has perhaps the most massive ego of all his incarnations thus far, as demonstrated by both his brief conquests of Earth. The first involved literal monuments to his vanity (see below), and as for the second... it's hard to get more narcissistic than turning an entire species into yourself. Nevertheless, he has a good go, being attracted to his future self who happens to be a woman.
• Nemesis Weapon: He trades in the TCE for a laser screwdriver, just to underline the whole evil counterpart thing. It can kill someone in a single shot, and also happens to be bigger than the Doctor's.
• New Era Speech: After being elected, ending with the following line:
  "In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what this country really needs, right now… is a Doctor."
• New Neo City: Henceforth, Earth will be known as New Gallifrey.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Saxon's strained relationship with President Winters — himself an analogue of George W. Bush — brings to mind Tony Blair as seen through a cracked mirror. Though Tony Blair was very well-liked and popular, by the time of his last Ministry, 2005-2007, he had suffered a severe drop in popularity and was seen by many as dishonest and sleazy. The Master exaggerates this being a beloved figure until elected, then immediately turning out rotten. Also, fun trivia: Simm supposedly based his performance on Russell T. Davies himself.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: This incarnation is particularly cunning, refusing to give the Doctor any clue about his plans until it's far too late. His methods are also notably efficient and simple: sic the police and MI5 on the Doctor, arrest Martha's family, and send Torchwood to Nepal. But he is ultimately still the Master though; despite his attempts to surpress it at first, it turns out that he is still the same old narcissist who craves the Doctor's validation at heart, so he simply cannot help himself and falls into the the old "keep them around to suffer" bit, but only when there's seemingly absolutely nothing they can do.
• Oh, Crap!: His expression when he finds out Martha and the Doctor's plan. Calling it this would be a colossal understatement.
• Omnicidal Maniac: After he conquers Earth, he has his human slaves build incredibly destructive rockets so he can "wage war on the universe". In "The End of Time" he plans to make every human and every Time Lord into just another copy of himself, effectively wiping out whoever they were before.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • During the Year that Never Was, he made Martha's family his servants, started physically abusing Lucy and suggested that she "get to know" one of his masseuses. Not to mention his reaction to spotting Martha and Jack...
    The Master: And look, it's the girly and the freak, although I'm not sure which one's which.
  • Also, his Nazi-esque pun after replacing every human on Earth with an imprint of himself.
    The Master: The human race was always your favourite, Doctor. But now, there is no human race. There is only... the Master race!
  • This continues into his return in "The Doctor Falls"; he keeps making very suggestive remarks to Missy — his future self, no less — and then laments the idea of a future being "all girl". Although unlike his behaviour towards Martha and her family, he does refrain from making any racist remarks about Bill.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: Definitely. He brings the Doctor to his knees and takes over the world for a year while expressing his love of the Scissor Sisters, Rogue Traders, and Teletubbies.
• Preemptive Declaration: Why is he wearing a gas mask during a cabinet meeting? Well, obviously, because of the gas.
  Albert: What "gas"?
  The Master: This gas.
• President Evil: He was Prime Minister Evil during the Year that Never Was, and manages to be President Evil of every country by "The End of Time", in Part One. "I'm president! President of the United States!"
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Alongside Bernard Cribbins for Ten's final story.
• Psycho Electro: He gains the ability to shoot lightning during "The End of Time" thanks to his sabotaged resurrection.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He giggles, makes faces, and dances around the room, all while taking over the world and ordering the annihilation of millions of people. Russell T. Davies, wondering what someone who'd successfully taken over the world would actually do next, concluded they'd act like a teenager in their bedroom, as there wouldn't be anyone who could say "no" to them. In "The Doctor Falls", he's a little less of a manchild and much more suave — suggested to be because of years without the drums in his head — though he's still as psychopathic as ever.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • "HERE. COME. THE DRUMS!"
  • Also: "ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!"
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter":
  • When the Toclafane kill President Winter, the Master laughs and claps his hands like an excited child.
  • Later, when the population of the Earth is decimated, he has a grin a mile-wide and can't keep the excitement out of his voice.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Downplayed, but this version of the Master mixes some red into his usual black attire, wearing a black coat lined with red during Series 3, a red t-shirt under his black hoodie in "The End of Time", and donning a new black coat with red accents in Series 10.
• Redemption Equals Death: Didn't see that one coming in "The End of Time", did you? Granted, it's more along the lines of "revenge against the guy who made me crazy", though it can also be seen as paying the Doctor back for sparing/saving his life seconds earlier. It's subsequently subverted, as he survived and remains as sociopathic as ever.
• Red Is Violent: The main visual change to the TARDIS after the Master has cannibalized it into a Paradox Machine is that everything is glowing red. 
• Retcon: The drumbeat having driven him insane his whole life is first mentioned in the revival series. However, it is heavily implied that it is in actuality a Cosmic Retcon, and the drumbeat was an effect of the Time War retroactively altering the Master's timeline.
  • Despite this supposedly being the cause of the Master's madness, it's removed offscreen before "World Enough and Time" to no effect — he's a lot less manic, but subsequent incarnation Missy is still "bananas" by her own account (though she's still much more lucid than he is when she's not playing up to it, and it could have something to do with the traumatic nature of her regeneration).
• Returning Big Bad: Returns eight years after his last appearance as the Big Bad of Series 10.
• Revenge Before Reason: Despite his obsession with his own survival, he'd rather die permanently than reconcile with the Doctor.
• Revenge Through Corruption: While he didn't exactly cause humanity's corruption into the Toclafane, he definitely uses it to torment the Doctor.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Invoked regarding his short-lived Cabinet, all of whom jumped ship to support him. He "rewards" them with a room's worth of poison gas. The fact that he possibly got them to do this via the same Subliminal Seduction he used on the entire country to get himself elected may make this a particularly nasty Subverted Trope, though.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When he gets a chance, the Master rages against Rassilon, attacking the Lord President in a fury as vengeance for the drumbeat that has haunted the Master for his entire life. The resulting onslaught was enough to cause Rassilon to regenerate, although the Master seems to have relented eventually, as the Time Lords repaired his unstable body and sent him on his way ("a mutual kicking me out" as he puts it).
• Rushmore Refacement: Martha mentions that he stuck his face on it in the timeline where he conquered Earth.
• Sadist: One of the most sadistic incarnations of the character, he delights in tormenting his enemies, his prisoners, and even his wife.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Already was extraordinarily crazy, but as of "The End of Time", he goes from "weird sense of humour" insane to "full on, batshit, animal-psyche" insane.
  • Then inverted in "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls", in which he's still deeply evil but much calmer and more rational than he was in either previous story. The Doctor suggests that the Time Lords fixed the problem that drove him insane in the first place, though it wasn't enough to change his evil nature and they eventually kicked him off Gallifrey (he insists it was mutual).
• Say My Name: He admits that he loves it when the Doctor uses it.
• Screw Yourself:
  • Davies got as far as writing Master-on-Master, but the scene didn't make it to the screen.
  • The 2017 finale goes there!
    Saxon: Kiss me.
    Missy: Make me.
  • Also:
    Saxon: By the way, is it wrong that I...
    Missy: [pointedly looking at his crotch] Yes. Very.
• Serial Killer: Even before he took over the world and started killing humans left and right, he and the Toclafane left quite a few bodies in their wake. And after his resurrection, he goes around devouring hobos and anyone else he can get his teeth on.
• Seven Deadly Sins: He exhibits all of them, as befits his being one of the rottenest of the Masters:
  • Envy: He hates how close the Doctor is to the human race, and always delights in coming between them, whether it be taunting the Doctor about how humans will eventually become the monstrous Toclafane, or else turning every human on Earth into a copy of himself.
  • Gluttony: When he takes over the Earth, he uses the opportunity to indulge his every whim and treat himself with excessive spoils. After his resurrection, this sin is manifested a bit more literally with his Horror Hunger.
  • Greed: He's greedy from small ways (taking whatever he wants when he rules the Earth) to big ways (wanting complete control of Earth, Gallifrey, and the entire Universe).
  • Lust: He makes lustful comments about his wife and his female servants. Even some of his dialogue to the Doctor comes off as creepily lustful!
  • Pride: This Master is his own biggest fan. He makes god-like speeches about his own importance and puts statues of himself all over the Earth.
  • Sloth: During the Year That Never Was, he generally had his minions do all the work on Earth while he played and lazed around in the Valiant.
  • Wrath: He's usually quick to anger if you disobey him, or don't treat him with the respect he feels he deserves.
  • For bonus points, his cynicism about the pointlessness of the human race and everything else could be interpreted as Despair, the eighth sin in Orthodox Christianity.
• Shock and Awe: In "The End of Time", as a side effect of his botched resurrection he can shoot lightning from his hands. It drains his life force, though, and can't be done for too long without killing him permanently.
• Sinister Surveillance: How he tracks the Doctor's crew in "The Sound of Drums".
• Sinister Sweet Tooth: To further emphasize his role as an Evil Counterpart to the Doctor, he has a taste for Jelly Babies.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Has quite a bit of flirting going on with the Gomez incarnation, in between smacks on the head.
• Smug Snake: He clearly thinks the world of himself and doesn't think anyone else even comes close to his brilliance, which is what lets Martha and the Doctor get the advantage when fighting him.
