After the debate in The War Games In Colour thread last month, I figured hey, why not stoke the flames again!
Are The War Chief and The Master the same person?
I’m only going to be looking at textual sources and ignoring anything metatextual. Anything from any published Doctor Who media intented to take place in universe is fair game, anything that writers have said or things on those lines won’t count.
Character Similarities - The War Chief and The Master are fairly similar characters both in personality, and the way they function in the plot. Manipulative, knows The Doctor their past and tries to get him on their side, etc.
Music Choices - The War Games in Colour uses The Master’s Theme for The War Chief multiple times.
Two Renegades - Doctor Who and The Doomsday Weapon (the Colony in Space novelisation), recalls the events of The War Games, and establishes that only two renegade time lords have ever left Gallifrey in stolen TARDIS’, implication being these are The Doctor and The Master/War Chief
Two Time Lord Foes - The Three Doctors’ novelisation states that The Doctor has only ever faced two time lords, The Master, and Omega
The War King - The character of The War King from the EDAs is very heavily implied, and clearly intended to be an incarnation of The Master. It’s also mentioned that he keeps an unfolded hypercube as a relic of his past, a reference to The War Games. His name is also obviously similar to The War Chief
That Transphobe’s Master - In The Home Guard, a pre-delgado incarnation of The Master makes reference to ‘a grander plan that was being served by these events’, which could be read as referencing The War Games
Arguments Against:
More Renegades and Three Time Lord Foes - Later stories reveal more renegades that left Gallifrey such as The Rani, but even at the time, these both overlook The Monk (unless you choose to believe that The War Chief, The Master, and The Monk are all the same, but that doesn’t work with later Monk canon or characterisation)
The Doctor Who RPG - The Legions of Death, an adventure for The Doctor Who Role Playing Game, features a regenerated War Chief as a primary antagonist, the game master is encouraged to make players think the villian may be the master, but pull out the rug from under them and reveal that it’s The War Chief a ‘similar but different’ time lord. In The Master Sourcebook, it also mentions an off screen story where The War Chief and The Master teamed up against Three. That all said, this RPG does also say The Master and The Monk are the same person, so up to you if you want to count it, additionally, as a TTRPG, the canonicity of adventures you can play is inherrently up for debate.
VNAs - Exodus features The War Chief and implies that The Doctor hasn’t encountered him for quite some time, implying he hasn’t met him since The War Games.
Masterful - Masterful was released as the 50th anniversary of The Master (counting from Terror of the Autons), and features all surviving actors who’d played The Master at that Time (except that transphobe), and references Delgado and Ainsley’s masters, but not The War Cheif
Magnus???:
Magnus is a character first introduced in the comic Flashback as a Time Lord The Doctor had known from his time in The Academy. There’s some ambiguity as to whether Magnus became The Master, The War Chief, or both, and because it’s involving an ambiguous character, I’ve decided to list anything relating to him seperately
Flashback - In Flashback, we’re introduced to Magnus, and learn that The Doctor warned him to be careful with his regenerations. This implies that Magnus is The Master with his proclivity to use them up quickly, leading to his attempts to get new cycles multiple times.
Goth Opera - In the novel Goth Opera, Ruath lists some of The Doctor’s fellow students at The Acadamy: Mortimus (The Monk), The Rani, and Magnus. Not including The Master on this list would be strange, thus Implying that Magnus is The Master
Divided Loyalties - In Divided Loyalties, we see a nightmare that includes Magnus and Koschei (an established name for the acadamy era Master) as separate figures, in fact we see Koschei looking up to Magnus
Goth Opera (again) - In the audio adaptation of the novel Goth Opera, Ruath lists some of The Doctor’s fellow students at The Academy: Mortimus (The Monk), The Rani, Koschei, and ‘Magnus’. Including The Master as a separate figure from Magnus.
So, there you have it, you’ve heard the arguments, now what do you think?
Was it the intention at the time that Delgado was the War Chief? No.
Can people “in charge” retcon it into existence? Yes.
