THE MASTERS' EVENING OUT
WRITTEN BY Z. P. MOO
The crowds of students flocked around the grounds of the university. It was the first day of the spring semester and the beginning of the final stretch of the academic year before the exam season would begin. For many, the reality of their studies was just beginning to hit home.
As ever, nobody stopped to ask why the more enigmatic of the physics lecturers was walking away from the main buildings at five minutes to nine in the morning. That was just what “The Doctor” did. Rumour had it that he and his plump, bald, duffle-coated colleague Nardole were working on a Top Secret Project in some kind of basement underneath the university, but nobody really knew for sure what they got up to under there. They just saw they went down there and then they got on with life as normal. How very human. It was the late 1970s (or possibly the early 1980s) by now, and still nobody had asked. Nobody even seemed to know how long the Doctor had worked here either. Anywhere between thirty and forty years seemed the usual guess.
“Keep up, Nardole!” the Twelfth Doctor was shouting over the noise of all the activity. “It’s that time of year again!”
“You never did tell me sir," Nardole began, “why we always have to go when all the students are on the move! Why not five minutes from now?”
“It’s so they don’t see where we go," the Doctor shouted back to him. “I don’t want some undergrad with a point to prove getting ideas and trying to break into the vault.”
“Oh, I see!” said Nardole, but he didn’t really. “We have to walk against their flow. Fine for you, you’re a stick insect, but for me this is exhausting.” He paused and whispered something quietly to himself. “I should have asked for my previous body when he reassembled me, not this one.”
“You know what our friend is like," the Doctor continued. “The poor guy would be breakfast!”
Nardole didn’t have the heart to tell the Doctor of all the people that had noticed them going down to the vault. It’s just that nobody thought anything of it. They just saw an unusual thing and then choose to get on with life as normal. Of course, there were rumours. Nardole had eventually said something about a Top Secret Project and that people shouldn’t look into it because it was dangerous, and that tended to put a stop to it. Students were more sensible in this era of history than their later reputation would have you believe.
It was the time of year when the Doctor and Nardole would go into the vault and check up on Missy, the Mistress, the Master, or whatever name she was using now. With the students returning after the time off over winter, it was no secret to the Doctor or to Nardole that she was always plotting some scheme and this was an opportune time for her to strike and cause the maximum impact. They would always go and spend a couple days on guard to make sure she didn’t try anything clever.
She never did of course.
But Nardole suspected both of them enjoyed these times much more than either would dare admit.
-
Ten lifetimes earlier, the scientific advisor for the UN Intelligence Taskforce was sat in his laboratory having a very heated argument with the Brigadier over the phone. The Doctor slammed down his telephone in a huff. “Of all the arrogant narrow-minded…”
He looked up and saw someone was stood at the door and he stopped mid-sentence. “Oh, hello Jo!” he said to her, suddenly cheerful. “Just got off the phone with the Brigadier. You won’t believe what he’s done this time!”
“The way you two carry on at each other, I don’t know why you put up with him sometimes!” Jo said as she took a seat next to her friend and placed a tray on the desk with two cups of tea on it.
“You and me also, Jo.” The Doctor picked up the tea she’d made him and took a sip. Too much sugar, he thought. Overly sweet. Just like someone else he could name.
“What’s he done?” Jo asked.
Jo took one of the cups and had a sip. The Doctor put his back down.
“Your close friend Captain Yates heard rumours of another man calling himself ‘Doctor’ working on some secret science project at a university in Bristol," the Doctor explained. He noticed Jo blush when he mentioned Yates. “Mike heard it mentioned by his neighbour’s son when he came home from studying at St Luke’s over the holidays. He thought he should let me know so he told me, and I confronted the Brigadier about why UNIT have employed an imposter!”
“Well it might not be an imposter. It’s possible for it to be you, isn’t it?” Jo asked. “You have a time machine. It could be you from the past, or the future.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Jo? My TARDIS is stuck here. It can’t go anywhere unless the Time Lords feel like letting me go free.” The Doctor took another sip of his tea. Jo didn’t make it very well but he appreciated the sentiment. “No. To me this bears all the hallmarks of our friend, the Master.”
“The Master?” gasped Jo, shocked.
“Yes, I fear it might be him. It’s not quite as it was a year back where we encountered him at every turn, but he’s still at large.” The Doctor shook his head. Was the Master really back?
“He escaped into the sea on a hovercraft last time we saw him," the Doctor continued. “He could be anywhere by now and I wouldn’t put it past him to impersonate me.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Jo. “Shall we go investigate?”
“Of course we will," the Doctor said. He stood up, adjusted the frills of his red jacket, making a face at himself in a mirror, and then took another sip of the tea to finish it off. “Let’s go right away. We’ll take Bessie.”
-
“Nardole, go check that there’s nobody trying to sneak inside our underground lair," the Doctor instructed. He was sat with his back to the vault’s sealed doors with his sonic shades covering his eyes and his sonic screwdriver turning over in his hands, glowing a beautiful blue colour.
“Right away, sir," said Nardole as he proceeded up the stairs towards the light of the outside world. The two of them had been down there for so many hours that the sun now was going down for early evening, and he was glad for something to do.
It was a relief to get away from the Doctor and Missy, and their tedious conversations where they traded secrets about Daleks and souffle recipes. The Doctor had never explained the reason for the souffle discussions. Nardole suspected he’d long since forgotten.
“Nobody here!” he called back down. “I’m gonna just go sit down over there.”
“Nardole, stay!” shouted the Doctor’s unmistakable voice, but his friend had already started walking.
Nardole walked over to a bench and sat on it. It was a nice day outside today, so he decided to stay there for a while until the Doctor came looking for him.
He wasn’t sure when the man sat there next to him, just that he had done. “Oh, hello!” Nardole said politely. “We haven’t met before. I’m Nardole.” He stretched out a hand, but the man didn’t take it. “Who are you?” Nardole asked.
“I am currently referred to as the… as the Professor," the man said.
“Oh, a professor. Is that so?” Nardole asked.
“University.”
“That’s nice. I’ve got this friend who’s like that. He goes by ‘The Doctor’. Never said what he’s a doctor of. I met him through his wife, she was a professor too.”
“Stop nattering, you ignorant fool!” the professor suddenly snapped sternly. “Did you say you know the Doctor?”
“You probably don’t know the same Doctor as me," Nardole said. He was beginning to suspect that the professor might not be all he seemed and wanted to find a way to get away from this strange man.
“I know the Doctor very well actually," said the man.
Nardole stood up and started to walk away. He was trying to get anywhere he could that wasn’t here but as soon as he was walking there was a hand on his shoulder. The man had caught him! Nardole turned and then he was face-to-face with this strange professor. Looking into his eyes Nardole thought he recognised them. “Missy?” he asked.
The Master’s hypnotic gaze was holding him. “Tell me all about what your Doctor is doing," he instructed. “You will obey me!”
-
Arriving at the university, the younger Doctor and Jo Grant made their way into the grounds and started to look around. The Doctor was pointing in a particular direction and so that’s where they were walking. It was beginning to get dark now, so the grounds weren’t particularly busy anymore. In spite of that, parking Bessie had been a challenge, but one the Doctor had overcome after driving aimlessly around for a few minutes.
“Why did I have to get stuck in this decade?” he had asked frustratedly. “If it was just thirty years earlier or a hundred years later… but no, it had to be now!”
Jo knew better than to respond to that. She’d heard it all before.
-
Nardole looked into the Master’s eyes, and felt himself getting lost in them, but then he started to blink rapidly and repeatedly. “Sorry about that," Nardole said. “I thought you were trying to hypnotise me for a moment!”
The Master said nothing, taken aback by this. “How didn’t it work?” he wondered out loud.
“Not human," Nardole said. He smacked his own body twice and made a metal clanging sound. “Cyborg alien, me! You know, the first time I met the Doctor he had my head removed? And now he drags me here, makes me wait around all day… I love him to bits, but still. He treats me like that.”
The Master considered for a moment. Perhaps a different approach was needed. “How does that make you feel?” he asked, trying hard not to feel ill for getting so sentimental. Maybe if this worked he’d drop hypnotism and try this more humane touch more often.
To the Master’s welcome surprise, Nardole started to talk. He explained they’d been tasked with guarding Missy and who she was, how she was now trapped in a vault below the university with the Doctor guarding it.
“Thank you, my good man," said the Master, as he got up and walked away. “You’ve been very useful.” He stopped, looked back at Nardole, and pulled his Tissue Compression Eliminator out from his pocket. He pointed it at Nardole, but then thought better of it and walked away.
Nardole could only watch him leave from his seat on the bench. He was terrified of the female Master trapped in the vault, but the Doctor has warned him about this one and his many dealings with him around this time period. How they shouldn’t draw attention to themselves in case UNIT got wind of it. And now Nardole had told the Master everything… including where a future Master could be located.
And he could only watch, frozen in horror, as the Master made his way swiftly to the vault.
-
The Doctor and Jo were walking around the outside grounds of the university. The Doctor didn’t know where to start looking for the Master, so he did the first thing he could think of, hoping that it would help.
“Where do you think the Master might be, Jo?” he asked.
“Assuming he’s here at all, of course," Jo said quietly.
“I beg your pardon?” asked the Doctor.
“I said, we should go to the reception and look him up!”
The Doctor gave her a warm smile. “Good idea," he said. He stopped still and looked around. “Where would that be, I wonder…”
Jo pointed to a sign that said Reception attached to the building next to them.
“Well done, Jo," said the Doctor. “Let’s take a look inside.”
-
The Master was walking away from Nardole now. One of the stupidest humanoids he’d encountered in all his centuries of scheming. If only they all told him everything he needed to know with such ease! He hadn’t been taken in by hypnosis, but it hadn’t even needed made a difference in the end. The bald man had told him everything!
He was working on a plan, some kind of universal conquest deal, but to do it he needed to collect some equipment from the past relative to that point. But now he had a better idea, for if one of his own incarnations was hidden somewhere in this university then it was surely his job to rescue them.
What had Nardole said? Something about an underground vault? He started to look for one, and set off walking the way he had seen the bald man come from earlier.
-
In the reception, the Doctor and Jo were poring over a staff-role trying to spot anything suspect.
“Doctor, look!” said Jo, and the Doctor rushed to see what she’d found. “There’s a physics professor called ‘The Doctor’ here!” she said.
“This bears all the hallmarks of the Master!” said the Doctor. “It says here he’s been on staff for more than three decades.”
“Isn’t that normal for university lecturers?” asked Jo, but the Doctor had already turned to leave. She watched as the doors leading outside swung open and shut behind the Doctor, and got up to follow.