  • It also comes back to bite him when he brings Gallifrey back in "The End of Time" and gleefully mocks Rassilon and tells him that he's going to do the same to the Time Lords as he's done to humanity. Rassilon doesn't even bother saying anything: he just flicks his gauntlet and undoes the Master's plans with absolutely zero effort.
• The Sociopath: The most blatantly amoral and sadistic version of the Master outside of the Crispy version (and even that can be disputed). The point is really driven home in "The Doctor Falls" when paired up with Missy, who ends up making a Heel–Face Turn by the end of the episode and kills the Saxon Master out of disgust.
• Sore Loser: This trait is particularly evident at the climax of "Last of the Time Lords". When the whole world helps the Doctor back to get full strength, he starts yelling at them to stop and screaming that it's "not fair". When that doesn't work, he tries to kill the Doctor. When that doesn't work, he tries to kill Martha's family. When that doesn't work, he threatens to blow up the whole Earth, including himself, just to get back at the Doctor, even though he ultimately doesn't go through with it. And as a final insult, after he's shot by Lucy he refuses to regenerate, just to hurt the Doctor.
• Stable Time Loop: He meets his future self, who ends up causing him to regenerate into her so that she can go on to meet him and make him regenerate.
• Straw Nihilist: The Master pointedly ended up in the year one hundred trillion, the eve of the universe's collapse. His smug description of humans on their last legs is a good peek into his worldview.
• Superpower Lottery: He actually got a pretty good deal out of his Came Back Wrong given that he can shoot lightning from his hands.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He shares a lot of mannerism's with The Editor, a popular one-off villain from the Ninth Doctor era.
• Take Over the World: He succeeds for a year before the Doctor manages to knock him off his throne.
• Taking You with Me: In "The End of Time", he uses the energy from his dying body to blast Rassilon with lighting as they both get swept back into the Time War.
• Temporal Paradox: Averted — he's killed by his own future self, but only to the degree that he regenerates into her.
• Temporal Suicide: Shoots his own future self in the back with an Anti-Regeneration ray, purely because he can't stomach the idea of dying heroically alongside the Doctor to save a village of humans.
• Terrible Ticking: Tappity-tap, tappity-tap, tappity-tap, tappity-tap "Can't you hear it?"
• There Is Another: Before The Master reared his head, The Doctor had thought he was the only Time Lord to have survived the Time War.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Compared to his previous incarnations, for the most part, he acts more upbeat, enthusiastic, and often even quite jolly. Not that this makes him any less malicious, of course, it's just his pronounced Faux Affably Evil and It Amused Me tendencies.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Some previous appearances of the Master claim that the universe will be a better place under their rule. This version of the Master not only doesn't bother with such supposedly-benevolent goals but actively both revels and wallows in the collapse and doom of humanity and everything else.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: While the previous Masters were usually just as villainous, they at least respected the Doctor enough to try and recruit him in conquering the universe, and if not that, then they would simply try to kill him. This Master doesn't even try to reconcile with the Doctor, and instead of killing him quickly, keeps him captive and tortures him For the Evulz. When the Doctor eventually gains the upper hand, the Master immediately tries to kill him, showing that any twisted affection he might have had for his old friend was small at best. It isn't until "The End of Time" that the Master starts to be slightly less hostile towards the Doctor through an Enemy Mine with the Time Lords. Even this small affection is gone by the time the Master runs into the Twelfth Doctor, however; though forced into another Enemy Mine with his old friend (this time against the Cybermen), he's never anything less than sneering, hostile and cruel, makes every effort to abandon the Doctor to his fate, and even insists with some of this incarnation's last breaths that he will never stand with the Doctor.
• To Serve Man: After he Came Back Wrong, he restored his rapidly-dwindling energy by eating humans.
• Toxic Friend Influence: A variation where the "friend" is one's self. Missy genuinely wanted the Doctor's favor and tried to become good, but Saxon, representing the worst of the Master's impulses, leads her astray until she works up the nerve to betray him (and gets shot in the back for her effort).
• Troll:
  • His entire modus operandi is to humiliate and screw with the Doctor as much as possible, and in doing so to have as much fun as he can making everyone around the Doctor as miserable as he can.
  • He trolls Bill for all it's worth as Mr. Razor, pretending to be her friend... who then drags her to be Cyber-converted...
• The Unfettered: John Simm shows what the Doctor would be like without any constraints of morality, humanity, or even sanity.
• The Un-Smile: He gives one when explaining to his Cabinet the difference between "funny" and "not funny". The smile is "funny" whilst a Comical Angry Face is "not funny".
• Unwitting Pawn: The Madness Mantra (the four drumbeats) was actually implanted by the Time Lords as part of their plot to escape the Time War alive. It's implied that this is the only reason the Master became insane, which kind of makes them responsible for quite a lot.
• Viking Funeral: The Doctor gives him a positively Vader-esque funeral pyre... which doesn't stop one of the Master's cultists fishing his ring out of the ashes.
• Villainous Breakdown: After the Doctor and Martha reveal their real plan just as he's about to launch his war machines, he starts shouting about how unfair it all is before cowering in a corner as the Doctor forgives him. His next move? Threaten to blow up the entire planet just to spite the Doctor.
• Villainous Glutton: He eats jelly babies while preparing to kill the President, he has his every little whim catered to in the luxury of the Valiant during his takeover of Earth, and when he comes Back from the Dead he starts devouring humans down to the bone left and right, and even when given other sources of meat, wolfs it down like a starving, savage animal, even licking a burger wrapper and ranting about all the food he craves.
• Villainous Legacy: It's implied that the reason why Martha joins the militant UNIT after his initial death is because she was never the same after all the trauma she endured because of him in the Year That Never Was.
• Villain Respect: As per usual, holds this towards the Doctor. When talking to Martha on the phone he simply puts it on speaker and in his pocket, but when the Doctor takes over the phone call, he scrambles to remove it from his pocket, and holds it to his ear in what is almost reverence.
• Villain Song:
  • His first scene in "Last of the Time Lords" has him sing and dance with the Scissor Sisters' "I Can't Decide" as he taunts his prisoners. While it's an already-existing song, the lyrics apply quite well to the situation.
  • The same goes for when he plays "Voodoo Child" by Rogue Traders, with its refrain of "Here come the drums, here come the drums" fitting the Master's drum motif quite well.
• Villain with Good Publicity: As Harold Saxon, he poses as a beloved political figure who is elect Prime Minister. It doesn't last, though, once he reveals himself and sics the Toclafane on humanity, which promptly gets him a 0% Approval Rating.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl:
  • Much like his last self. "Always the women."
  • While he never actually says it, it happens again in "The Doctor Falls" — except the woman in question is his own future self this time. It's downplayed, as he actually praises her for the kill.
    The Master: Now that was really, very nicely done. It's good to know I haven't lost my touch.
    Missy: You deserve my best.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Initially it wasn't clear what caused him to regenerate into Missy after his last appearance fighting Rassilon in "The End of Time". "The Doctor Falls" reveals this, and it has quite the twist: the Time Lords simply repaired his decaying body, gave him a new TARDIS and kicked him off of Gallifrey prior to its supposed destruction at the hands of the War Doctor and the Moment. Eventually finding his way to the settler ship, he attempted to conquer it, but the colonists rebelled, setting off a chain of events that led to him being stabbed by his next self, who has become much more empathetic and can no longer bring herself to act like him. This leads to the Master shooting her with his laser screwdriver, supposedly killing her permanently.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Sports this as part of his Came Back Wrong look. After being cured he kept the hair but with a darker tint.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: When he has the Toclafane invade the Earth, he is more focused on that then stopping Martha from getting away, and when she does get away, the Master keeps the Doctor as his prisoner to gloat and torment him, instead of killing him. Both of these come back to bite him.
• The Wonka: While acting as Prime Minister, he quotes Little Britain during his speeches and relentlessly takes the mickey out of the US President. Once he drops the pretense, it's more a case of "put up with my antics or be vaporized".
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: This Master is a very unsympathetic example, at least during his encounters with the Tenth Doctor; although the drum beat implanted by Rassilon drove the Master insane long ago, this version is constantly tormented by the noise, driving him even further off the deep end than previous Masters. He's constantly asking other people if they can hear the drumming, wonders aloud if it will stop with his death, and, when the Doctor acknowledges the sound as real and not just a symptom of the Master's madness, the Master is in tears, overcome with emotion that his lifelong torment is real and may have a purpose. By the time of his return in series 10, however, the drum beat has been removed and the Master is more stable than he had previously been, although if anything, even more evil. At the end of the day, this Master is an incredibly broken individual, though he's no less malevolent than any of his previous incarnations.
• Would Hit a Girl: It's implied that he hit his wife during his reign over the Earth.
• Younger and Hipper: He's younger than the previous Masters on the show before him, and has an affinity for Earth pop culture.
• You're Insane!: One of his cabinet members calls him this right before he kills them. His response is a hearty thumbs up.

"Mr. Razor"

The eccentric and disheveled Hospital janitor who befriends Bill Potts while she was stuck at the lower levels of a Mondasian colony ship. In actuality, he is the Master in disguise.

• False Friend: He is one to Bill, playing her like a fiddle the whole time.
• The Igor: He has overtones of this before his true identity is revealed.
• Latex Perfection: He hides his true appearance via a rubber mask.
