I cannot remember where I read this. It's probably not canonical, but I don't read much non-canon DW material. It might be from the novelization of Deadly Assassin. But, I seem to recall some source indicating that the Master was burned and deformed during his alliance with the Daleks. That the Daleks turned on him. He managed to escape barely and was unable to regenerate. Of course, Delgado's last story revealed he had an arrangement with the Daleks.
Has the Doctor been a Woman before?
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I cannot remember where I read this. It's probably not canonical, but I don't read much non-canon DW material. It might be from the novelization of Deadly Assassin. But, I seem to recall some source indicating that the Master was burned and deformed during his alliance with the Daleks. That the Daleks turned on him. He managed to escape barely and was unable to regenerate. Of course, Delgado's last story revealed he had an arrangement with the Daleks.
Originally, Time of the Doctor was going to establish there was something about being on Trenzalore that prevented the Doctor from regenerating. But after creating the War Doctor Moffat came to the realization that counting Tennant's hand job regeneration means there's been twelve regenerations, Moffat decided to bring the regeneration limit back since it's a canonical precedented way to prevent regeneration.
You can tell the whole thing wasn't planned. Up until then Moffat and RTD before him were doing their damndest to avoid mentioning the limit, to the point we got that whole 507 thing when Matt Smith appeared on SJA. And of course, the Doctor was still capable of regenerating only three episodes prior in Nightmare in Silver.
You're thinking of "Legacy of the Daleks." A novel in the Eighth Doctor range wherein Susan is captured by the Delgado Master, she fights him and uses the TCE against him while he's holding a Dalek weapon which causes his decayed form. So the book posited that the Delgado Master and the Pratt/Beevers master were the same person. My understanding is that the book wasn't well liked at the time for a lot of what it did, and was summarily ignored. (That the Daleks never appeared again in the EDA's helped this.) Since then, I think it's "fan assumption" they're different people because of the intention for the Delgado Master to be killed off without regenerating. Big Finish have made them separate people, with a non-decayed Beevers having "appeared" in the audios. There was a recent Delgado Master/Twelve comic in Doctor Who Magazine that was meant to be his regeneration story, but it doesn't confirm who he turns into as far as I recall, just that he regenerates and so isn't this version. I believe BF also have MacQueen be the one who burns Beevers.
Oddly enough, according to the TARDIS wiki, the Target novelization of Deadly Assassin has this to say: "The Master regenerated into his thirteenth incarnation after a life of constant pressure and danger, in addition to using some bodies as disguises."
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No, I never read that book. But, I bet it developed that storyline from wherever I heard it. I wish I knew where, but it predates that book, which I looked up and it was published in 1998. It wasn't just a fan theory but darn if I can't remember.
I suspect what you're thinking of is the 1980's Doctor Who RPG by FASA. It reads, in part:
"The Master's alliance with the Daleks, however, almost cost him his life. He promised the Daleks that he could trick the Earth Empire and Draconia into a bitter, bloody war, leaving the Galaxy weakened for a Dalek invasion. When the Doctor exposed his plot, the Master fled. Enraged by his betrayal and failure, the Daleks pursued him, caught up with him, and imprisoned him in a time corridor. In order to escape, the Master was forced to destroy his own TARDIS, and he was horribly injured in the process. Since he had gone through eleven previous regenerations, he had reached the end of his natural cycle, but the Master refused to accept death."
Of course, this same RPG entry said the Master had also previously been the Meddling Monk and the War Chief, so I wouldn't put much stock into it.
"The Master's alliance with the Daleks, however, almost cost him his life. He promised the Daleks that he could trick the Earth Empire and Draconia into a bitter, bloody war, leaving the Galaxy weakened for a Dalek invasion. When the Doctor exposed his plot, the Master fled. Enraged by his betrayal and failure, the Daleks pursued him, caught up with him, and imprisoned him in a time corridor. In order to escape, the Master was forced to destroy his own TARDIS, and he was horribly injured in the process. Since he had gone through eleven previous regenerations, he had reached the end of his natural cycle, but the Master refused to accept death."
Of course, this same RPG entry said the Master had also previously been the Meddling Monk and the War Chief, so I wouldn't put much stock into it.
The Monk wasn't nearly evil enough to be the Master, and he was supposed to have come from the generation after the Doctor's and never to have met him before. But I'm partial to the idea of the War Chief being the Master, although the character's co-creator Terrance Dicks asserted otherwise in Timewyrm: Exodus.
Divided Loyalties by Gary Russel indicates that the Monk, the Master, and the War Chief (with six others) were a close group of rebellious Time Lord acolytes with the Doctor, called the Deca. The full list includes Drax, the Rani, Vansell (appeared in a couple of audios), Jelpax (never heard of again), and Rallon and Millenia, who were pivotal Divided Loyalties' story involving the Toymaker.
The Faction Paradox spin-off and (I think) the Eighth Doctor novels go with the War Chief being an earlier incarnation of The Master. Here's a timeline of The Master's TV, audio, novel, and comic incarnations that one of the Faction Paradox authors put together on their Tumblr.
https://doctornolonger.tumblr.com/image/162745691773
I get tired of the tendency to assume that every single member of this society that's been around for billions of years comes from the same generation and knows all the others personally. It doesn't really make sense.
Plus, the last shot of Deadly Assassin was intended at the time to show the Master starting to regenerate, without committing to a new actor. Keeper of Traken ignored that in favour of making Beevers look like the Asassin Master, but now we've got the Beevers audios it makes a vague sense if Pratt regenerated into an initially healthy Beevers, but the regeneration didn't last, with Beevers then degenerating back long before Traken.
That's interesting. I didn't play that game, but it sounds so much like my vague memory that it must've originated from that somehow--maybe second hand. Thanks for sharing because I was really wondering where I picked that up.
Hm. I always assumed that Pratt and Beevers were just playing the same mask character, like the various Davros actors. Having two different incarnations decay in the same way seems implausible.
I don't think he even made it to a healthy Beevers. He just didn't have enough energy to get all the way there. He went from a 90% dead Pratt to an around 60-70% dead Beevers.
Come to think of it, how many times has the same Doctor Who character been played by multiple actors, discounting Time Lord regenerations or child/adult castings like Amelia/Amy Pond? I mean a character who's supposed to have a single consistent appearance but is recast over the course of the series. I can't seem to think of any other than Davros and possibly the Pratt/Beevers Master (since I think it's far too literal-minded to assume two different actors wearing the same horror makeup are meant to be different regenerations in-universe).
Elizabeth I?
Well, there was Hamish Wilson as Jamie in The Mind Robber but that was because Frazer Hines got chicken pox and they had to do a last-minute rewrite of the story to explain Wilson's appearance.
I do feel like there was some character that returned years later during the classic series but played by a different actor but I can't seem recall who.
I do feel like there was some character that returned years later during the classic series but played by a different actor but I can't seem recall who.
If only someone else had played the First Doctor as well
Well, I was limiting it to recasting during the classic series (not regeneration related) because that seemed to be the discussion at hand. But, of course, Bradley as well.If only someone else had played the First Doctor as well
That would count.
No, that doesn't count because the change was explained in-story. I'm looking for examples of the more common type of TV/movie recasting, where the actor changes but the character is presumed to be unchanged in-story. The equivalent of Saavik in Star Trek, Jennifer in Back to the Future, or Rhodey or Fandral in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
If only someone else had played the First Doctor as well
Oh, yes, of course, that would count -- how could I forget?
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