I love the War Master range so much. And yet, I’ve never seen anyone hypothesise a timeline for this incarnation. Then again, the Master’s timeline is a very complicated thing to begin with.
So here, with the many boxsets I’ve listened to and wiki pages read, I’ve attempted to create a chronological timeline of the enigmatic War Master.
Please be aware, I haven’t listened to everything featuring the War Master (though that’s a goal) and there is a massive table in the middle with everything I have trouble placing. There are several stories that do explicitly lead into each other, so I’ve done my best to give appropriate context. This document is also spoiler free. Mostly.
You’re also more than welcome to leave comments if you have your own input/headcanon.
There’s also a MIRO link if you want pictures
I can give a bit of help, but it’ll create massive spoilers for Whistle and I’ll Come to You, from the latest boxset.
Spoilers under cut:
Summary
The Master telling the stories in Future Phantoms is revealed to actually be the Master’s TARDIS, after being abandoned on Earth during the events of The Heavenly Paradigm. So all the stories from that boxset take place after boxset 1!
This creates additional complications as it’s unclear when the Master actually took part in the stories his TARDIS narrates (they’re implied to be true stories, and Derek Jacobi plays a role in all of them as the Master in disguise). So this doesn’t help much, but it’s pretty fun!
I don’t think they take place anywhere. The child Master trying to escape the time war with his future self’s TARDIS seemingly erases him from the timeline altogether.
Well he has to fit somewhere along the war master’s timeline, although he’s active at the end of the war which apparently contradicts like all the other war master stories that take place at the start to middle of the war. Unless the paradox actually threw him backwards in his timeline
It has to happen after Day of The Master and UNIT: Dominion and The Stuff of Legend and The Two Masters, so maybe it’s the first story and this Master lived it all twice. Or, maybe it went on longer than Alice knows and it was actually somewhere near the beginning or middle.. I took it that way. Maybe the end of the story retroactively prolonged the conflict? Daak probably made the Dalek forces adapt to more than they’d have needed with just Time Lords to fight and exterminate. I think textually it makes sense if The Then and The Now sent this Master back in time considering the TARDIS failure happening inside the timelock during the paradox wave. But maybe he was the TARDIS version of The Master intended for Scream of The Shalka from the EDAs who seems to be in current audios. We’ll never know.