• Mr. Exposition: He explains the Backstory of the Mondasians and why they're doing what they're doing now. Interestingly, despite The Reveal that Mr. Razor is actually the Saxon Master, there is no reason to think (at this point) that he lies to Bill about anything aside from who he is.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Right before Mr. Razor reveals himself to be John Simm's Master, shades of Simm's normal, unaffected voice start to seep through.
• The Reveal: His true identity is that of the Master in disguise.
• Token Good Teammate: Is the only person in the hospital who cares remotely for Bill's safety. Sadly, it's just an act.
• Walking Spoiler: Not only was he manipulating Bill, he was the Harold Saxon version of the Master in disguise the whole time.

The Mistress / "Missy" (Twelfth Doctor)

This mysterious, very manic and teasing woman first showed up in "Deep Breath", and was referred to as "The Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere" in promotional material. She would appear in several episodes to welcome the dead to a place she calls "Heaven", in reality said Nethersphere. Her identity and motives were initially a mystery, but she seemed to be familiar with the Doctor. Upon encountering the Twelfth Doctor in person in "Dark Water", she revealed herself as being the latest incarnation of the Master, and the Nethersphere itself held a more sinister purpose than its inhabitants assumed.

Aside from being a true sadist, the newly-rebranded Mistress is also very flirty and fond of playing little games — dancing around, pretending to be a droid, setting up tea parties for her victims, and so on. She makes no secret of her fondness for the Doctor, calling him her "boyfriend" and openly displaying the Unresolved Sexual Tension aspects of their dynamic. Contrarily to most of the other incarnations, Missy seems to have no desire to kill the Doctor, but instead wishes they would reconcile. Of course, this is the Master we're talking about, so don't expect her to be any less dangerous now that she's regenerated into female form, which, for all intents and purposes, she seems to have taken completely in her stride.

• Affably Evil: Although still insane, she actually acts genuinely friendly and polite when not getting another urge to murder someone for fun, unlike many previous incarnations:
  • Is courteous to the Half-Face Man when she meets him, apologizing for how "mean" her "boyfriend", the Doctor, could be.
  • She tells Doctor Chang that she's going to keep a picture of him looking "so sweet", always, before killing him so he can't get in the way of her Evil Plan. She says that she even "feels a bit emotional" about it afterwards.
  • She encourages Osgood to be more confident in herself in "Death in Heaven", before murdering Osgood for the hell of it.
  • Her entire plan in Series 8 turned out to just be an attempt to repair her friendship with the Doctor, in her own Axe-Crazy way.
  • Tries through most of Series 10 to be on her best behaviour, going so far as to honestly request the "little people" she meets to stay out of her way lest she get an overwhelming urge to murder.
    Missy: Hello, ordinary person. Please maintain a minimum separation of three feet. I'm really trying not to kill anyone today, but it would be tremendously helpful if your major arteries were out of reach.
• All for Nothing: Her difficult ordeal toward reforming ends when her past self kills her in disgust, and her next incarnation learns about a certain devastating Time Lord secret, then backslides into an even worse monster.
• Ambiguously Evil: Comes across this way for most of Series 8, where she mostly appeared Once per Episode to comment on the Doctor's adventures or greet a recently dead soul. The ambiguity is later thrown out the window with the revelation that she's the Master. Interestingly, it comes back in her later appearances, particularly in Series 10 where no one's completely sure whether or not she's genuinely trying to reform.
• Anti-Villain: It can be hard to tell if she is this or an Anti-Hero for most of Series 10. She qualifies as one or the other, finally becoming a clear example of an antihero before her Heel–Face Door-Slam in the final episode. Interestingly, she has some traits of Classical Antiheroes as well, including the cowardice (though ultimately, Simm's Master is suggested to be even more cowardly).
• Arc Villain: For the Twelfth Doctor, as his most persistent and intimate foe who appears in every season of his tenure. Even though she's not necessarily the driving force, her influence is highly felt — especially in Series 9 where the consequences of putting Clara and the Doctor together rear their tragic head.
• Axe-Crazy: She's still just as murderous as her past selves, but this time she is more open about it.
  Osgood: Why would you bother killing me? I'm not even important.
  Missy: Oh silly, why does one bother popping a balloon? Because you're pretty.
• Bad Boss: Kills Dr. Chang when he is no longer needed, and casually vaporizes Seb after he cheers at the Doctor performing a death-defying stunt.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • In a roundabout sort of way. Missy got the Doctor and Clara together because of their polarizing personalities. It could also be construed as her attempt to fulfil the prophecy of the Hybrid. And though the Doctor and Clara ultimately parted, the Doctor is alone, with no memory of Clara at all. So though Missy failed to bring the Hybrid forth, she did set in motion events that left the Doctor miserable and alone.
  • She also very nearly wins at the end of "Death in Heaven" — her Cyberman army is defeated, but she has so devastated Clara that she is going to kill Missy. And the Doctor is so determined to protect Clara that he's willing to kill Missy so she doesn't. When Missy tells him to say something nice, the Doctor simply says "You win" and Missy says "I know."
• Best Served Cold: The Doctor has abandoned or imprisoned more than one Time Lady over the years. Her dialogue in "Dark Water" teases at the return of the Rani, Romana, or even Susan Foreman.
• Big Bad: For Series 8, taking deceased people to turn into a Cyberman army.
• The Big Damn Kiss: After forty-three years of Foe Romance Subtext, she finally gets one with the Doctor. Followed by kissing his nose. Once he realizes how thoroughly broken she is, and how desperate she is for his friendship, he very sweetly kisses her back in the next episode.
• Black Comedy:
  Dr Chang: Are you going to kill me?
  Missy: Now, come on, let's not dwell on horrid things. This is going to be our last conversation, and I'm the one who's going to have to live with that.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • While in general she's completely and vocally evil, her relationship with the Doctor falls under this banner. She considers their endless battles to be indicative of close friendship, and claims their feelings for each other are indescribable in human terms. The (scary) thing is, however badly cracked and warped her outlook is, she's not entirely wrong. The Doctor sent his confession dial to her, after all, and Clara noted that he was too happy to hear she survived.
  • She can be considered a Downplayed Example even after her Character Development; she tends to look at morality from a more utilitarian standpoint than the Doctor. This often leads her to look callous, and it's a reason she's an Anti-Hero, but she's also not presented as a Straw Vulcan. A major theme of series 10 is a contrast between utilitarian ethics, which advocates actions that produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people (meaning that ethics are dependent upon circumstances and outcomes), and deontological ethics, which advocates for inviolable ethical principles regardless of circumstances. Throughout series 10, Missy generally holds to the former, while the Doctor generally holds to the latter. Interestingly, the show itself seems to suggest that one must consider both philosophies to have a balanced ethical viewpoint. One can compare this to Watchmen, another work that explores the same ethical issues and reaches a similar conclusion (in which Veidt represents utilitarianism and Rorschach ultimately represents deontology, though both are particularly dark representations of their respective philosophies).
• Bookends: Her first appearance consists of her dancing and swinging her umbrella around in a lush, bright green garden that has a lot of different-coloured flowers. "The Doctor Falls"'s last shot of Missy is her lifeless body in an overgrown, dark green vine-covered ground with only white flowers. It also book ends her relationship with the Doctor: White flowers range in significance from purity and innocence to sympathy, showing that she sympathised with the Doctor and her decision to side with him was genuinely true.
• Breaking Speech: Calls the Doctor out on his general motivations at the end of "Death in Heaven".
  The Doctor: All of this... All of it, just to give me an army?
  Missy: Well, I don't need one, do I? Armies are for people who think they're right. And nobody thinks they're righter than you! Give a good man firepower, and he'll never run out of people to kill.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Subverted. Missy thought she'd lived her lives as the Master this way, but when she's in the middle of a Heel–Face Turn, she realizes, tearfully, that she actually did know the names of the many, many people she's killed over the years. As the Master is responsible for the death of a quarter of the universe, it's understandable she's crying over it.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Calls herself "Queen of Evil".
• Catchphrase: "Say something nice" before she kills someone. She also says it before she thinks the Doctor is about to kill her.
• Character Development: Probably more so than any previous incarnation of the character, Missy changes substantially over her arc on the show. A Driving Question of series 10 is whether she's genuinely trying to reform herself or if it's just another ploy. The finale ultimately suggests the former, with her suggesting that the Doctor is right that the two of them should, at last, stand together because that's what they need to do to survive, though it doesn't stick after she's zapped with Saxon's laser screwdriver. She shouldn't have been able to regenerate from that, but due to the character's Joker Immunity, no-one seriously expected her to be Killed Off for Real.
• The Chessmaster: Came up with a solid plan for the Series 8 finale, and was the architect of the Doctor and Clara's relationship.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Out of all the TV incarnations, she's the closest to being on the Doctor's side. At times. It changes. A lot. Especially once she has to choose between the Doctor and her own former self. In series 10, she literally backstabs her past incarnation. Partially this is because he finds her to be a case of Future Me Scares Me and she wants to ensure that he becomes her out of spite. It's also partially because of her aforementioned Character Development, though.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • She's quite offended when the Doctor names Davros rather than her as his greatest foe.
    Missy: No, wait, hang on a minute, Davros is your arch-enemy now? I'll scratch his eye out!
  • Also livid at the suggestion that the Doctor's confession dial, sent to the Doctor's closest friend, is for Clara. Clearly, it's intended for Missy.