Stepping outside the building, Jo found the Doctor was standing still on the ground pointing across the path from the reception to a green area with a bench. On the bench was a bald man in a duffle coat, and in front of him…
“The Master!” said the Doctor and Jo in unison.
They watched for a moment as the Master pulled out his Tissue Compression Eliminator, and were confused when instead of using it he put it away, unused.
“How curious," said the Doctor when he saw this.
“Should we go confront him?” Jo asked as they watched the Master disappear round a corner. The Doctor responded by running after him, his cape billowing in the air as he went.
“I guess that’s a yes," she said to herself before setting off after him.
-
“Hello Master!” said the Doctor.
The Master stopped still and turned round. “My dear Doctor!” he said. “I hoped you wouldn’t find me here.”
“Posing as me at a university?” the Doctor said. “However did you think I wouldn’t hear of it?”
The Master was confused for a moment. “Why would I do something so foolish?” he said. “I’m not using that name, I’m going by Professor Magister!”
Jo had caught up by now. “But we saw The Doctor in the staff-role here?” she said.
The Master laughed. “I had heard there was another of your incarnations around here," he said. “I was just on my way to go see them. He laughed, and didn’t say anything else. Instead he continued running towards the steps down to the vault. The Doctor and Jo ran after the Master and saw him go down the steps into darkness.
“This could be dangerous for you," the Doctor said. “Wait outside here, Jo, in case he tries to slip away.”
Jo nodded and watched the Doctor descend the steps behind his mortal foe. She noticed Nardole as he caught up and stood beside her.
“Hello," he said. “I’m Nardole. I’ve heard all about you, you know. The Doctor does go on sometimes.”
-
Down the steps, the older Doctor was sat outside the door to the vault with an older Master trapped inside. It was dark down here and both their other selves almost lost their footing going down.
When the Master made it to the bottom, the Doctor took one look and stood up with a start.
Was that…? It was! But how? This didn’t make any sense to him, but it could only be bad news. Had Missy somehow arranged this? He wouldn’t have put that past her. He almost regretted never coming up with something like this himself sometimes.
The Doctor tried to find something to say, but he couldn’t think of anything. This was wrong. This was simply wrong and it shouldn’t be happening.
“How can it be you?” he eventually managed to say. “The timelines are all wrong. You can’t be here, not this one of you! It’s the wrong time!”
“Doctor dear," a singsong Scottish female voice came from inside the vault. “It’s never the wrong time for me to meet me. Don’t you recall that time when I was every one of your precious humans? There were some people getting on with funtimes at that moment – Do you think they stopped, or did they enjoy it even more? I’ll spare you time, it’s the second one.”
“So that’s how I sound now?” the Master said. “I’m Scottish! And so are you, my dear Doctor. Which of us is copying the other then?”
The Third Doctor came stumbling down the stairs and he took in his new surroundings. “A big vault. That’ll be where the other Master is, so what about…?” He looked and saw the Twelfth Doctor. “Are you the next one along then?”
The older Doctor looked at the younger one with a look of confusion. “Doctor?” he asked. “What are you doing here? The Master is irresponsible and evil, but you!!! You shouldn’t be crossing the timeline with me like this, just irresponsible! I will be having strong words with myself about this later.”
From inside the vault came Missy’s voice again. “Doctor, did you just bring in another one of yourselves? Which one is it? I hope it’s the pretty one with inconsistent hair and vegetable matter, he was always my favourite. So sweet and innocent, and imagine how your friend would take her daddy’s new look? What fun we can have now!”
“It’s the one with the frills, the action-heroey one, the scientist one.”
“Oh, of course it would be number three if that one of me is here," Missy said. “Doesn’t matter, you’re all the Doctor to me.”
The younger Doctor was taking in this conversation with some initial confusion but was now beginning to understand. This strange man was the same Doctor as himself, but from a long time in the future. So not the next incarnation then? And at this point in his future the Master was now a Scottish woman trapped inside that vault with the Doctor as a prison guard. That unusual bald man must be his latest companion.
But there was one issue much more pressing that he had to address immediately. “What are you doing with those sunglasses?” the Third Doctor demanded. “And indoors too! They look ridiculous. My dear fellow, you’re meant to be a scientist!”
“You’re one to talk!” the Twelfth responded, insulted. “Have you seen how you’re dressing yourself? Are you a scientist or a glam rockstar?” He removed his sunglasses and pocketed them. “Besides, people love the sunglasses. Trust me, everyone likes them. I’d say to get over your fashion sense, but I know what’s round the corner.”
The younger Doctor scoffed, interrupting him. “Of all the arrogant egotistical things to say!”
The older one smirked. “Scarves and celery," he said sarcastically. “Rainbows. Question marks. Lord Byron.”
What neither Doctor had noticed during all of this was what the younger Master had been doing. Of course, Missy knew. She remembered this, almost remembered. Any moment now… yes! The Master was working on the door, slowly figuring out how the locks worked, but now it was beginning to slowly open until she could see him face-to-face.
Outside the two Doctors fell silent as they saw the vault opening and bright light shone out from it. Out from inside it there came a woman wearing a jet-black dress and a hat to match, with her dark hair tied back and tucked under it. She raised one of her gloved hands in greeting to the three people waiting for her there.
“Hello. I’m Missy, Queen of Evil. No, don’t say anything.”
-
The Master stretched out a hand to Missy and held hers. “It is exciting to meet another one of me," he said. “How many of us are there now?”
Missy laughed. “I don’t know, darling, I stopped keeping count around the time we reached Logopolis. And there had already been more than just thirteen of us by then!”
“I have a long life ahead of me then," the Master observed. “Good to know, and might I compliment myself on this incarnation I see before me now? You are rather beautiful, if I may say so myself.” He kissed his future self on her hand. “I hope that we can keep this incarnation for a long time.”
Missy chuckled. “I’ve had it a while already," she said as she took his hand. They linked arms. “I’ll try to make it last longer, provided you don’t go burning through this one as quickly as the rest, dear.” Using her free hand she tickled his cheek gently.
The two Doctors watched this display in horror. The Master was flirting with the Master! To be fair, that was very them.
“I hope we never resort to that kind of display," said the younger Doctor.
“Maybe if my previous selves knew how to dress properly we might have got on better," said the older one.
“Perhaps if we ever regenerated into a female form it might happen," the younger one said. “Have we done that yet?”
“Not that I remember, but it’s been a long time since I got started," said the older incarnation. “Maybe I forgot something, makes no difference to me, but why would that make a difference to you? We’re not stooping as low as the humans do over that. You’ve been exiled here too long…”
“What are you talking about, sir!” demanded the younger Doctor.
“Pass the the test-tube Miss Shaw," mimicked the older one, in a faux-posh accent.
Missy made a coughing sound, and the Doctors broke off their argument and looked up. “Don’t wait up, Doctors!” she instructed. “I’m off out for a date with this handsome specimen.”
“No, Missy, no. You can’t do this!” said the Twelfth Doctor.
“Master, you’re breaking all of the rules here at once, you foolish man!” shouted the Third Doctor.
“Missy, let’s do something important first," the Master said. He pulled out the Tissue Compression Eliminator and pointed it at the ceiling, and fired. Several chunks of the ceiling started to shake above the heads of the Doctors.
The Master gave his signature evil laugh as he linked arms with Missy once again. The two of them walked away up the steps as the ceiling began to fall in behind them. Chunks of stone fell with a thud and dust covered the room, forcing both Doctors to grab their respective cape and coat to cover their mouths and noses. It was only for a few seconds but even then the rumbling and crashing sounds were deafening.
And then the dust settled and the Doctors could see what had happened. The entrance was blocked, the lights around the room had gone out leaving only the vault’s light to let them see. The Doctor was alone with only the Doctor for company.
The Third Doctor was the first to recover. He ran his hands through his hair and started to comb out the rubble. “The two Masters got away!” he said.
The Twelfth Doctor reached instinctively for his head. “At least the sonic sunglasses didn’t break," he said.
-
Jo and Nardole were horrified when they saw both of their respective Masters leaving the vault hand in hand, walking away into the sunset. “Who is that woman?” Jo asked. “Is that… she can’t be the future Master, can she?”
“Yes, she’s a woman now," Nardole said. “She goes by Missy, short for Mistress.” He leaned over and whispered in Jo’s ear. “She terrifies me," he confessed. “Almost as much as a Dalek. Have you met Daleks yet?”
“Yes, I have," she replied. “A couple times. You don’t want to know what I did to them.”
“The Doctor didn’t tell me what you did," Nardole said. “What was it?”
Jo decided to change the subject quickly. “We should follow them," she said. “Before they get up to anything evil!”
Nardole nodded. “Or, we could see what the Doctors say! Down there.” He pointed to where the Masters had come from, and then started to walk over to it without waiting for Jo to answer. She followed him and they saw how the collapsed ceiling blocked the entrance up.
“So much for that idea," Nardole deadpanned.
“It looks like we’ll have to go after the Master and Missy ourselves anyway," Jo said. She tentatively reached out to touch the blockage and it didn’t move.
Nardole made Jo step aside and decided to try himself. He made a fist and hit the blockage with all his cyborg-augmented strength. There was a loud noise, like smashing metal against rock, but the blockage didn’t budge.
“Nardole?” the Twelfth Doctor could be heard calling out. “Nardole! Or Jo? Is that one of you?”
“Yes! Yes, Doctor, it’s us! You survived!” said Nardole.
“But what’s happened to your voice?” asked Jo. “You haven’t regenerated, have you? The Brigadier told me about…”
“No, I’m quite alright Miss Grant," interrupted the Third Doctor. “This rather ridiculous man with me is my future self. It seems I get access to my TARDIS back one day and for some reason come here to guard the Master.”
“Oh please," said the older Doctor. “Like you don’t care about your Master enough to do exactly the same thing. There’s nobody else like me but her. Just you wait until what’s in store for you in a few lifetimes, and then maybe you’ll understand.” He stopped, suddenly sad. “And nobody else ever will.”
The younger Doctor didn’t have time for that. He decided to turn his attention to Jo instead. “You need to go after the Masters. They must be up to something, I’m sure of it!”
“But what about you?” Jo asked. “Should we try to get you out of there? The other one might have his TARDIS nearby, we could chase them in that!”
“No, we can’t do that," said the older Doctor. “No way am I letting Missy near to that time machine, not yet. You two need to find them both and stop whatever they’re up to, now!”
“I’m quite correct, as usual," said the younger Doctor.
“Thank you Doctor," said the older Doctor.
“I’m very welcome," said the younger one. “Now Jo, we will work on getting ourselves out of here. You two need to get after them!”