Do I think that’s a good idea? Not really, but given a really, really good story that explains all I could definitely change my mind as to if it’s a good idea.
(It has to be a hell of a lot better than “Somehow Palpatine returned” though )
Against. And for me, a lot of it is down to the show never confirming them as the same, or even making the suggestion that they’re the same. The expanded media (and a retelling like TWGIC I’d include in there as well) is free to make whatever decisions they’d like, but when it comes to a debate as to if something is one way or the other, I turn to the show, which I consider to be the highest authority. This of course doesn’t apply to things created outside of the show, but both the Master and the War Chief are from the show itself.
I see them as two different characters. Production wise they were clearly introduced as different characters, and to me that’s all that really matters. What does it even accomplish if they are the same character? Nothing really changes narratively, it doesn’t make the Masters interactions with the Doctor any different, it’s a theory that exists because it can and no other reason in my opinion.
Personally, I have to admit that when I first watched The War Games I fully thought The War Chief was The Master, and expected it to be revealed at some point during the serial. It was only when I watched Terror of the Autons that I realised that was never intended to be the case.
I wouldn’t say it’s canon, but I think people who say there’s absolutely no basis for this theory are being a little harsh. If there was no basis for it, would we even be having this debate?
I want to point out that the original soundtrack also uses a somewhat similar theme to the modern Master theme, with the four beats of the drum. That’s part of what led me to believe they might be the same character in the first place.
Obviously the War Chief nor the Monk are the Master, and the Monk is the War Chief!/j
I think the part that makes the theory hold the most water for me is that Hulke and Dicks themselves were the ones to initiate the idea, and you know, they created the character, it’s their guy, if Terrance says it’s the Master then like sure I’ll accept that. But of course also, he later wrote against that theory himself (even if it might’ve been due to editor’s wishes) so you could dismiss it quite easily too. And then Magnus has since become relatively established to be the War Chief, and it’d be silly for Magnus to be Koshei if you ask me.
So as it has been decided by Divived Loyalties, it’s probably the Toymaker’s fault and I’ll use that offhand line from The Giggle about jigsawwed histories to excuse every single inconsistency in this theory instead of one of the more fun and original inconsistency-explainers.
I don’t accept the word of writers if it wasn’t reflected in their episode as written. So even if Hulke and Dicks said so after the fact, it didn’t make it to screen.
It’s much more interesting to me that there are multiple renegade time lords like The Multitude, The Corsair, The Master, The War Chief, and The Monk/Nun out there. It informs how other Time Lord’s view The Doctor and more characters is more fun than less.
No. I think they are two different Characters.
Do I tell people otherwise if they chose to believe that Theory? No. They can and should believe it if they want to, there is a base in it, and it’s clear if we look outside the Show, I am sure when creating the Master, the War Chief was a big Inspiration. That said for me while it seems like there are more Arguments for than against that Theory, looking at the Story “The War Games” itself, it would feel wonky.
I am aware of retroactively continuity and Who is no Stranger to it (Two Hearts, the Doctor being an Alien etc.) that also said just looking how both Characters interact in War Games, does it feel like those two Characters were best Friends? Not really. And I think that’s the big trouble for me to accept both as one and the same, Degaldos Master was very much introduced as somebody who the Doctor had a past relationship with. Does the War Chief have that? Not really. Or at least not a very close relationship, which I would expect with any Pairing of the Master and the Doctor.
That is not even mentioning that I just feel like it would be boring. Why make this Universe feel smaller? I just don’t feel like, for me, it adds much to the Story.
When it comes to the Time Lords, I’m usually in favor of any interpretation that provides them with depth. Therefore, I’ve always thought it was two different Time Lords. There again, I also always mistake the War Chief and the War Lord in the War Games, so maybe my opinion is WarThless.
I just finished Divided Loyalties though and that explicitly says he was a different guy to The Master and that’s more than good enough for me. One degree of removal from “official canon status” (Wartever that’s supposed to mean) is good enough for me to enshrine it and call it a day.
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