• Complexity Addiction: Her plan to contact Clara in "The Magician's Apprentice" involves stopping Earth's plane traffic, so UNIT would find Clara and play her Missy's message, and then have UNIT transport Clara and a team of their operatives to the Mediterranean where she would find Clara and tell her what she needed to know. It is just that Missy perfectly well knows Clara's exact address, but arranging for UNIT to have a team of snipers on hand when Missy stops by Clara's home to talk to her apparently wasn't grandiose enough for her (as she points out, she knows perfectly well Clara won't talk to her without the snipers).
• Corrupted Character Copy: Invoked, She's really pushing this evil Mary Poppins thing.
• Cradling Your Kill: Creepily true of Harold Saxon, whom she praises and caresses while stabbing him in the back. And then graciously helps him to the elevator, with assurances that he'll make it back to his TARDIS before he regenerates into her.
• Depraved Bisexual: Kisses the Doctor after all their years of Foe Romance Subtext, and is more than happy to offer Clara the same make-out session (Clara refuses). It should be noted that Word of God (from various lead writers) states that Gallifreyans don't really factor gender into attraction, so this is a race trait, not a character trait. The "depraved" part is all her, though.
• Desecrating the Dead: She gleefully takes advantage of the fact that dead humans vastly outnumber living ones, and uses the corpses to create an army of Cybermen.
• Dies Wide Open: She's left lying in a holographic forest, eyes open and motionless, after the laser screwdriver seemingly sapped away all her life and took away any hope of regenerating. As to be expected, it doesn't last.
• Disintegrator Ray: Rather than a TCE or a laser screwdriver, she carries a customised PDA/smartphone with a disintegrator ray built in.
• The Dreaded: The usually calm and collected Twelfth Doctor becomes increasingly terrified of her as he begins to realize her identity. By the end of "Dark Water", he's running through the streets screaming for people to get away after seeing her Cyber-army. She also deliberately invokes this trope when giving Osgood a countdown to her death.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Missy saves the Doctor from being drained by Davros and the Daleks. And then, just for the lulz, pokes Davros in the eye...
• Evil Counterpart: To the Doctor, of course, with her dark clothing and her Scottish accent; also a bit to Clara, whom Missy herself decided was the Doctor's ideal companion. "Bubbly personality masking bossy control freak" → "A calculating mass-murderer pretending to be Mary Poppins."
• Evil Is Petty:
  • She uses every human death in history to create an army of Cybermen. Not to conquer the universe, but simply to prove to the Doctor that they're Mirror Characters
  • When Clara questions whether Missy's pretending to have done a Heel–Face Turn, Missy begins killing nearby UNIT soldiers, just to prove she's still evil. She even takes delight in telling Clara that one of them was a new father.
• Evil Plan: Makes a digital version of Heaven using Gallifreyan Matrix technology, to cull experience from humans who recently died, which she then uploads into Cybermen made from their corpses to make a world-conquering army... which she plans to give to the Doctor, to prove they're Mirror Characters.
• Ex-Big Bad: By Series 10, where she spends most of the season imprisoned and seems slowly on the way to reforming. In the finale though she teams up with the Saxon Master after running into him, only to ultimately decide to go back to the Doctor and join his side for real.
• Females Are More Innocent: The first female incarnation of the character is notably the only one thus far who manages to pull a Heel–Face Turn (even if only briefly). Even more notably, the next incarnation went straight back to being a villain.
• Foe Romance Subtext:
  • Calls the Doctor her "boyfriend" when the Half-Face Man meets her. It turns out to be an actual Villainous Crush by the time they meet.
    Missy: Hello! I'm Missy. You made it. I hope my boyfriend wasn't too mean to you.
    Half-Face Man: Boy-friend?
  • The Doctor/Master relationship is pushed even more as Missy actually receives the Doctor's "last will" meant for his oldest friend. Who else often receives a dying person's will? Their spouse. The implication is clear.
  • Though in the same episode, Missy herself defies this trope by claiming (possibly untruthfully) that Time Lord friendships are a lot deeper than human ones and if Clara or anyone else reads romantic subtext into her interactions with the Doctor, it's just because our primitive monkey brains are obsessed with sexinvoked.
• Foil: The Doctor said that his meet-up with Clara in "Deep Breath" was orchestrated by a "controlling, needy game-player", but he was referring to Clara. It was actually set up by Missy.
• For the Evulz:
  • Orders the Cybermen to kill some Belgians, just because they can... and because Belgian is not French.
  • Also vaporizes a couple of UNIT soldiers for no reason other than to prove to Clara that she's still evil.
  • The Doctor and Ashildr speculate that she united Clara and the Doctor together just to see what chaos would result from their initially clashing personalities. Moreover, the Doctor and Clara becoming more and more similar to each other ends up causing even more trouble, ultimately temporarily turning the Doctor into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who risks the universe to bring Clara back from the grave, the kind of act Missy could get behind!
• Friendly Enemy: She's quite friendly to the Doctor, mainly because she wants to be friends again.
• Fun with Acronyms: While pretending to be a robot, she claims her name is M.I.S.I., Mobile Intelligence Systems Interface.
• Gender Bender: Regenerated with a female body this time around, and very happily presents and identifies as female. Her puffy sleeves are a genderbent homage to Ainley's first outfit. The Saxon Master calls her "lady version" when they meet.
• A God Am I: She put herself in charge of her own little heaven and (using Gallifreyan Matrix technology) had complete control over the souls and bodies of the deceased all throughout human history, as long as humans have had the concept of an afterlife, making her a bona fide Angel of Death.
• Good Is Not Nice: While Missy does try to be a better person, even then she's removed and cold about it, viewing the death of Bill as a small price to save others.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Long before she made her presence known to the audience, she had already had an influence in the Doctor's life, being the one responsible for introducing Clara to the Eleventh Doctor.
• I Hate Past Me: Literally, fatally stabs him in the back — to make him turn into her. On the other hand, she takes the time to mention how much she loved being him and how she'll always miss how intensely he felt everything.
• Heaven: She claims her "Nethersphere" is this in Series 8. In truth, she's using Time Lord technology to capture the minds of the dead and remove their emotions, then re-download them into their Cyber-converted bodies, creating her own personal army of Cybermen. The Doctor theorises that she's been doing this for such a long period of human history, the entire concept of the afterlife is based around her. 
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Just when she's on the verge of truly siding with the Doctor, her own past self shoots her in the back. Her redemption is shown not to stick either, as the next incarnation of the Master to appear onscreen has regressed back to the character's usual villainy (or at least tried to). Although if Big Finish's Missy: Series 2 is canon, Missy did save herself using a forbidden Time Lord technology called an Elysian field to reconstitute her personality and give herself a new regeneration cycle. Her next incarnation is a very good person and calls herself the Lumiat, not the Master. But Missy herself, at a point in her timeline long before her Heel–Face Turn, fatally shoots the Lumiat, and it's possible that the Lumiat is going to regenerate into who will become the Sacha Dhawan Master.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: She goes from helping the Doctor or Clara to hindering them several times over the course of "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar".
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Defied in "The Magician's Apprentice"; when Clara asks if her offering help means she's "turning good", Missy vaporizes a couple of UNIT soldiers to prove she's still evil.
  • Series 10 showed that she is now sincerely trying to do this, with the Doctor's help. The process is... slow going.
  • "The Doctor Falls" fully confirms Missy has legitimately turned over a new leaf, going so far as to kill her previous Simm incarnation when he refuses to help the Doctor. Thus far, she is the only incarnation of the Master to go this far. Pity she was killed off by her predecessor shortly after, which, inevitably, results in the next incarnation of the Master to show up being firmly in the villainous camp (albeit a very broken villain).
• Hidden Agenda Villain: We as the audience meet Missy in "Deep Breath", but it's unclear what exactly she's up to.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard:
  • Bringing back all the Earth's dead, with Cyber-weaponry, and their own minds restored into their bodies, and then attempting to murder Kate Lethbridge-Stewart... leads to her being defeated by one very determined Cyberconverted Brigadier.
  • Telling the Simm Master that, after mortally wounding him, she's going to join the Doctor in a futile fight, leads the Master to kill her to prevent it.
• Humanizing Moment: Missy realizes, and weeps as she realizes that she does know the names of everyone she, as The Master, has killed over her long, long life.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Her gaze matches that of the Twelfth Doctor's.
• Internal Homage:
  • Her relations with the Doctor hearken back to the first incarnation of the Master ever introduced, Roger Delgado, and his dynamic with Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor. UNIT shows up soon afterwards, led by the Brigadier's daughter, resulting in a full circle recreation of the era of Doctor Who that Peter Capaldi knew best.
  • Her series 10 arc also could be considered an example either of an internal homage to a case of What Could Have Been or of a Mythology Gag. The writers apparently originally planned to have Roger Delgado's Master undergo a Heel–Face Turn before dying, but Delgado's death resulted in the abandonment of this plot line. Missy undergoes a Heel–Face Turn in series 10 that is ultimately revealed to be entirely genuine. However, she appears to be killed at the end of "The Doctor Falls". The question wasn't whether she'd survive — presumably every Doctor Who fan knows that the Master has Joker Immunity — but whether the Heel–Face Turn would stick in the character's next incarnation. (It didn't.)