Jo looked helplessly at Nardole. He nodded at her. “Okay, you heard the Doctors. Come on Jo, we’ve got work to do.”
She could tell Nardole was serious because his squeaky voice was slightly less squeaky now. “But how do we find them?” she asked.
-
In the Doctor’s university office was a desk. On the desk was a pencil pot. In the pencil pot was a variety of sonic screwdrivers. These were what Nardole was going after now.
“That one looks just like my Doctor’s," Jo observed when Nardole selected one.
“Does it? It’s a bit too low-tech for my liking," he explained. “That one there, with the blue LED, that’s my favourite. But Missy would notice if I went for anything that recent. But this –” he held the one Jo had pointed out and lifted it up in the air triumphantly “– this is exactly what we need to find her.”
“How?”
“Well, it’s simple really.” Nardole ended his explanation there and walked into the next room along.
The Doctor kept his guitar hidden back there, but more importantly he kept his TARDIS here as well. Jo let out a gasp when she saw the familiar blue police box. “It’s a bit bigger than I recall," she said.
Nardole didn’t stop to explain as he opened the doors, removing an “Out Of Order” sign as he did so. Jo saw a blue light come through the door swallowing him up from her view as he went inside. Jo ran in after him and found that the TARDIS interior had changed a lot since her time.
“It’s so much bigger than it used to be!” she exclaimed.
Nardole was taken aback. “That’s not the usual response.”
“And it’s got blue lighting!” she said. “All dark and artificial. Is it meant to be moody?”
Nardole ignored her, not wanting to admit he shared that sentiment.
“Bookshelves," she went on. “Why are there bookshelves? And is that a Rembrandt?”
Approaching the console, Jo tentatively touched it. She was surprised when it didn’t wobble, not even slightly. “What are we going to do?” she asked. “Normally the Doctor would think of something extremely clever. But he’s trapped now, twice upon a time!”
“There must be a more elegant way of putting that," Nardole thought out loud as he shoved the sonic screwdriver into a slot on the console. The machine whirred into life as the central column started to move up and down and the familiar noise filled the room. “I took the liberty of scanning Missy with this sonic shortly after she was first imprisoned!” he shouted over the noise. “Just in case she ever escaped. The Doctor doesn’t know about it, so don’t tell him!”
“But your Doctor told us not to do this!” shouted Jo.
“He says a lot of things," Nardole admitted. “But his missus gave me strict instructions to protect him, with full authority to kick his arse.”
“He’s married?” Jo said in surprise.
Nardole gave her a cheeky smile. “Spoilers!”
-
Meanwhile, in the twilight of the early evening out on the streets of Bristol, both Masters were having a great time. With their hands held and arms linked together, they were walking into the early evening with a spring in their step, reminiscing about the conquest of worlds gone by.
“Do you remember that time we took on the Truth Monks?” she asked.
“Yes!” he responded. “And the young maiden I killed to defeat them and take over that world for myself!”
“We pushed her into the volcano!” she cackled. “Do you remember how she struggled?”
“She kicked and screamed and begged for mercy," the Master said laughing. “But that wasn’t enough! I have no mercy. I was the Master, and she would obey me.”
“How she jumped in herself because I told her to," Missy said. “And those big deep brown eyes of hers. They remind me of someone, looking back. Just don’t tell the Doctor.”
As they walked on the sun continued to go down. A few minutes later, night had fallen and everything had gone dark. Time for some proper fun.
-
The two Masters passed by the window of a closed music shop. Missy saw the guitar and thought of the Doctor. “Look at this," she said. She smashed the window and stepped inside. She pulled out some device from inside her dress and she slipped it into the hollow of the guitar, underneath the strings. “Quickly!” she shouted, grabbing her past self by his arm. They ran along a little way as the shop’s alarm blared out and a few metres on they heard it explode. The shop was destroyed and all of the products inside it too.
Missy laughed, and ran back to the shop window. She stepped in and bent over, picking up a bit of stray metal. “Look at that guitar now,” she said, before tossing it over he shoulder.
“Why did you do that?” asked the Master, as they walked further down the pavement once again.
“Because my Doctor plays guitars a lot now, I thought I’d blow one up.” She twirled round excitedly. “Just to spite him!”
“I see,” the Master said. He pointed ahead up the road. “But what was the point? It didn’t express power over anyone. You are the Master!”
Missy looked at what he had pointed to. A young man was walking home from having dinner. As he passed by the pair of Masters, who he took to be a couple out for the evening, the Master suddenly grabbed him and held him still.
“What are you doing?!” the man asked.
“Yes, I’d like to know that as well,” said Missy.
“Like I told you,” the Master said. “I am the Master.” He reached for his pocket “And everyone will obey me, but if they refuse...” He pulled out the TCE. A few seconds later, the two of them walked on, leaving behind a very lifelike doll lying on the ground.
“How did that express dominion or power?” Missy asked, imitating the Master’s deep commanding voice. “It was senseless murder. Not making an example or anything.”
“It proves that I have power, that I am a Master of all!” he explained. Missy didn’t feel like this had answered her question at all. They saw a group of drunk students on the other side of the road. “But it doesn’t have to be by killing,” he continued. “Watch this.”
He crossed over and looked one of them in the eye. Missy couldn’t hear what he said, but she could make a good guess. Sure enough as soon as the Master returned to her she could see that the student had started to hit one of his friends. The group were having a full-on fistfight within seconds.
The Master was having a great time, but Missy wasn’t so sure. She looked him in the eyes. He looked her back. She remembered those eyes, they had been her own for a while after all, but this was more than that. She recognised the lust for power burning deep within them and felt happier than she had been in many many lifetimes. It was a beautiful feeling. A simpler time, she thought. Before she had grown old and had to face her own mortality. Before she started to ask why she did the things he did. She missed that feeling sometimes. But it was the past and she didn’t much want to go back there.
The earlier Master however felt something new. There was something enchanting about this woman, something that had connected with him. He wasn’t sure what it was, maybe that she was in fact him. Yet there was something more, it was something that he could almost call… no, that couldn’t be right.
This woman wasn’t some evil villainess he was teaming up with for his latest scheme. This was himself from the future that he had somehow been in the same area and naturally had decided to help set free. So why couldn’t he get the words out? There was something deeper to this connection, one that made him search within himself to find out who he really was. He didn’t like that feeling most of the time, but here he very nearly did. Perhaps because of the woman responsible? He was fairly certain it wasn’t love, but maybe it could become that with time. This attraction, he couldn’t explain it.
He saw Missy’s expression change. “What is it?” she asked. “Don’t try to hide it, I know that face. I remember it. You’re struggling with something. Tell me.”
He let go of her hand and unlinked his arm from her’s. He took a small step back. “Missy," he said. “I don’t know what it is but you make me feel… something.”
“I know," she said. “I have that effect on everyone dear, you’ve got this to look forward to one day. Can’t remember how exactly we took on this form, but it happens. Maybe one day I’ll know.” She laughed again.
The Master caught her eyes again. She smiled. “Yes, I can remember bits of this for you," she said. “This is your first time realising that you’re into yourself.”
“I’m… into myself?” he repeated. “That’s not the sort of thing we say!”
“It is now," she said. “And this is your first time to realise it’s true for us.”
“This is wrong,” he said. “There is only one person I have feelings for, and it isn’t another of me!”
“That’s lovely dear, here have this –” and then she kissed him.
It caught him off-guard. But he didn’t try to fight it. He put his arms round her and held her in a passionate embrace.
“Is this wrong?” he asked, suddenly unsure of his earlier assertion.
“Probably," she said. “It’s nice though.”
“What’s that noise?” asked the Master. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say a TARDIS had landed.”
“Right first time!” said Nardole. The Masters looked round and saw that the TARDIS had materialised around them during their kiss.
“Oh, you caught up with us," Missy said. She looked at Jo and mimed biting something. “Hello again, my dear. It’s been a while.”
“Enough of this foolishness!” snapped the Master. He ran over to the console, shoving Nardole aside, and started to set the controls. “We have gained access to the Doctor’s TARDIS. Now I, I mean we, will finally be able to rule the cosmos. I will be Master of the universe and my queen will be myself!”
Jo shot Nardole a disapproving look. “I told you not to take the TARDIS to them!” she said. “And so did the Doctor! And look what happened.”
The TARDIS dematerialised and went into flight. The Master looked across the console and gazed at Missy with a loving look. She smiled back. “Why don’t you tell everyone what your plan is?” she asked him.
-
The TARDIS arrived in an empty lecture theatre back at the university and all four of the people inside it had disembarked. After a few minutes, the Master had finished explaining his latest plan to conquer the Earth. It was a complicated plan and neither Jo nor Nardole fully understood it.
It required the Master to base himself at the university, armed with a tenured professorship. This had been quite an undertaking and instead of working hard to get the required credentials he eventually had resorted to travelling back in time no less than six times so that the university’s board that appointed him with this role consisted mostly of himself under various false names and disguises. In addition to his current identity as Magister he was also present in that meeting as professors Estram, Keller, Moffat, Thascalos, Dominar, and Roberts. That had been a long day.
Nardole and Jo tried desperately to follow his plan as the Master continued to explain, but as it got more and more convoluted from there onwards they soon lost track. Apparently there were three more of him running around in the even earlier past. One of them was ghostwriting songs for The Beatles so the Master could play the lyrics to one of their songs backwards at a particular frequency to make a star explode, but he’d lost track of which song and it was only on some versions of it that it worked, so the other two times he went back to try and get hold of as much of their work as possible.
The final thing he needed to be able to start doing it was a working time machine, one he could take apart without damage to his own. And now that’s just what he had. “I had no idea that I would end up finding the Doctor’s TARDIS," he said. “Sadly it’s not working for him at the moment, but the fact that another one of him was in this area with a working version, this was an unexpected pleasure.”
Missy coughed.
“But not nearly so pleasurable as the woman he was looking after!” the Master finished.
“Wait, so why did you need to be based at the university?” asked Nardole. “I got lost around the time you pretended to be Paul after you killed him. What did you say you needed the fourteen copies of The Beatles’ back catalogue for again?”
“I love The Beatles," said Jo. “Do you know I Am The Walrus?”
“You look human to me," Nardole said.
“Master, why did we bring these two along?” asked Missy.
“It’s not my fault they were in the TARDIS when we came inside it!” he snapped at her. “Now go inside it yourself, and find the right fluid link. Then I can add it to my device, thus beginning with my plan and then soon the entire universe will obey me!”
Missy coughed again.
“Both of me!” the Master corrected himself.
Missy shot him a glare, and then went inside the TARDIS to find what he’d asked for. The Master, Jo, and Nardole watched her go and saw the doors close behind her.