• Irony: The last two incarnations complained about meeting their ends by the hands of a woman. Now the Master is a woman. To her credit, she completely rolls with it, and delights in being girly. And becomes the one to stab the Simm incarnation, ultimately triggering his regeneration into her. There's an added layer of irony here since the Simm incarnation ultimately dies at the hands of a woman twice.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Well, one, at least. For all the Foe Romance Subtext and stalker-like facets to her character, all she really wants is her old friend back. All the psychotically flirty behaviour is just the Master, well, being the Master.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Despite having cold-bloodedly murdered several UNIT agents right in front of her, Clara not only agrees to work with Missy on finding the Doctor, she insists that Missy accompany her when the Doctor is about to be transported away. At no point is it ever mentioned again about Missy killing the agents (one of whom is described as a father). There is also no follow-up to the fact that she killed one of the Osgoods, either. Granted, her last scene in that episode was being surrounded by Daleks, but her last words were "I've just had a very clever idea", presumably an idea on how to escape.
  • Subverted in series 10. She is sentenced to death, but the Doctor ultimately rescues and imprisons her, and makes her freedom contingent upon her reforming herself. Most of the series' arc is about her attempts to do this, with a major Driving Question being whether they are genuine. It's immediately clear that this is a painful and difficult process, and the series finale ultimately indicates that she actually has changed. Ultimately, one can draw parallels to the real-life debate over whether criminals should receive rehabilitation or punishment, and whether one considers her a Karma Houdini in this series will probably depend largely upon one's stance on this issue.
• Karmic Transformation: Subverted. Her last two incarnations were blatantly sexist, but if she had any problems with her new incarnation, she's gotten over it by the time we see her. Which is exasperating for her when she meets her previous self and he's as sexist as ever, twisting the trope from subverted back to karmic as she becomes the one to murder her previous self in the first place.
• Kill the Cutie: Missy murders Osgood (whether that Osgood was human or Zygon is a mystery for the ages), taunting her with the knowledge that she's going to kill her before doing so. And then crumples her glasses under her boot heel.
• Kiss of Death: Puckers her lips and blows kisses before killing each of her victims. She does this with almost every kill, even applying lipstick in the case of Osgood and her guards.
  Missy: Thanks for being yummy.
• Large Ham: Roger Delgado was a bit eccentric, Anthony Ainley swings between the lines of Arch-Enemy and affably evil, John Simm was just mad... but Missy? There is nowhere big enough in the entire universe to host this woman's ego, especially when she carries on her traditional psychotic tendencies with a wicked sense of cruelty in her veins. Such as smooching at her subordinate as she disintegrates him, for example.
• Laughably Evil: She delights in her own absurdity, playing it up even after she murders people just for the hell of it.
• Left for Dead: Accuses the Doctor of doing this to her after she was flung into Gallifrey on the final day of the Time War.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Places people who die into a digitized version of a modern urban city.
• The Mad Hatter: Responds to people expressing bemusement at her actions by pointing out that she's "bananas". And she really is — absolutely, completely insane... though perhaps not quite as much as she lets people think. She's more lucid than Simm's Master was, prior to getting the drums removed (though that really isn't very hard).
• Meaningful Echo: Simm's Master muttered "I win", right before he crushed the Doctor's yearning to rejoin his people by killing himself. The Doctor's parting line as he resignedly points a disintegrator at Missy? "You win." (And just like last time, with her death goes the Doctor's one shot at finding Gallifrey.)
• Meta Guy: Several times, most memorably when she calls Bill and Nardole "exposition" and "comic relief".
• Mirror Character: Her plan in Series 8 is to give the Doctor ultimate power, so he'll see that she's not really any worse than him and stop hating her.
  The Doctor: Why are you doing this!?
  Missy: I need you to know we're not so different! I need my friend back~!
  • Ashildr theorizes that this desperation to make him realize this may also be behind Missy bringing the Doctor and Clara together. Their initially clashing personalities eventually grow so similar that the Doctor cannot contemplate life without Clara, and when she dies in a horrible Senseless Sacrifice he undergoes a Protagonist Journey to Villain in which he gives up his principles and almost destroys the universe to bring her back from the grave — and thus, like Missy, creates mayhem to reclaim someone he loves. But he recrosses the Despair Event Horizon and proves himself the better man once more, though it comes at a great personal cost.
• Mutual Kill: She stabs her past self, the injury that led to him regenerating into her in the first place. He returns the favour by shooting her in the back.
• Never Found the Body: As per usual.
  • She appears to get vaporized by the Brigadier near the end of Series 8's "Death in Heaven", only to return in Series 9.
    Missy: Death is for other people, dear.
  • Lampshaded in "The Magician's Apprentice":
    Missy: Okay, cutting to the chase: not dead, back, big surprise, never mind.
• Not Quite Dead: Despite the Master being in a rapidly deteriorating body and fighting with Rassilon, the Time Lord President, back in Series 4, Missy turns up alive and perfectly healthy in Series 8. (As per usual for her.)
  Missy: Death is for other people, dear.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: In "The Doctor Falls"
  Missy: Because if somebody kills you and it's not me, we'll both be disappointed. 
• Only Sane Woman: She's willing to put aside her endless conflict with the Doctor and reconcile.
• OOC Is Serious Business:
  • Missy, and by extension the other Masters, are usually calm and collected. When she finds out she's on a rebuilt Skaro, she freaks out. We have never seen the Master scared before. It makes sense if you remember she was once executed on Skaro.
  • Missy also nearly breaks down at explaining why she remade the Cyberman army on Earth: she missed her friend, and wanted him back.
  • Missy finds herself horrified at all the damage she's wrought over the years, weeping and remembering the names of those she's killed. A previous incarnation accidentally killed a quarter of the universe, and barely batted an eye.
• Our Liches Are Different: Her character draws on aspects of this trope, from her Not Quite Dead nature to raising an army from the dead.
• Perky Goth: She combines classic, Edwardian clothes with spikey bracelets and copious amounts of eyeliner, and she's very, very bouncy.
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: An affable woman who encouraged someone to be more confident in herself before violently killing her versus a snarky man who bad-mouths everyone while saving all of humanity.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Refers to Twelve as her "boyfriend" and spins stories about how he's so violently protective of her (he's actually terrified of her). Her plan in Series 8 is actually to give him a "birthday present" of his own Cyber-army to make him a more ruthless "hero".
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Like Twelve, she sometimes acts more like a broody teenager than her apparent age. Dressing like a Goth Mary Poppins, sharing "special girl secrets" with the much younger Osgood, etc.
• Psychopomp: Presents herself as the "gatekeeper of the nethersphere" through Series 8 and greets the newly dead.
• Redemption Equals Death: Subverted. While she fully intended to redeem herself, she's killed when she commits to it, not when she's able to fulfil her good intentions. Both she and the Saxon Master find this hilarious.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Her Heel–Face Turn does not improve her batty and callous personality.
• Relationship Upgrade: They're still arch-enemies, but in "Death in Heaven", they have a long-overdue talk about how much they need each other — including the Doctor getting down on his knees to softly kiss her.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Claims the only way to kill her without her regenerating is to get three snipers to shoot both her hearts and her brain stem at the same time.
• The Reveal: Drops a bombshell on the Doctor in "Dark Water", when she gets frustrated at his inability/refusal to figure out that she's the latest incarnation of the Master.
  12th Doctor: Who are you?
  Missy: You know who I am. I'm Missy.
  12th Doctor: Who's Missy?
  Missy: (sighs) Please, try to keep up. Short for Mistress. Well... I couldn't very well keep calling myself "The Master" now, could I?
• Samus Is a Girl: A variant in that we know her gender before the big reveal about who she really is.
• Self-Serving Memory: Claims the Doctor "abandoned" her, when in fact her previous incarnation threw himself into the fight to have his revenge on Rassilon. This could, perhaps, be a call-forward to her incarnation's death and she's remembering Simm's incarnation seeing her die, alone, while the Doctor "abandoned her" to fight though due to two of them being there, parts of it are fuzzy.
• Shipper on Deck: Zigzags between affirming and averting. In "The Magician's Apprentice" she goes out of her way to try and downplay Clara as being anything more than the Doctor's latest "puppy", yet a major arc related to her character involves her having brought the Doctor and Clara together. In "Hell Bent", Ashildr refers to Missy as "a matchmaker" in this context, though her full rationale for doing this has yet to be explained in detail.
• Shout-Out: She sings "Mickey" (substituting her own name) and floats in on an umbrella towards the end of "Death in Heaven". In "The Magician's Apprentice", she initially contacts UNIT via their "Doctor channel", texting them her rewritten version of "Mickey".
• Slasher Smile: She gives Osgood a magnificent one before killing her.
• Sobriquet Sex Switch: From "the Master" to "Missy", short for "the Mistress".
• Stable Time Loop: Directly kills her previous incarnation, which triggers his regeneration into her.
• Stalker with a Crush:
  • She spends the majority of Series 8 tracking the Doctor's movements. She even goes out of her way to meet with most of the people who died in his recent adventures to ask about him.
  • Appears to be a little bit of this regarding Clara, too, such as at the end of "Flatline".
• Third Law of Gender-Bending: She fully embraces female clothes and makeup, and switches titles to Mistress and Time Lady ("I'm old-fashioned").
• Troll:
  • Seems to be this incarnation's most defining trait. She loves messing with people, pretends to be a droid and even improvises a mnemonic acronym to go with her name, just for the hell of it. This gets decidedly unfunny when she murders Osgood just because the Doctor likes her, and tells him the coordinates for where Gallifrey used to be, convincing him it reemerged from the pocket universe. In all fairness, it did... almost at the end of time itself. She didn't mention that part.