“Now to deal with you two," said the Master as he approached the Doctors’ companions with a menacing stare.
Nardole turned and started to run up the stairs to the door, hoping to get away. Jo however stood her ground and waited as the Master approached her. Jo looked up at the towering figure of the evil Time Lord as he came to within centimetres of her, trying to stare him down but desperately avoiding eye contact. She wanted to turn and run, just like Nardole had, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. She was rooted to the spot, and transfixed on the sight of the menacing monster she was convinced was about to attack. If this was the end then she wasn’t going to go down screaming. She wouldn’t let the Master have that satisfaction.
And then…
A high-pitched noise filled the room. The Master put his hands over his ears and buckled over with his eyes clenched shut. “What is this?” he shouted. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU IGNORANT GIRL!!!!!!”
“She’s not doing anything except holding your attention," explained Nardole from a seat over to the side of the room, where he’d gone to when Jo and the Master were focussed on each other and not on him. “But I have this, you see.” He held up the sonic screwdriver. “It’s tuned into you specifically, Master. I just need to hold this down and it will lock-on the TARDIS to you. Of course, you’re both inside and outside of it so it doesn’t know what to do.” Nardole released the button he was holding down and the noise stopped. “Jo, run to the TARDIS!” he commanded.
Jo ran towards the TARDIS, but she couldn’t resist kicking the Master where he lay collapsed on the ground first. He made a grunting sound. It felt good to do that.
The TARDIS’s doors were now opened and Missy was stepping outside of it. “I feel just like Doctor Who, doing this!” she said, brandishing the fluid link before she tucked it away inside her dress. Then she saw her past self where he lay on the ground and the sight of Jo and Nardole running for the TARDIS, and before she had fully registered it they had pushed past her. In the TARDIS, Jo quickly ran for the console in search of the button that closed the doors.
“It doesn’t work like that anymore," Nardole explained as he casually closed the doors manually and pressed a button on the sonic to lock the doors. Just in time, as Missy was starting to smack on them trying to get inside.
“You can’t go anywhere with that thing," she called through to them. “Not without this fluid link.”
“Oh, why does she have to be so right?” Nardole asked to nobody in particular.
“What if she isn’t?” Jo said.
Nardole walked over to the console. “But she is, she must be!” he said. “The Doctor told me that the TARDIS couldn’t move without the fluid links. And why would he lie to me, to Nardy? We’re stuck here!”
“No we’re not," Jo said. “The Doctor, my one I mean, he has been trying for years to make his TARDIS work again and has almost managed it a few times.”
“That’s good," said Nardole. “How successful has he been?”
“Not very," Jo admitted. “And I don’t even know how he does it.”
“Okay," said Nardole, “that’s very helpful.”
“Did you ever take a scan of the Doctor with that?” Jo pointed at the sonic screwdriver. “Because we could go back to him with it if you did.”
Nardole leapt over to the console next to Jo. “Great idea!” he shouted. “Yes, that would definitely work! Shame we can’t do it because I never thought of that.”
Jo and Nardole looked at each other in despair.
-
Outside the TARDIS, both Masters continued to wait. The earlier one was busy with the device he was putting together as his female future self continued to smack the doors of the TARDIS in vain. She gave up after a minute and walked over to herself. She had something she wanted to ask him and she couldn’t leave it any longer.
“Why do you do this?” she asked him.
“Do what?” he replied, without looking up. He stuck out a hand. “Fluid link.”
Missy didn’t give it to him. “Why do you try to conquer the universe?” she asked him. “What’s the point, I mean, what’s the motivation for it?”
He didn’t answer.
“I asked you a question, Master.”
“I heard you.” He stood up and turned to face her. He put a hand on each of her shoulders. “Because we are the Master.”
“Yes, yes, yes, and they will obey us, I know. Heard it all before.” She shook his hands off. “But do we need to do this? What’s there to gain? Conquer the universe and what else is there left to do?”
“We will rule the cosmos! Master of all creation.”
She nodded sarcastically. “Of course. That’s all you ever wanted.” She walked away from him towards the front of the lecture theatre. She sat herself down behind the lecturer’s desk and leant back into the chair. “Maybe with age I’ve started to wonder why I do this kind of thing. Perhaps being dragged back into the Time War it forced me to think about it properly.” She stopped for a moment. “Or maybe it was what that creepy old lady told me. I still don’t know who she was, you know… but I have my theories.”
Her earlier self didn’t understand any of what he was hearing. “I am the Master," he said again. “The clue is in the name.” He ignored her and walked over and stood beside the TARDIS. He produced the TCE from his pocket again. “Let me blast our way in!” he said.
Missy looked and saw in horror that he was aiming his TCE at the keyhole. She opened her mouth to protest but before she could say anything he had fired. The TARDIS shook and made the sound it usually did when it took off, before it began to fade and dematerialise.
Inside it, Jo and Nardole were both thrown to the floor. Nardole grabbed onto the console and stood up, pulling the scanner round to him. He and Jo looked at the screen and watched as the two Masters were squabbling.
“What did you do that for?” Missy was shouting. “Don’t you know about the Hostile Action Displacement System?”
“You’re the one that didn’t stop them getting inside it," the Master shouted back. “And all that knocking on the door, begging them. Ooh, let me in, I’m all Scottish and feminine! Is this what I become in my future? I don’t want to live like this.”
He ran to the opposite side of the desk to where she stood and pointed his weapon at her chest. She looked at it and laughed once. “Really, so that’s what you do now?” she asked him, sarcastically. “Delayed action suicide? I like the bravery but even you would never do that. There’s only one of our incarnations that ever would... and he’s not here.”
She paused for a moment as though remembering something, but in her mind she rejected that immediately. Not true. Never happened. Fake news.
“I thought we had something!” the Master said. His hand trembled as his grip weakened. “I thought you felt it too! Not love, like I do for...” He stopped himself for a second and took in a deep breath. “Not love, but… but there was something!”
“Unexplainable attraction?” Missy asked.
The Master nodded, as his hands continued to tremble.
“Yeah,” said Missy. “This is the main reason two of us shouldn’t meet. You’ve always been full of yourself, it’s always gonna end like this.”
Inside the TARDIS, which was now travelling at random through the time vortex, Jo turned off the scanner. “That’s enough of that," she said.
“I wonder where we will end up now?” asked Nardole. His voice had gone high-pitched. Scared.
Jo took his hand reassuringly. “I hope that we end up where the Doctor is," she said. “He would know what to do. Both of him.”
-
The Hostile Action Displacement System is one of the more random and unpredictable features of the Doctor’s TARDIS. But on this occasion it worked wonders. The TARDIS ended up in the safest possible place whenever this system was required, and at this moment that location was just a few floors below, specifically an underground basement where a vault was found and where two Doctors were left stranded.
As soon as the familiar sound was heard, the two Doctors stood to their feet immediately and started to look around frantically trying to figure out where it was going to end up.
“Good heavens!” said the Third Doctor. “It’s been far too long since I heard that sound! I hadn’t realised how much I missed it.”
“Nardole, oh Nardole no, what are you doing?” shouted the Twelfth Doctor. “I told you not to go to the TARDIS, I said it was too dangerous!”
The TARDIS landed inside the vault. Both Doctors looked inside it and saw the blue box stood there waiting for them. “Is this one yours?” asked the younger Doctor.
“It must be," said the older one, as he let himself in. “Nardole, I told you not to use it!” shouted the Doctor.
“Sorry sir!” said Nardole “But it was the only thing I could think of!”
“I tried to stop him," Jo said. “Now Missy has stolen one of the fluid links for the Master’s plot.”
“And it was the only thing he needed to complete his plan," said Nardole. “But if we can get back to them quickly then maybe we can still stop them!”
He walked towards the door but before he got to them the younger Doctor had entered the console room.
“You’ve redecorated this place," he observed. “I say, I rather like it for once, dear chap; could you kindly tell which desktop is this one?”
“I don’t know what it’s called," the older Doctor replied. “I was hoping to get some more of these round things, but I seem to have misplaced them.”
Nardole pointed to the door. “Shouldn’t we get going back to the lecture theatre?” he asked. “The Master and Missy could stop fighting any moment and team up again!”
“No, I don’t think so!” the older Doctor said. He started to plug in coordinates, press buttons, and pull levers. Suddenly the TARDIS leapt into the air. It passed through ceilings and floors and walls and then it settled on the spot. “Let’s just take a shortcut instead.”
The Twelfth Doctor stood beside the Third Doctor at the doors of the TARDIS. They nodded at each other and then each pushed one of the two doors outwards and stepped outside.
-
A few moments before this happened, the Master fired his weapon at Missy and she reeled in shock as the wave of energy hit her in her chest. She fell down immediately with a grunt.
The Master laughed. “That’ll teach you!” he said.
To his surprise, the next thing he saw was Missy getting up again. “That," she said, “was very very rude! I expected better of myself than that.” She leapt at the Master and grabbed the TCE from his hands. He fell over and watched as she grabbed it from the ground. With one shot she destroyed the device he’d been working on. Then she stomped on the TCE with one of her big boots. The weapon shattered, destroyed beyond repair.
“How could you do that?” he shouted up at her. “I am the Master! You are the Master too! You shouldn’t do that!”
“Says you!” she crooned. “Even after you just tried to kill me?”
“How did it not work?” he asked. “Why aren’t you regenerating?”
“You little flirt," she said with a smile. “You’re almost as bad as the man downstairs.”
“You should be dying!!” he yelled. “I just shot you! You should die!”
“Nope. Just winded," she replied. “Don’t feel like dying today. Besides, that weapon was tuned-in to your bio-print. It wouldn’t work on you, any of you, not unless you changed that. And why would you ever want to?” Again a memory entered her mind, again she dismissed it.
The Master stood himself up. “You are nothing like me!” he shouted. “You had the Doctor’s companions in your grasp and let them get away.”
“Yes, funny that.” She turned her back to the Master and walked to the front of the room. She sat down, on top of the desk this time, and reached inside her dress producing the fluid link from inside it. “You still need this?” she asked.
The Master stared at it. “You will hand that over to me," he said. “I am the Master…”
“Yes, yes, yes, and I will obey you, I know how that one ends. Are you trying that line again? Even after what I said before?” Missy laughed. “As if that would ever work on yourself!”
The Master lunged at her. She slightly adjusted her position and the Master fell right over the desk and his head connected with the wall, with a loud bump. When he didn’t get up, Missy quickly got down behind the desk to check on his pulse, still alive. Phew. If she’d accidentally erased herself from existence, that would’ve been a bit awkward.