  • And in "The Witch's Familiar", Missy almost tricks the Doctor into killing Clara, currently trapped inside a Dalek, in another decidedly unfunny moment.
• Uncertain Doom:
  • She was allegedly vaporized by the Cyberized Brigadier in the Series 8 finale. It of course doesn't stick, and she's back again in Series 9.
  • She appears to have been Killed Off for Real in "The Doctor Falls". Right after luring her former self into an embrace to skewer him with a blade hidden in her umbrella, he retaliates by frying her with a full blast from the laser screwdriver, enough to disable her ability to regenerate — which was designed for use against the Doctor. She drops dead not long afterward. But just like all those other times the Master/Missy has pulled a Houdini on death, it didn't stick.
• Unexplained Recovery:
  • When Missy returns after being left on Skaro surrounded by Daleks.
  • For once averted in "The Witch's Familiar", actually giving an explanation for how Missy survived being vaporized by the Cyber-Brigadier in "Death in Heaven".
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The Master's regeneration into a female doesn't seem to turn any heads at UNIT. Osgood had already surmised Missy's identity before the Doctor even mentioned it.
• Villain Ball: Even after acknowledging that Osgood being alive is more advantageous, she still kills Osgood, remarking that she (Missy) is "Bananas".
• Villain Decay: Even though she keeps reminding people that she's not good, she appears as little more than a minor nuisance in Series 9's two-part opener; it remains to be seen what happened when she found out that the Doctor and Clara were separated for good and he lost his memories of why he loved her, which spoiled all the fun of Missy's plan to make him miserable (and more like her) by teaming them up!
• Villainous Cheekbones: Apparently, Michelle Gomez herself used them as a selling point.
• Villainous Crush: Makes out with the Doctor when they first encounter each other in their new forms, and continuously flirts with him while enacting her latest Evil Plan.
  Missy: You know who I am. I told you. You felt it. Surely you did.
  The Doctor: Two hearts!
  Missy: And both of them yours.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: She's the one who gave Clara the Doctor's telephone number ("the control freak and the man who should never be controlled"), left an ad in the paper in "Deep Breath", made the Nethersphere in Series 8, and unleashed an army of Cybermen in "Dark Water"/"Death in Heaven".
  Missy: Clara. My Clara. I have chosen well.
• Violent Glaswegian: Is played by a English-Glaswegian woman this time, and is still as kill-happy as ever.
• Walking Spoiler: Learning her full nickname, "The Mistress", gives away that she's the latest incarnation of the Master, and that at least one of the Time Lords has left the pocket universe the Doctor used to save them back in Series 7. It's also almost impossible to discuss anything about series 10 without mentioning her apparent Heel–Face Turn.
• We Used to Be Friends: Her overall plan in series 8 is that she wants to be friends with the Doctor again, like they used to be as children. The problem is that she's so caught up in her previous selves' ways, and is so mentally broken from the events they endured, she doesn't know how to do so beyond dragging the Doctor down to her own level. Series 10 sees her willing to try changing herself instead, with copious amounts of help from the Doctor himself. It's slow going but the desire is there, and the Doctor wants his friend back just as much as she does.
• Woman of Wealth and Taste: She dresses in fancy, Edwardian-style clothes.
• Would Hurt a Child: In "The Lie of the Land", she claims to have once pushed a little girl into a volcano.
• Xanatos Gambit: At the end of the day, her series 8 plan would have ended in her victory. Either the Doctor takes control of her army and conquers the universe, as she wanted, or the Cyber-rain wipes out humanity and she keeps an even bigger army.
• Yandere:
  • More overtly so than previous incarnations: She loves the Doctor, but also kind of wants to kill him and all his friends.
    Missy: Oh, "Clara, Clara, Clara"! You know, I should shoot you in a jealous rage. Now wouldn't that be sexy?
  • You can see the flare of jealousy in Missy's eyes when the Doctor offers Osgood a seat in the TARDIS; her number was up from that point on.
  • She's equally put out when the Doctor calls Davros his greatest enemy instead of her.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Telling the Doctor Gallifrey's location... where it's definitely not at the moment. And gets her own in "The Doctor Falls", thinking she can stab Saxon and stand with the Doctor gets her lasered in the back. She dies in the grass, without hope, without witness, without reward, and this trauma is a big factor as to why her next regeneration is so wrecked.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Kills Dr. Chang when she finally activates the Cyberman army he inadvertently helped her create.

The Spy Master (a.k.a. the "O" Master) (Thirteenth Doctor)

• Always Second Best: One of the more defining traits of this Master is his jealousy towards the Doctor. This becomes magnified tenfold with the reveal of the Doctor's origin as the Timeless Child, because it means that the Master was always doomed to be second-best to his former friend. As the originator of their species, anything unique or special inside the Master comes directly from the Doctor herself. This revelation led "Agent O" to destroy both Gallifrey and the Time Lords as a whole.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's as yet unclear where exactly in the Master's timeline he fits in, especially since Missy had gone through a Heel–Face Turn and was specifically stated to have no hope of regenerating again — though a video put up on the show's official channel documenting the history of the Master confirms that the Saxon Master did regenerate into Missy and highly implied this incarnation comes after her. Then again, Unexplained Recovery is basically the Master's Signature Move, and it's lampshaded numerous times by his previous incarnation that Joker Immunity is to be the default assumption. It's implied during "Spyfall, Part 2" that he is indeed the incarnation after Missy — he makes an offhanded comment that he feels that murdering is what he was born to be doing, vaguely alluding to Missy's attempt to reform. Eventually, the 2021 Annual outright confirms he succeeded Missy. During a feature showing correspondence between the Doctor and the Master, she brings up the time he became a woman and almost turned good. His response? "She spent too long in your company, Doctor — a mistake I don't intend to repeat." However, the Big Finish Missy series has her encountering a benevolent future incarnation of herself called the Lumiat (played by Gina McKee) who says that when Missy was killed, she used an Elysian field to distil all her good qualities into a new, separate body, so there may be Literal Split Personality in play after Missy's regeneration. "The Power of the Doctor" clarifies things somewhat, with him making references to his killing of Tegan's aunt in "Logopolis" and becoming a cat person in "Survival" respectively, seemingly establishing that this incarnation is at least later in his timeline than the Ainley incarnation.
  • In Big Finish “Call Me Master” he mentions shooting himself in the back, implying he remembers the event and it made him unstable.
• Attention Whore: Outright admits that some of his villainous schemes are carried out for the sole purpose of attracting the Doctor's attention.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • As angry as he seems to be at the Doctor, he wouldn't be the Master without some affection for his old friend, as there's plenty of moments in "Spyfall, Part 1" (where nobody can see him and he doesn't have to lie) where he clearly finds her endearing.
  • His twisted behaviour in "The Timeless Children" is the equivalent of pulling the Doctor's pigtails, as he's so angry at what the Time Lords did to her, but is also a Green-Eyed Monster who feels betrayed, so he scapegoats her instead. Sacha Dhawan confirmed on Instagram that the Master still loves the Doctor.
  • It's even implied that he destroyed Gallifrey because he couldn't stand what the Time Lords did to her. In a way, he did this whole thing for the Doctor!
  • At one point he warns the Doctor to leave or he'll utterly destroy her. In the moment, he seems sincere and even hopeful she'll listen.
• Ax-Crazy: The inevitable result of being a Psychopathic Manchild with a Hair-Trigger Temper. He outright admits he's addicted to killing people for no reason.
• Badass Boast: He uses one to utterly dismiss the Doctor when she offers herself in exchange for a room full of innocent civilians.
  The Doctor: Let them go. Then you can have me.
  The Master: I've got you anyway.
• Bad Boss: In order to demonstrate the regenerative capabilities of the Cybermen he created, he orders one of them to shoot and kill another.
• Beard of Evil: Grows one out from stubble over the course of "Spyfall, Part 2" after the reveal of his true identity (including his 77-year trip back to 2020), suggesting more time passed for the Master than for the Doctor while he was hunting her. He's clean-shaven again in "The Power of the Doctor", at least when he's not Grigori Rasputin.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: "The Power of the Doctor" suggests that this Master was (or at least impersonated) Grigori Rasputin.
• Big Bad: The most recurring villain of the Thirteenth Doctor's run, which features his massacre of Gallifrey in Series 12 and his efforts to steal her body in the centenary special.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Shares the role of Arc Villain with the Lone Cyberman in Series 12. However, he's disappointed by Ashad's generic plan and kills him, taking the Cyberium for himself to create an army of CyberMasters.
• Big Bad Friend: The Doctor befriended him as O in one of her past male incarnations before he revealed himself.
• Break the Haughty: This incarnation's debut had the Master possibly at his most grandiose and arrogant, fully self-assured that he had all the winning cards in his hands... then the Doctor proceeded to drop his perception filter and leaves him to be located and captured by the Nazis. When he returns to the present day 77 years later, the Master is clearly shaken, disturbed, and possibly traumatized by what he experienced during that time frame before he escaped.
• I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: Does an Addled Addict nose sniff before telling the Doctor MI6 has a surprisingly good staff canteen.
• Casting Gag:
  • Dhawan played Waris Hussein, a regular director in the show's early days, in An Adventure in Space and Time.