She gave him a kiss and focussed hard with her mind on the events of that evening. “When you come to, in a few hours time, this will all be forgotten," she said. “Well, maybe not all of it. I’ll leave you with some pieces so you know what to do when you’re me.” She tucked him away underneath the desk. From what little she could remember of her time in that life, she knew he had to be left there alone.
She walked back from behind the desk and sat down on one of the chairs. She didn’t recall what the Master’s plan had been anymore, that was gone now after her mindwipe. Never mind that, it was irrelevant now. She could see the TARDIS materialising. Then she saw two Doctors step out from inside it in perfect unison.
“Missy!” said the Scottish Doctor.
“I surrender," she said calmly. She placed the fluid link on the ground in front of her and kneeled down. “I surrender. You’ve got me.”
-
With Missy now locked back inside the vault, the Twelfth Doctor was hard at work fixing the ceiling area around the steps down to it. He’d been doing this for a couple hours but the job wasn’t nearly so hard as he had thought it might’ve been. Maybe that might have had something to do with him quickly taking a trip to the planet Athena Major to procure some handheld antigrav tractor beams from a cow merchant there. Nardole was sure to say he was cheating by doing that, but the Doctor figured if he didn’t tell Nardole then what he didn’t know wouldn’t bother him.
Also he’d had some help. The earlier Doctor was stood at a distance commanding the rebuild, with Jo next to him. The newest Doctor didn’t feel like he needed it, but he didn’t mind it. It was his only chance at intelligent conversation, he joked. Nardole didn’t appreciate that.
The younger Doctor had tried to send Jo to make some tea for him, but the older one put a stop to that and sent Nardole. The tea had tasted horrible, but the Doctors appreciated it all the same. They needed it after an hour or so trapped underground.
After the rebuilding was finished – it only took a few minutes in the end thanks to the alien tech – the two Doctors walked together back to the carpark where the younger one had left Bessie. Jo and Nardole weren’t far behind.
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand," said the Third. “Why are you protecting the Master? And why don’t you use your TARDIS anymore?”
“So that’s two things?” Nardole said quietly. Jo laughed but neither of the Doctors had heard it.
“You pick that over your Master still being at large?” asked the Twelfth.
“I don’t need to worry about that too much," admitted the Third Doctor. “I’m bound to run into him sooner or later.”
“I made a promise. I swore that I would guard the vault for a thousand years. And someone special, someone who died, made me stand by that. I’m doing it for her.” The older Doctor paused. “And because she told Nardole to kick my arse if I didn’t.”
“If you say so, my good man.” They had reached Bessie now and the younger Doctor climbed aboard. “But take it from me. If my TARDIS was working again, like it is by your time, then as much as I love this world I wouldn’t be staying put here.”
The Twelfth and Third Doctors met the other’s gaze but neither said anything. The older one knew of the younger one’s exile of course. What the younger one didn’t know was that it was almost at an end.
“I made my choice," the older Doctor said. “Without witness or reward, I made my choice.”
“If you say so, Doctor," said the younger Doctor. “I look forward to seeing how I get there.”
The Doctor said nothing. He knew better than that having lived through it. But his younger self would have to find this out the hard way.
“But here’s an idea," he went on. “You can’t leave Earth, you say, nor leave the current timezone. So answer me this, have you any unfinished business on this world?”
The older Doctor smiled at his past self. “Maybe," he said. “I’m sure Nardole wouldn’t stop me doing that.”
“It’s good to see my future is safe, whatever happens," the Third Doctor said.
“Say hello to Allistair from me," said the Twelfth Doctor.
-
After the Doctor and Nardole had watched the Doctor and Jo drive away, they returned to the vault.
“Unfinished business on Earth," mimicked Nardole. “Sir, you can’t leave this –”
“Yes, I know.” The Doctor smiled at his friend. “But as long as it’s in the present day… I can think of something.”
Nardole watched as the Doctor turned and ran back to where they’d left the TARDIS. “I know that look, Doctor!” he shouted. “Wait for me, wait for me! Where are we going?”
The Doctor turned back to face Nardole. “New York!”
“New York?” shouted Nardole back at him.
“Yes, there’s a big time paradox I made there a while ago, needs fixing. And after that, some old friends to drop in on…” the Doctor started running again, a big wide grin on his face.
-
Elsewhere, the Master awoke with a start. He didn’t recognise where he was and realised he couldn’t recall how he’d got there. Yet here he was.
He stood up. A lecture theatre? But this was the nighttime! Then he saw his TCE broken on the floor and the ruins of the device he’d been making lay next to it. He knew where he could get a new TCE one day. Terserus. Not that he was in a hurry.
How had this happened? He tried to remember but his mind was blank, almost as if someone had gotten rid of it. He reached for his head and ran his hands through his hair where he felt a lump. How had that happened?
He went out of the lecture theatre and down the corridor as he made his way to his office.
Room 11 – Professor Magister
The Master forced his way into the room and collapsed through the door of his waiting TARDIS. He pressed buttons on the console and set off on his way.
What had happened to him today? He had no idea. But for whatever reason, he wanted to get out of here as soon as he could.
“Until the next time, Doctor!” he shouted, as his ship flew off through the time vortex. He laughed his evillest laugh as he went on his way.
Several lifetimes later, the Master was alone in her vault. “Until the next time, Master!” she said to herself trying to remember the events of the past. “You’ll see me soon. The long way round.”
As ever, nobody stopped to ask why the more enigmatic of the physics lecturers was walking away from the main buildings at five minutes to nine in the morning. That was just what “The Doctor” did. Rumour had it that he and his plump, bald, duffle-coated colleague Nardole were working on a Top Secret Project in some kind of basement underneath the university, but nobody really knew for sure what they got up to under there. They just saw they went down there and then they got on with life as normal. How very human. It was the late 1970s (or possibly the early 1980s) by now, and still nobody had asked. Nobody even seemed to know how long the Doctor had worked here either. Anywhere between thirty and forty years seemed the usual guess.
“Keep up, Nardole!” the Twelfth Doctor was shouting over the noise of all the activity. “It’s that time of year again!”
“You never did tell me sir," Nardole began, “why we always have to go when all the students are on the move! Why not five minutes from now?”
“It’s so they don’t see where we go," the Doctor shouted back to him. “I don’t want some undergrad with a point to prove getting ideas and trying to break into the vault.”
“Oh, I see!” said Nardole, but he didn’t really. “We have to walk against their flow. Fine for you, you’re a stick insect, but for me this is exhausting.” He paused and whispered something quietly to himself. “I should have asked for my previous body when he reassembled me, not this one.”
“You know what our friend is like," the Doctor continued. “The poor guy would be breakfast!”
Nardole didn’t have the heart to tell the Doctor of all the people that had noticed them going down to the vault. It’s just that nobody thought anything of it. They just saw an unusual thing and then choose to get on with life as normal. Of course, there were rumours. Nardole had eventually said something about a Top Secret Project and that people shouldn’t look into it because it was dangerous, and that tended to put a stop to it. Students were more sensible in this era of history than their later reputation would have you believe.
It was the time of year when the Doctor and Nardole would go into the vault and check up on Missy, the Mistress, the Master, or whatever name she was using now. With the students returning after the time off over winter, it was no secret to the Doctor or to Nardole that she was always plotting some scheme and this was an opportune time for her to strike and cause the maximum impact. They would always go and spend a couple days on guard to make sure she didn’t try anything clever.
She never did of course.
But Nardole suspected both of them enjoyed these times much more than either would dare admit.
-
Ten lifetimes earlier, the scientific advisor for the UN Intelligence Taskforce was sat in his laboratory having a very heated argument with the Brigadier over the phone. The Doctor slammed down his telephone in a huff. “Of all the arrogant narrow-minded…”
He looked up and saw someone was stood at the door and he stopped mid-sentence. “Oh, hello Jo!” he said to her, suddenly cheerful. “Just got off the phone with the Brigadier. You won’t believe what he’s done this time!”
“The way you two carry on at each other, I don’t know why you put up with him sometimes!” Jo said as she took a seat next to her friend and placed a tray on the desk with two cups of tea on it.
“You and me also, Jo.” The Doctor picked up the tea she’d made him and took a sip. Too much sugar, he thought. Overly sweet. Just like someone else he could name.
“What’s he done?” Jo asked.
Jo took one of the cups and had a sip. The Doctor put his back down.
“Your close friend Captain Yates heard rumours of another man calling himself ‘Doctor’ working on some secret science project at a university in Bristol," the Doctor explained. He noticed Jo blush when he mentioned Yates. “Mike heard it mentioned by his neighbour’s son when he came home from studying at St Luke’s over the holidays. He thought he should let me know so he told me, and I confronted the Brigadier about why UNIT have employed an imposter!”
“Well it might not be an imposter. It’s possible for it to be you, isn’t it?” Jo asked. “You have a time machine. It could be you from the past, or the future.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Jo? My TARDIS is stuck here. It can’t go anywhere unless the Time Lords feel like letting me go free.” The Doctor took another sip of his tea. Jo didn’t make it very well but he appreciated the sentiment. “No. To me this bears all the hallmarks of our friend, the Master.”
“The Master?” gasped Jo, shocked.
“Yes, I fear it might be him. It’s not quite as it was a year back where we encountered him at every turn, but he’s still at large.” The Doctor shook his head. Was the Master really back?
“He escaped into the sea on a hovercraft last time we saw him," the Doctor continued. “He could be anywhere by now and I wouldn’t put it past him to impersonate me.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Jo. “Shall we go investigate?”
“Of course we will," the Doctor said. He stood up, adjusted the frills of his red jacket, making a face at himself in a mirror, and then took another sip of the tea to finish it off. “Let’s go right away. We’ll take Bessie.”
-
“Nardole, go check that there’s nobody trying to sneak inside our underground lair," the Doctor instructed. He was sat with his back to the vault’s sealed doors with his sonic shades covering his eyes and his sonic screwdriver turning over in his hands, glowing a beautiful blue colour.
“Right away, sir," said Nardole as he proceeded up the stairs towards the light of the outside world. The two of them had been down there for so many hours that the sun now was going down for early evening, and he was glad for something to do.
It was a relief to get away from the Doctor and Missy, and their tedious conversations where they traded secrets about Daleks and souffle recipes. The Doctor had never explained the reason for the souffle discussions. Nardole suspected he’d long since forgotten.
“Nobody here!” he called back down. “I’m gonna just go sit down over there.”
“Nardole, stay!” shouted the Doctor’s unmistakable voice, but his friend had already started walking.
Nardole walked over to a bench and sat on it. It was a nice day outside today, so he decided to stay there for a while until the Doctor came looking for him.
He wasn’t sure when the man sat there next to him, just that he had done. “Oh, hello!” Nardole said politely. “We haven’t met before. I’m Nardole.” He stretched out a hand, but the man didn’t take it. “Who are you?” Nardole asked.
“I am currently referred to as the… as the Professor," the man said.
“Oh, a professor. Is that so?” Nardole asked.
“University.”
“That’s nice. I’ve got this friend who’s like that. He goes by ‘The Doctor’. Never said what he’s a doctor of. I met him through his wife, she was a professor too.”
“Stop nattering, you ignorant fool!” the professor suddenly snapped sternly. “Did you say you know the Doctor?”
“You probably don’t know the same Doctor as me," Nardole said. He was beginning to suspect that the professor might not be all he seemed and wanted to find a way to get away from this strange man.
“I know the Doctor very well actually," said the man.
Nardole stood up and started to walk away. He was trying to get anywhere he could that wasn’t here but as soon as he was walking there was a hand on his shoulder. The man had caught him! Nardole turned and then he was face-to-face with this strange professor. Looking into his eyes Nardole thought he recognised them. “Missy?” he asked.
The Master’s hypnotic gaze was holding him. “Tell me all about what your Doctor is doing," he instructed. “You will obey me!”
-
Arriving at the university, the younger Doctor and Jo Grant made their way into the grounds and started to look around. The Doctor was pointing in a particular direction and so that’s where they were walking. It was beginning to get dark now, so the grounds weren’t particularly busy anymore. In spite of that, parking Bessie had been a challenge, but one the Doctor had overcome after driving aimlessly around for a few minutes.
“Why did I have to get stuck in this decade?” he had asked frustratedly. “If it was just thirty years earlier or a hundred years later… but no, it had to be now!”
Jo knew better than to respond to that. She’d heard it all before.
-
Nardole looked into the Master’s eyes, and felt himself getting lost in them, but then he started to blink rapidly and repeatedly. “Sorry about that," Nardole said. “I thought you were trying to hypnotise me for a moment!”
The Master said nothing, taken aback by this. “How didn’t it work?” he wondered out loud.
“Not human," Nardole said. He smacked his own body twice and made a metal clanging sound. “Cyborg alien, me! You know, the first time I met the Doctor he had my head removed? And now he drags me here, makes me wait around all day… I love him to bits, but still. He treats me like that.”
The Master considered for a moment. Perhaps a different approach was needed. “How does that make you feel?” he asked, trying hard not to feel ill for getting so sentimental. Maybe if this worked he’d drop hypnotism and try this more humane touch more often.
To the Master’s welcome surprise, Nardole started to talk. He explained they’d been tasked with guarding Missy and who she was, how she was now trapped in a vault below the university with the Doctor guarding it.
“Thank you, my good man," said the Master, as he got up and walked away. “You’ve been very useful.” He stopped, looked back at Nardole, and pulled his Tissue Compression Eliminator out from his pocket. He pointed it at Nardole, but then thought better of it and walked away.
Nardole could only watch him leave from his seat on the bench. He was terrified of the female Master trapped in the vault, but the Doctor has warned him about this one and his many dealings with him around this time period. How they shouldn’t draw attention to themselves in case UNIT got wind of it. And now Nardole had told the Master everything… including where a future Master could be located.
And he could only watch, frozen in horror, as the Master made his way swiftly to the vault.
-
The Doctor and Jo were walking around the outside grounds of the university. The Doctor didn’t know where to start looking for the Master, so he did the first thing he could think of, hoping that it would help.
“Where do you think the Master might be, Jo?” he asked.
“Assuming he’s here at all, of course," Jo said quietly.
“I beg your pardon?” asked the Doctor.
“I said, we should go to the reception and look him up!”
The Doctor gave her a warm smile. “Good idea," he said. He stopped still and looked around. “Where would that be, I wonder…”
Jo pointed to a sign that said Reception attached to the building next to them.
“Well done, Jo," said the Doctor. “Let’s take a look inside.”
-
The Master was walking away from Nardole now. One of the stupidest humanoids he’d encountered in all his centuries of scheming. If only they all told him everything he needed to know with such ease! He hadn’t been taken in by hypnosis, but it hadn’t even needed made a difference in the end. The bald man had told him everything!
He was working on a plan, some kind of universal conquest deal, but to do it he needed to collect some equipment from the past relative to that point. But now he had a better idea, for if one of his own incarnations was hidden somewhere in this university then it was surely his job to rescue them.
What had Nardole said? Something about an underground vault? He started to look for one, and set off walking the way he had seen the bald man come from earlier.
-
In the reception, the Doctor and Jo were poring over a staff-role trying to spot anything suspect.
“Doctor, look!” said Jo, and the Doctor rushed to see what she’d found. “There’s a physics professor called ‘The Doctor’ here!” she said.
“This bears all the hallmarks of the Master!” said the Doctor. “It says here he’s been on staff for more than three decades.”
“Isn’t that normal for university lecturers?” asked Jo, but the Doctor had already turned to leave. She watched as the doors leading outside swung open and shut behind the Doctor, and got up to follow.
Stepping outside the building, Jo found the Doctor was standing still on the ground pointing across the path from the reception to a green area with a bench. On the bench was a bald man in a duffle coat, and in front of him…
“The Master!” said the Doctor and Jo in unison.
They watched for a moment as the Master pulled out his Tissue Compression Eliminator, and were confused when instead of using it he put it away, unused.
“How curious," said the Doctor when he saw this.
“Should we go confront him?” Jo asked as they watched the Master disappear round a corner. The Doctor responded by running after him, his cape billowing in the air as he went.
“I guess that’s a yes," she said to herself before setting off after him.
-
“Hello Master!” said the Doctor.
The Master stopped still and turned round. “My dear Doctor!” he said. “I hoped you wouldn’t find me here.”
“Posing as me at a university?” the Doctor said. “However did you think I wouldn’t hear of it?”
The Master was confused for a moment. “Why would I do something so foolish?” he said. “I’m not using that name, I’m going by Professor Magister!”
Jo had caught up by now. “But we saw The Doctor in the staff-role here?” she said.
The Master laughed. “I had heard there was another of your incarnations around here," he said. “I was just on my way to go see them. He laughed, and didn’t say anything else. Instead he continued running towards the steps down to the vault. The Doctor and Jo ran after the Master and saw him go down the steps into darkness.
“This could be dangerous for you," the Doctor said. “Wait outside here, Jo, in case he tries to slip away.”
Jo nodded and watched the Doctor descend the steps behind his mortal foe. She noticed Nardole as he caught up and stood beside her.
“Hello," he said. “I’m Nardole. I’ve heard all about you, you know. The Doctor does go on sometimes.”
-
Down the steps, the older Doctor was sat outside the door to the vault with an older Master trapped inside. It was dark down here and both their other selves almost lost their footing going down.
When the Master made it to the bottom, the Doctor took one look and stood up with a start.
Was that…? It was! But how? This didn’t make any sense to him, but it could only be bad news. Had Missy somehow arranged this? He wouldn’t have put that past her. He almost regretted never coming up with something like this himself sometimes.
The Doctor tried to find something to say, but he couldn’t think of anything. This was wrong. This was simply wrong and it shouldn’t be happening.
“How can it be you?” he eventually managed to say. “The timelines are all wrong. You can’t be here, not this one of you! It’s the wrong time!”
“Doctor dear," a singsong Scottish female voice came from inside the vault. “It’s never the wrong time for me to meet me. Don’t you recall that time when I was every one of your precious humans? There were some people getting on with funtimes at that moment – Do you think they stopped, or did they enjoy it even more? I’ll spare you time, it’s the second one.”
“So that’s how I sound now?” the Master said. “I’m Scottish! And so are you, my dear Doctor. Which of us is copying the other then?”
The Third Doctor came stumbling down the stairs and he took in his new surroundings. “A big vault. That’ll be where the other Master is, so what about…?” He looked and saw the Twelfth Doctor. “Are you the next one along then?”
The older Doctor looked at the younger one with a look of confusion. “Doctor?” he asked. “What are you doing here? The Master is irresponsible and evil, but you!!! You shouldn’t be crossing the timeline with me like this, just irresponsible! I will be having strong words with myself about this later.”
From inside the vault came Missy’s voice again. “Doctor, did you just bring in another one of yourselves? Which one is it? I hope it’s the pretty one with inconsistent hair and vegetable matter, he was always my favourite. So sweet and innocent, and imagine how your friend would take her daddy’s new look? What fun we can have now!”
“It’s the one with the frills, the action-heroey one, the scientist one.”
“Oh, of course it would be number three if that one of me is here," Missy said. “Doesn’t matter, you’re all the Doctor to me.”
The younger Doctor was taking in this conversation with some initial confusion but was now beginning to understand. This strange man was the same Doctor as himself, but from a long time in the future. So not the next incarnation then? And at this point in his future the Master was now a Scottish woman trapped inside that vault with the Doctor as a prison guard. That unusual bald man must be his latest companion.
But there was one issue much more pressing that he had to address immediately. “What are you doing with those sunglasses?” the Third Doctor demanded. “And indoors too! They look ridiculous. My dear fellow, you’re meant to be a scientist!”
“You’re one to talk!” the Twelfth responded, insulted. “Have you seen how you’re dressing yourself? Are you a scientist or a glam rockstar?” He removed his sunglasses and pocketed them. “Besides, people love the sunglasses. Trust me, everyone likes them. I’d say to get over your fashion sense, but I know what’s round the corner.”
The younger Doctor scoffed, interrupting him. “Of all the arrogant egotistical things to say!”
The older one smirked. “Scarves and celery," he said sarcastically. “Rainbows. Question marks. Lord Byron.”
What neither Doctor had noticed during all of this was what the younger Master had been doing. Of course, Missy knew. She remembered this, almost remembered. Any moment now… yes! The Master was working on the door, slowly figuring out how the locks worked, but now it was beginning to slowly open until she could see him face-to-face.
Outside the two Doctors fell silent as they saw the vault opening and bright light shone out from it. Out from inside it there came a woman wearing a jet-black dress and a hat to match, with her dark hair tied back and tucked under it. She raised one of her gloved hands in greeting to the three people waiting for her there.
“Hello. I’m Missy, Queen of Evil. No, don’t say anything.”
-
The Master stretched out a hand to Missy and held hers. “It is exciting to meet another one of me," he said. “How many of us are there now?”
Missy laughed. “I don’t know, darling, I stopped keeping count around the time we reached Logopolis. And there had already been more than just thirteen of us by then!”