  • "The Power of the Doctor" sees him disguised as Rasputin as part of his latest evil scheme. This isn't the first time a character played by Dhawan shows up in the Russian royal court.
• The Chosen One: Of the dark variety. One of the main plot points established during the Twelfth Doctor’s run was the prophecy of a dreaded Hybrid who would end up destroying Gallifrey, which the Master ended up doing. Unfortunately, the Time Lords didn’t see it coming^note The prophecy in itself was talking about a Dalek-Time Lord hybrid, while the truth is that it actually might have been the Doctor themself because unbeknownst to them, all of them were technically hybrids, due to being Shobogans fused with the DNA of the Timeless Child. Ironically, it was the reveal of the Time Lords' true nature that lead to the Master fulfilling the prophecy in the first place.
• Continuity Nod:
  • His laugh and penchant for clapping his hands together is strongly reminiscent of the Saxon Master.
  • Like Missy before him, this Master is once again disappointed that the Doctor doesn't "keep up" during The Reveal.
  • Uses a Tissue Compression Eliminator and reveals himself to the Doctor by presenting her with a victim inside a box, just like in the Master's very first appearance.
  • Like Saxon, he likes it when the Doctor says his name.
  • Recognises the four-beat signal the Doctor sends out in Paris, the rhythm of a Time Lord's hearts that haunted the Saxon Master.
  • He vaguely alludes to Missy's attempt to turn a new leaf twice — first stating that killing is what he's meant to do, and then openly questioning why the Doctor would think he'd ever stop.
  • Reminisces about "assassinating Presidents", referencing "The Deadly Assassin" and possibly what he did to Rassilon, as well as his murder of President Winters.
  • Like Missy, he creates an army of Cybermen from corpses, and imbues them with abilities that previous members of the species have never demonstrated before. She gave them to the Doctor as a gift, while he taunts his Doctor that they were made from her. Both 12 and 13 look vaguely queasy in reaction.
  • He gets in some needling over his previous history with the Brigadier and Tegan's Aunt Vanessa; Ace retorts by pointing out the time he turned part-cat.
  • He has a similar plan to the Roberts Master, aiming to pull a Grand Theft Me on the Doctor. Unlike that time, he actually briefly succeeds.
• Death Seeker: Seems legitimately disappointed when he kills Ashad and the Death Particle within him doesn't activate. After the Doctor foils his Grand Theft Me plan, the Master seems to view continuing as himself to be a Fate Worse than Death.
• Desecrating the Dead: Kills every Time Lord on Gallifrey, then turns their corpses into a new breed of Cybermen that can regenerate.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: He desperately craves affection from the Doctor, but unlike Missy or even Saxon, feels so insecure like she’s above him now, just wants to spread the pain, and rubs it in that she couldn’t save him, saying he has no better nature after Missy got shot in the back.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He discovered a truth about Time Lord history connected to the mysterious "Timeless Child" that led him to raze Gallifrey again. The Doctor even seems to agree that he was somewhat right to do it, although he refuses to tell her what he found out initially. Ultimately subverted as while he was genuinely enraged at what the Time Lords did to her, he makes it all about him, because he feels that the friendship they shared as children and tried to rebuild as Twelve/Missy is diminished by her being so much more important..
• Evil Counterpart:
  • He even spins around and flaps his hands like the Eleventh Doctor did. Jodie Whittaker noted in an interview that, like the Thirteenth Doctor, this Master changes his mood on a pin. For instance, in "Spyfall", just as the Doctor switches within seconds from annoyance at having to kneel in front of him to straight up gleeful mockery when she figures out there are definite gaps in his knowledge of the Kasaavin, this Master switches numerous times in that episode from calm and calculating to loud and angry on a dime. Additionally, he's very much the Psychopathic Manchild to her Womanchild and even shares her propensity for Puppy-Dog Eyes and Thinking Out Loud. He even has a Northern accent like 13 does (just as 12 and Missy both had a Scottish accent in common) and wearing trousers that don't reach. These versions also share similar death seeker tendencies. On the other hand, his belief that the Doctor is something more powerful and important than he is has led him to conclude they aren't the same after all.
  • He is also this with the War Doctor as both cause the genocide of their race upon learning a horrific secret: Rassilion's end game for the War Doctor and the Time Lords' true origins for the Master. But the War Doctor is a Pragmatic Hero who was almost forced into killing his own people for the sake of the universe, while the Master's motives are Evil Is Petty and made sure the Time Lords would die out should any survive his assault on Gallifrey.
  • He becomes this trope very literally in "The Power of the Doctor" when he forces the Doctor to regenerate into him.
• Evil Evolves: He seems to be heading in this direction. His plans are more complicated (while also being more slipshod) than Saxon's, and while Saxon was more straight-up unhinged, this incarnation is leaning more toward unpredictable; it's shown on several occasions that the Doctor has no idea what he's going to do next, and his constant, random vacillating between calmness and rage visibly throws her off her game.
• Evil Gloating:
  • Well, naturally. His glee and smugness when he details how he outwitted the Doctor by performing a Kill and Replace on the real "O" is palpable.
  • Works against him during "Spyfall", with his gloating about how Daniel Barton and the Kasaavin will do his dirty work for him before he eliminates them getting recorded by the Doctor and replayed when the Kasaavin army's about to attack her for foiling Barton's scheme, causing them to turn on him.
  • His whole Rasputin plot culminates in this — it literally has no other purpose.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He'll kill a person and then joke about it. In fact, on one occasion he was disappointed he didn't think of a Bond One-Liner until after he killed the subject in question. Said one liner was the funniest joke in the episode.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • This Master is so dead-set on opposing the Doctor that he'll even disguise himself as a Nazi to get at her. The Doctor notes that this is low even for him. It is also for this reason that he refuses to tell her what he found out about the Timeless Child so finding out will be as hard for her as it was for him.
  • Later, it is revealed that upon learning that the Doctor is the Timeless Child, and thus the source of the Time Lords' regenerative ability, he wiped them all out simply out of sheer spite for the fact that he couldn't stand the idea that his former friend is so much more important and powerful than him.
  • It is revealed that not only did he wipe out Gallifrey with a modified genetic bomb across time and space, he added a modifier that any Time Lord that escaped the initial blast zone would be rendered sterile, ensuring the end of the Time Lords one way or another.
• Evil Laugh: Sacha Dhawan must have taken notes from John Simm's performance.
• False Reassurance: After taking a crowd hostage, he starts focusing on a cowering woman and demanding to know if she'd moved, then starts laughing and apologises for his "mistake". Then he offhandedly "dolls" her up anyway.
• Faux Affably Evil: Heavy on the "faux" with this incarnation. It takes barely anything for him to drop the façade and reveal the snarling murderous bastard underneath.
• Freudian Excuse: Possibly. While he doesn't directly mention his attempts to redeem himself when he was Missy, and questions why he would ever want to stop killing, it's heavily implied that he was deeply traumatised by what he found on Gallifrey and lashed out at them in revenge.
• The Gadfly: Loves getting under people's skin any way he can, holding nothing sacred.
• Gender Bender: If he is indeed the incarnation that came after Missy, then he's back to being male once again. Ironically with the Doctor now being the female one.
• Genocide from the Inside: Destroys Gallifrey for real, leaving it a broken, burnt-out shell. For extra measure, he arranged that the attack that killed most of the Time Lords would render any survivors infertile.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: While the Master has never been sane to begin with, it's implied that what he discovered about the Time Lords drove him even further over the edge. Not because he thought it was unethical, but finding out that his worst enemy was the source of his people’s greatest gift and has always been and always will be his superior was a tremendous blow to ego.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: How he found out the Awful Truth. Judging by what he says to the Doctor, he'd just been messing around in the Matrix for giggles. And then he learned about the Timeless Child.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • At least part of his motivation is due to the discovery that the Time Lords became what they are thanks to the Timeless Child... who is actually the Doctor. He can't stand that everything he and his species is ultimately originates with his former best friend and always has. He later attempts to steal her body in order to become the Doctor.
  • Also seen when he immediately singles out Yaz as the Doctor's favourite, and as we know, he cannot play second fiddle.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Possibly the most easily-angered portrayal of the Master to date. He lampshades this when he says that the bomb he had planted on the plane has a short fuse before mentioning he can relate to that. With each humiliation or defeat he comes back even worse.
• Hero Killer: One of the few incarnations of the Master to be directly responsible for killing the Doctor; namely, he struck Thirteen with a laser weapon, forcing her to regenerate.
• High on Homicide: He openly admits to the Doctor that he's somewhat addicted to killing people for little reason, claiming that it gives him a "buzz" in both of his hearts.
• If I Can't Have You…: If I can’t BE you. After he’s returned to his own body and the Doctor is restored, his last act before dying is to kill the 13th Doctor, stating that if he can’t be the Doctor, neither can she.
• Incoming Ham: When the O persona is cast away, the ham increases! When he returns in "Ascension of the Cybermen", he gets the hammiest entrance in the episode.
• It's All About Me: He hates the Time Lords for what they did to the Doctor, but makes it all about how he feels inferior to her now. Even she has enough by that point, and angrily shoves him.
• I Just Want to Be You: He attempts to pull a Grand Theft Me on the Doctor in order to replace her, and upon it being reversed, he's left despairing at being forced to go back to being himself.