“I have a long life ahead of me then," the Master observed. “Good to know, and might I compliment myself on this incarnation I see before me now? You are rather beautiful, if I may say so myself.” He kissed his future self on her hand. “I hope that we can keep this incarnation for a long time.”
Missy chuckled. “I’ve had it a while already," she said as she took his hand. They linked arms. “I’ll try to make it last longer, provided you don’t go burning through this one as quickly as the rest, dear.” Using her free hand she tickled his cheek gently.
The two Doctors watched this display in horror. The Master was flirting with the Master! To be fair, that was very them.
“I hope we never resort to that kind of display," said the younger Doctor.
“Maybe if my previous selves knew how to dress properly we might have got on better," said the older one.
“Perhaps if we ever regenerated into a female form it might happen," the younger one said. “Have we done that yet?”
“Not that I remember, but it’s been a long time since I got started," said the older incarnation. “Maybe I forgot something, makes no difference to me, but why would that make a difference to you? We’re not stooping as low as the humans do over that. You’ve been exiled here too long…”
“What are you talking about, sir!” demanded the younger Doctor.
“Pass the the test-tube Miss Shaw," mimicked the older one, in a faux-posh accent.
Missy made a coughing sound, and the Doctors broke off their argument and looked up. “Don’t wait up, Doctors!” she instructed. “I’m off out for a date with this handsome specimen.”
“No, Missy, no. You can’t do this!” said the Twelfth Doctor.
“Master, you’re breaking all of the rules here at once, you foolish man!” shouted the Third Doctor.
“Missy, let’s do something important first," the Master said. He pulled out the Tissue Compression Eliminator and pointed it at the ceiling, and fired. Several chunks of the ceiling started to shake above the heads of the Doctors.
The Master gave his signature evil laugh as he linked arms with Missy once again. The two of them walked away up the steps as the ceiling began to fall in behind them. Chunks of stone fell with a thud and dust covered the room, forcing both Doctors to grab their respective cape and coat to cover their mouths and noses. It was only for a few seconds but even then the rumbling and crashing sounds were deafening.
And then the dust settled and the Doctors could see what had happened. The entrance was blocked, the lights around the room had gone out leaving only the vault’s light to let them see. The Doctor was alone with only the Doctor for company.
The Third Doctor was the first to recover. He ran his hands through his hair and started to comb out the rubble. “The two Masters got away!” he said.
The Twelfth Doctor reached instinctively for his head. “At least the sonic sunglasses didn’t break," he said.
-
Jo and Nardole were horrified when they saw both of their respective Masters leaving the vault hand in hand, walking away into the sunset. “Who is that woman?” Jo asked. “Is that… she can’t be the future Master, can she?”
“Yes, she’s a woman now," Nardole said. “She goes by Missy, short for Mistress.” He leaned over and whispered in Jo’s ear. “She terrifies me," he confessed. “Almost as much as a Dalek. Have you met Daleks yet?”
“Yes, I have," she replied. “A couple times. You don’t want to know what I did to them.”
“The Doctor didn’t tell me what you did," Nardole said. “What was it?”
Jo decided to change the subject quickly. “We should follow them," she said. “Before they get up to anything evil!”
Nardole nodded. “Or, we could see what the Doctors say! Down there.” He pointed to where the Masters had come from, and then started to walk over to it without waiting for Jo to answer. She followed him and they saw how the collapsed ceiling blocked the entrance up.
“So much for that idea," Nardole deadpanned.
“It looks like we’ll have to go after the Master and Missy ourselves anyway," Jo said. She tentatively reached out to touch the blockage and it didn’t move.
Nardole made Jo step aside and decided to try himself. He made a fist and hit the blockage with all his cyborg-augmented strength. There was a loud noise, like smashing metal against rock, but the blockage didn’t budge.
“Nardole?” the Twelfth Doctor could be heard calling out. “Nardole! Or Jo? Is that one of you?”
“Yes! Yes, Doctor, it’s us! You survived!” said Nardole.
“But what’s happened to your voice?” asked Jo. “You haven’t regenerated, have you? The Brigadier told me about…”
“No, I’m quite alright Miss Grant," interrupted the Third Doctor. “This rather ridiculous man with me is my future self. It seems I get access to my TARDIS back one day and for some reason come here to guard the Master.”
“Oh please," said the older Doctor. “Like you don’t care about your Master enough to do exactly the same thing. There’s nobody else like me but her. Just you wait until what’s in store for you in a few lifetimes, and then maybe you’ll understand.” He stopped, suddenly sad. “And nobody else ever will.”
The younger Doctor didn’t have time for that. He decided to turn his attention to Jo instead. “You need to go after the Masters. They must be up to something, I’m sure of it!”
“But what about you?” Jo asked. “Should we try to get you out of there? The other one might have his TARDIS nearby, we could chase them in that!”
“No, we can’t do that," said the older Doctor. “No way am I letting Missy near to that time machine, not yet. You two need to find them both and stop whatever they’re up to, now!”
“I’m quite correct, as usual," said the younger Doctor.
“Thank you Doctor," said the older Doctor.
“I’m very welcome," said the younger one. “Now Jo, we will work on getting ourselves out of here. You two need to get after them!”
Jo looked helplessly at Nardole. He nodded at her. “Okay, you heard the Doctors. Come on Jo, we’ve got work to do.”
She could tell Nardole was serious because his squeaky voice was slightly less squeaky now. “But how do we find them?” she asked.
-
In the Doctor’s university office was a desk. On the desk was a pencil pot. In the pencil pot was a variety of sonic screwdrivers. These were what Nardole was going after now.
“That one looks just like my Doctor’s," Jo observed when Nardole selected one.
“Does it? It’s a bit too low-tech for my liking," he explained. “That one there, with the blue LED, that’s my favourite. But Missy would notice if I went for anything that recent. But this –” he held the one Jo had pointed out and lifted it up in the air triumphantly “– this is exactly what we need to find her.”
“How?”
“Well, it’s simple really.” Nardole ended his explanation there and walked into the next room along.
The Doctor kept his guitar hidden back there, but more importantly he kept his TARDIS here as well. Jo let out a gasp when she saw the familiar blue police box. “It’s a bit bigger than I recall," she said.
Nardole didn’t stop to explain as he opened the doors, removing an “Out Of Order” sign as he did so. Jo saw a blue light come through the door swallowing him up from her view as he went inside. Jo ran in after him and found that the TARDIS interior had changed a lot since her time.
“It’s so much bigger than it used to be!” she exclaimed.
Nardole was taken aback. “That’s not the usual response.”
“And it’s got blue lighting!” she said. “All dark and artificial. Is it meant to be moody?”
Nardole ignored her, not wanting to admit he shared that sentiment.
“Bookshelves," she went on. “Why are there bookshelves? And is that a Rembrandt?”
Approaching the console, Jo tentatively touched it. She was surprised when it didn’t wobble, not even slightly. “What are we going to do?” she asked. “Normally the Doctor would think of something extremely clever. But he’s trapped now, twice upon a time!”
“There must be a more elegant way of putting that," Nardole thought out loud as he shoved the sonic screwdriver into a slot on the console. The machine whirred into life as the central column started to move up and down and the familiar noise filled the room. “I took the liberty of scanning Missy with this sonic shortly after she was first imprisoned!” he shouted over the noise. “Just in case she ever escaped. The Doctor doesn’t know about it, so don’t tell him!”
“But your Doctor told us not to do this!” shouted Jo.
“He says a lot of things," Nardole admitted. “But his missus gave me strict instructions to protect him, with full authority to kick his arse.”
“He’s married?” Jo said in surprise.
Nardole gave her a cheeky smile. “Spoilers!”
-
Meanwhile, in the twilight of the early evening out on the streets of Bristol, both Masters were having a great time. With their hands held and arms linked together, they were walking into the early evening with a spring in their step, reminiscing about the conquest of worlds gone by.
“Do you remember that time we took on the Truth Monks?” she asked.
“Yes!” he responded. “And the young maiden I killed to defeat them and take over that world for myself!”
“We pushed her into the volcano!” she cackled. “Do you remember how she struggled?”
“She kicked and screamed and begged for mercy," the Master said laughing. “But that wasn’t enough! I have no mercy. I was the Master, and she would obey me.”
“How she jumped in herself because I told her to," Missy said. “And those big deep brown eyes of hers. They remind me of someone, looking back. Just don’t tell the Doctor.”
As they walked on the sun continued to go down. A few minutes later, night had fallen and everything had gone dark. Time for some proper fun.
-
The two Masters passed by the window of a closed music shop. Missy saw the guitar and thought of the Doctor. “Look at this," she said. She smashed the window and stepped inside. She pulled out some device from inside her dress and she slipped it into the hollow of the guitar, underneath the strings. “Quickly!” she shouted, grabbing her past self by his arm. They ran along a little way as the shop’s alarm blared out and a few metres on they heard it explode. The shop was destroyed and all of the products inside it too.
Missy laughed, and ran back to the shop window. She stepped in and bent over, picking up a bit of stray metal. “Look at that guitar now,” she said, before tossing it over he shoulder.
“Why did you do that?” asked the Master, as they walked further down the pavement once again.
“Because my Doctor plays guitars a lot now, I thought I’d blow one up.” She twirled round excitedly. “Just to spite him!”
“I see,” the Master said. He pointed ahead up the road. “But what was the point? It didn’t express power over anyone. You are the Master!”
Missy looked at what he had pointed to. A young man was walking home from having dinner. As he passed by the pair of Masters, who he took to be a couple out for the evening, the Master suddenly grabbed him and held him still.
“What are you doing?!” the man asked.
“Yes, I’d like to know that as well,” said Missy.
“Like I told you,” the Master said. “I am the Master.” He reached for his pocket “And everyone will obey me, but if they refuse...” He pulled out the TCE. A few seconds later, the two of them walked on, leaving behind a very lifelike doll lying on the ground.
“How did that express dominion or power?” Missy asked, imitating the Master’s deep commanding voice. “It was senseless murder. Not making an example or anything.”
“It proves that I have power, that I am a Master of all!” he explained. Missy didn’t feel like this had answered her question at all. They saw a group of drunk students on the other side of the road. “But it doesn’t have to be by killing,” he continued. “Watch this.”
He crossed over and looked one of them in the eye. Missy couldn’t hear what he said, but she could make a good guess. Sure enough as soon as the Master returned to her she could see that the student had started to hit one of his friends. The group were having a full-on fistfight within seconds.