• Kneel Before Zod: Threatens to keep murdering hostages unless the Doctor does this. On top of that, he forces her to call him by name, which puts a very specific type of subtext on her submission.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Thirteenth Doctor's run becomes much darker once he shows up.
• Last of His Kind: Along with the Doctor, as a result of the razing of Gallifrey — an act he claims to have carried out himself as the result of discovering an Awful Truth about the "Timeless Child".
• Laughably Evil: He is a monster, no doubt, but he makes such hilarious jokes, you wouldn't be able to hate him.
• Leitmotif: A really terrifying one, with a melody that could have been a more positive, heroic theme, albeit with the notes made more aggressive and menacing, representing this incarnation's relapse into evil after an attempt to reform as Missy.
• Locked Out of the Loop: He's livid when he discovers that the Time Lords withheld the truth of the Doctor's past — enough to wipe them all out. That the Doctor herself doesn't remember said past is secondary to his latest tantrum...
• Meaningful Name: Mentions he specifically took the identity of MI6 agent "O" in expectation of the Doctor's Oh, Crap! reaction once she finally discovered him.
• Mood-Swinger: Not that the Master has ever been a model of stability, but this incarnation swings back and forth between cool, composed schemer and shouty, Axe-Crazy lunatic with alarming frequency. He can go from a Large Ham Laughably Evil jokester to an ice cold No-Nonsense Nemesis just as quickly too.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Apparently annihilated the civilization of the Time Lords after finding out the truth of the Timeless Child — something even the Daleks never managed at the height of their power. "The Timeless Children" implies that his victims never even had time to regenerate.
• Oh, Crap!: Explicitly took the identity of someone codenamed "O" to serve as the punchline when the Doctor recognizes him and says the Trope Namer.
• OOC Is Serious Business:
  • In his holographic message explaining his destruction of Gallifrey and why he did it, he has a completely serious demeanour in contrast to his usual Psychopathic Manchild behaviour, only breaking slightly at the end when he refuses to tell the Doctor what he discovered about the Timeless Child.
  • His Death Seeker moment when he admits he'd have been okay with the Death Particle annihilating everything including himself is disturbing on its own, but all the more so when set against the character's long, long history of trying to survive at all costs — a sign of how mentally broken he's become.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: He destroys Gallifrey — but considering their track record of genocide, manipulation of entire civilizations and torturing him and the Doctor, it's hard to hold it against him.
• Pretty Boy: Floppy hair, Puppy-Dog Eyes, pouty lips... The Guardian recaps don't call him "hot camp Master" for nothing.
• Psychopathic Manchild:
  • Gleefully reveals the man he killed, shrunk and then kept in a matchbox for years to the Doctor before, giggling, declaring "I have had a LOT of fun!"
  • He takes great pleasure in murdering members of a crowd he's demanded not move, such as murdering a couple just so he can show their shrunken corpses to the rest of them, while mentioning how they're such a happy couple.
  • He acts like a schoolboy around the Doctor, what with the manic clapping and "not telling you!"
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Sacha Dhawan called him a more melancholy Master, and even with a Hair-Trigger Temper he looks seconds away from crying a good chunk of the time.
• Racial Transformation: The Master's first obviously non-white-appearing incarnation onscreen (Roger Delgado was mixed-race between European ethnicities, specifically British of Spanish/Belgian descent). Becomes a minor plot point in "Spyfall, Part 2", with the Doctor confused how he managed to worm his way into being a Nazi officer with his current appearance. He handwaves this with a perception filter, which she later disables after spreading false info that he's a British spy, leading to his arrest.
• Redemption Failure: If he is indeed the incarnation suceeding Missy, the redemption that she underwent at the end of her life never stood a chance of sticking once he discovered the revelation that the Doctor is the Timeless Child. This caused him to go on a rampage and slaughter all the Time Lords on Gallifrey, and he ultimately regressed back to the Master's old villanous ways.
• Revisiting the Roots:
  • Unlike his predecessors in the new series, this Master doesn't just use laser weapons, but also the Tissue Compression Eliminator from the classic series (in an episode that aired the day before the 49th anniversary of the Master's first appearance and use of the TCE, no less). He ruminates on his past victories too. Jodrell Bank^note The Pharos Project in "Logopolis", though it's not identified as Jodrell Bank in that story., hijacking the Matrix, assassinating presidents... Also lampshaded.
    The Master: It's a classic.
  • He is also the first incarnation of the Master to possess a Beard of Evil for the majority of his run since the incarnation played by Gordon Tipple. In the classic series, said beard was considered to be a distinctive characteristic of the Master.
  • He performs the Hypnotic Eyes used by Delgado too.
• Sanity Slippage: It's been a given for decades that the Master is nuts, but after regenerating from the partially-reformed Missy, it seems like the brake lines have been cut.
  The Master: When I kill them, Doctor, it gives me a little buzz, right here in the hearts. It's like— how, how would I describe it? It's like... it's like knowing I'm in the right place, doing what I was made for.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Defeated and trapped in a golden tooth by The Toymaker, per his own words, sometime before the events of "The Giggle". Naturally, it's implied at the end of the special that he will return.
• Secondary-Color Nemesis: Has a thing for purple◊, which appears to be one of the few things carried over from Missy.
• Shout-Out: Notes his TARDIS that's disguised as a house flying through the sky is a bit Wicked Witch of the West.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Completely absent from all Series 12 promotional material prior to the airing of part one of "Spyfall". Sacha Dhawan was not included on released cast lists, and scenes in either trailer where he is present were represented by shots where he's either hidden or difficult to spot. Even as "O", he was absent.
• The Slow Path: Thanks to the Doctor stealing his TARDIS and leaving him a captive of Nazis, he has to spend 77 years getting out of the 20th century and back to the current events and his plans with the Kasaavin. He isn't happy about it.
  "So, I've just had the most infuriating 77 years of my life."
• Small Name, Big Ego: Possibly the most egotistical and pretentious of all the Masters.
• Smug Snake: He's an arrogant and self-absorbed Slimeball that gets intensely giddy of his malevolence.
• Suddenly Shouting:
  • Starts shouting at the Doctor when she tries sonicking the cockpit bomb, apparently offended she'd think he wouldn't sonic-proof it.
    The Master: Did you really think I wouldn't make that sonic-proof, Doctor?! Come on!
  • Again when he initially orders one of the Cybermen he created to shoot and kill another in his normal tone of voice, then yells at the top of his lungs when said Cyberman initially hesitates.
    The Master: [points at one Cyberman, then another] Shoot him. [first Cyberman hesitates] SHOOT HIM!
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Finding out his oldest friend is the Timeless Child made Missy’s fragile redemption regress into an incarnation that is deeply hurting and angry, for both himself and the Doctor, and he razed Gallifrey to the ground, even desecrating the corpses to make them a mix (hybrid if you will) of Cybermen and Time Lords. He even lies to make the Doctor still think she couldn't save Missy, saying he has no better nature.
• Too Kinky to Torture: He makes a sound like he was enjoying Ashad choking him, and he has a giant smile when the Doctor goes feral and shoves him to the ground. He also is positively giddy when getting captured by UNIT.
• Tragic Villain: Neither Missy or Saxon were all that stable, but they also very much didn't want to die. This version, on the other hand, is utterly wrecked and clearly wants it to end, or at the very least to stop being the Master anymore. There's also an element of selfishness to his tragedy, as he feels insecure about his friendship with the Doctor so ends up making her pain all about him.
• Unexplained Recovery:
  • As usual. No explanation is given for how they survived after Missy got shot with a blast that was supposed to make them Deader than Dead. There are various possibilities as to how Missy might have got a new body, but it's not addressed in the show (though he still has two hearts and a Time Lord's slow aging).
    • Big Finish's Missy: Series 2 provides a possible explanation, but it's hardly an outright confirmation. Missy purges all of her "badness" using Time Lord technology after being killed by the Saxon Master, creating a kind and memory addled Time Lady known as "the Lumiat." After adventuring with Missy for a short time, Missy quickly becomes disgusted by this good version of herself and (in a very Master-like move) kills the Lumiat to get this "phase" over with. She comments that regeneration is always a lottery for them, and that there's no guarantee she'll stay good in the next life.
  • Not from death, but "The Timeless Children" completely glosses over how he got out of the realm of the Kasaavin. They're not even mentioned.
• Villainous Legacy: His genocide of the Time Lords and discovery in the Matrix indirectly caused Tecteun to unleash the Flux (though she had indicated it was long-planned anyway). The genocide in particular also casted a shadow extending throughout the Fifteenth Doctor's tenure, having left the Time Lords infertile, leading the Rani to try and revive Omega.
• Walking Spoiler: Like his predecessor (in series chronology, at least), he is introduced under a cover identity but it's virtually impossible to discuss him without disclosing that he's the Master.
• Wham Line: When the Doctor first spots a hole in his "O" cover story, the Master instantly drops the bubbly voice he was using and says Got me... in a cold and contemptious tone.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: The end of "Spyfall" reveals that before the events of the episode, he went back to Gallifrey and killed everyone on it, burning the Capitol to the ground on the way out. For his part, he claims that finding out the truth about the Time Lords' origins and the Timeless Child meant that he couldn't leave them alive in good conscience.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: His friendship with the Doctor, the thought betrayal of "The Doctor Falls", and finding out what the Doctor is and what the Time Lords did to them, have left this regeneration completely Axe-Crazy and a broken Death Seeker, who would like nothing more than for the Doctor to kill him.