The Master was having a great time, but Missy wasn’t so sure. She looked him in the eyes. He looked her back. She remembered those eyes, they had been her own for a while after all, but this was more than that. She recognised the lust for power burning deep within them and felt happier than she had been in many many lifetimes. It was a beautiful feeling. A simpler time, she thought. Before she had grown old and had to face her own mortality. Before she started to ask why she did the things he did. She missed that feeling sometimes. But it was the past and she didn’t much want to go back there.
The earlier Master however felt something new. There was something enchanting about this woman, something that had connected with him. He wasn’t sure what it was, maybe that she was in fact him. Yet there was something more, it was something that he could almost call… no, that couldn’t be right.
This woman wasn’t some evil villainess he was teaming up with for his latest scheme. This was himself from the future that he had somehow been in the same area and naturally had decided to help set free. So why couldn’t he get the words out? There was something deeper to this connection, one that made him search within himself to find out who he really was. He didn’t like that feeling most of the time, but here he very nearly did. Perhaps because of the woman responsible? He was fairly certain it wasn’t love, but maybe it could become that with time. This attraction, he couldn’t explain it.
He saw Missy’s expression change. “What is it?” she asked. “Don’t try to hide it, I know that face. I remember it. You’re struggling with something. Tell me.”
He let go of her hand and unlinked his arm from her’s. He took a small step back. “Missy," he said. “I don’t know what it is but you make me feel… something.”
“I know," she said. “I have that effect on everyone dear, you’ve got this to look forward to one day. Can’t remember how exactly we took on this form, but it happens. Maybe one day I’ll know.” She laughed again.
The Master caught her eyes again. She smiled. “Yes, I can remember bits of this for you," she said. “This is your first time realising that you’re into yourself.”
“I’m… into myself?” he repeated. “That’s not the sort of thing we say!”
“It is now," she said. “And this is your first time to realise it’s true for us.”
“This is wrong,” he said. “There is only one person I have feelings for, and it isn’t another of me!”
“That’s lovely dear, here have this –” and then she kissed him.
It caught him off-guard. But he didn’t try to fight it. He put his arms round her and held her in a passionate embrace.
“Is this wrong?” he asked, suddenly unsure of his earlier assertion.
“Probably," she said. “It’s nice though.”
“What’s that noise?” asked the Master. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say a TARDIS had landed.”
“Right first time!” said Nardole. The Masters looked round and saw that the TARDIS had materialised around them during their kiss.
“Oh, you caught up with us," Missy said. She looked at Jo and mimed biting something. “Hello again, my dear. It’s been a while.”
“Enough of this foolishness!” snapped the Master. He ran over to the console, shoving Nardole aside, and started to set the controls. “We have gained access to the Doctor’s TARDIS. Now I, I mean we, will finally be able to rule the cosmos. I will be Master of the universe and my queen will be myself!”
Jo shot Nardole a disapproving look. “I told you not to take the TARDIS to them!” she said. “And so did the Doctor! And look what happened.”
The TARDIS dematerialised and went into flight. The Master looked across the console and gazed at Missy with a loving look. She smiled back. “Why don’t you tell everyone what your plan is?” she asked him.
-
The TARDIS arrived in an empty lecture theatre back at the university and all four of the people inside it had disembarked. After a few minutes, the Master had finished explaining his latest plan to conquer the Earth. It was a complicated plan and neither Jo nor Nardole fully understood it.
It required the Master to base himself at the university, armed with a tenured professorship. This had been quite an undertaking and instead of working hard to get the required credentials he eventually had resorted to travelling back in time no less than six times so that the university’s board that appointed him with this role consisted mostly of himself under various false names and disguises. In addition to his current identity as Magister he was also present in that meeting as professors Estram, Keller, Moffat, Thascalos, Dominar, and Roberts. That had been a long day.
Nardole and Jo tried desperately to follow his plan as the Master continued to explain, but as it got more and more convoluted from there onwards they soon lost track. Apparently there were three more of him running around in the even earlier past. One of them was ghostwriting songs for The Beatles so the Master could play the lyrics to one of their songs backwards at a particular frequency to make a star explode, but he’d lost track of which song and it was only on some versions of it that it worked, so the other two times he went back to try and get hold of as much of their work as possible.
The final thing he needed to be able to start doing it was a working time machine, one he could take apart without damage to his own. And now that’s just what he had. “I had no idea that I would end up finding the Doctor’s TARDIS," he said. “Sadly it’s not working for him at the moment, but the fact that another one of him was in this area with a working version, this was an unexpected pleasure.”
Missy coughed.
“But not nearly so pleasurable as the woman he was looking after!” the Master finished.
“Wait, so why did you need to be based at the university?” asked Nardole. “I got lost around the time you pretended to be Paul after you killed him. What did you say you needed the fourteen copies of The Beatles’ back catalogue for again?”
“I love The Beatles," said Jo. “Do you know I Am The Walrus?”
“You look human to me," Nardole said.
“Master, why did we bring these two along?” asked Missy.
“It’s not my fault they were in the TARDIS when we came inside it!” he snapped at her. “Now go inside it yourself, and find the right fluid link. Then I can add it to my device, thus beginning with my plan and then soon the entire universe will obey me!”
Missy coughed again.
“Both of me!” the Master corrected himself.
Missy shot him a glare, and then went inside the TARDIS to find what he’d asked for. The Master, Jo, and Nardole watched her go and saw the doors close behind her.
“Now to deal with you two," said the Master as he approached the Doctors’ companions with a menacing stare.
Nardole turned and started to run up the stairs to the door, hoping to get away. Jo however stood her ground and waited as the Master approached her. Jo looked up at the towering figure of the evil Time Lord as he came to within centimetres of her, trying to stare him down but desperately avoiding eye contact. She wanted to turn and run, just like Nardole had, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. She was rooted to the spot, and transfixed on the sight of the menacing monster she was convinced was about to attack. If this was the end then she wasn’t going to go down screaming. She wouldn’t let the Master have that satisfaction.
And then…
A high-pitched noise filled the room. The Master put his hands over his ears and buckled over with his eyes clenched shut. “What is this?” he shouted. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU IGNORANT GIRL!!!!!!”
“She’s not doing anything except holding your attention," explained Nardole from a seat over to the side of the room, where he’d gone to when Jo and the Master were focussed on each other and not on him. “But I have this, you see.” He held up the sonic screwdriver. “It’s tuned into you specifically, Master. I just need to hold this down and it will lock-on the TARDIS to you. Of course, you’re both inside and outside of it so it doesn’t know what to do.” Nardole released the button he was holding down and the noise stopped. “Jo, run to the TARDIS!” he commanded.
Jo ran towards the TARDIS, but she couldn’t resist kicking the Master where he lay collapsed on the ground first. He made a grunting sound. It felt good to do that.
The TARDIS’s doors were now opened and Missy was stepping outside of it. “I feel just like Doctor Who, doing this!” she said, brandishing the fluid link before she tucked it away inside her dress. Then she saw her past self where he lay on the ground and the sight of Jo and Nardole running for the TARDIS, and before she had fully registered it they had pushed past her. In the TARDIS, Jo quickly ran for the console in search of the button that closed the doors.
“It doesn’t work like that anymore," Nardole explained as he casually closed the doors manually and pressed a button on the sonic to lock the doors. Just in time, as Missy was starting to smack on them trying to get inside.
“You can’t go anywhere with that thing," she called through to them. “Not without this fluid link.”
“Oh, why does she have to be so right?” Nardole asked to nobody in particular.
“What if she isn’t?” Jo said.
Nardole walked over to the console. “But she is, she must be!” he said. “The Doctor told me that the TARDIS couldn’t move without the fluid links. And why would he lie to me, to Nardy? We’re stuck here!”
“No we’re not," Jo said. “The Doctor, my one I mean, he has been trying for years to make his TARDIS work again and has almost managed it a few times.”
“That’s good," said Nardole. “How successful has he been?”
“Not very," Jo admitted. “And I don’t even know how he does it.”
“Okay," said Nardole, “that’s very helpful.”
“Did you ever take a scan of the Doctor with that?” Jo pointed at the sonic screwdriver. “Because we could go back to him with it if you did.”
Nardole leapt over to the console next to Jo. “Great idea!” he shouted. “Yes, that would definitely work! Shame we can’t do it because I never thought of that.”
Jo and Nardole looked at each other in despair.
-
Outside the TARDIS, both Masters continued to wait. The earlier one was busy with the device he was putting together as his female future self continued to smack the doors of the TARDIS in vain. She gave up after a minute and walked over to herself. She had something she wanted to ask him and she couldn’t leave it any longer.
“Why do you do this?” she asked him.
“Do what?” he replied, without looking up. He stuck out a hand. “Fluid link.”
Missy didn’t give it to him. “Why do you try to conquer the universe?” she asked him. “What’s the point, I mean, what’s the motivation for it?”
He didn’t answer.
“I asked you a question, Master.”
“I heard you.” He stood up and turned to face her. He put a hand on each of her shoulders. “Because we are the Master.”
“Yes, yes, yes, and they will obey us, I know. Heard it all before.” She shook his hands off. “But do we need to do this? What’s there to gain? Conquer the universe and what else is there left to do?”
“We will rule the cosmos! Master of all creation.”
She nodded sarcastically. “Of course. That’s all you ever wanted.” She walked away from him towards the front of the lecture theatre. She sat herself down behind the lecturer’s desk and leant back into the chair. “Maybe with age I’ve started to wonder why I do this kind of thing. Perhaps being dragged back into the Time War it forced me to think about it properly.” She stopped for a moment. “Or maybe it was what that creepy old lady told me. I still don’t know who she was, you know… but I have my theories.”
Her earlier self didn’t understand any of what he was hearing. “I am the Master," he said again. “The clue is in the name.” He ignored her and walked over and stood beside the TARDIS. He produced the TCE from his pocket again. “Let me blast our way in!” he said.
Missy looked and saw in horror that he was aiming his TCE at the keyhole. She opened her mouth to protest but before she could say anything he had fired. The TARDIS shook and made the sound it usually did when it took off, before it began to fade and dematerialise.
Inside it, Jo and Nardole were both thrown to the floor. Nardole grabbed onto the console and stood up, pulling the scanner round to him. He and Jo looked at the screen and watched as the two Masters were squabbling.
“What did you do that for?” Missy was shouting. “Don’t you know about the Hostile Action Displacement System?”
“You’re the one that didn’t stop them getting inside it," the Master shouted back. “And all that knocking on the door, begging them. Ooh, let me in, I’m all Scottish and feminine! Is this what I become in my future? I don’t want to live like this.”
He ran to the opposite side of the desk to where she stood and pointed his weapon at her chest. She looked at it and laughed once. “Really, so that’s what you do now?” she asked him, sarcastically. “Delayed action suicide? I like the bravery but even you would never do that. There’s only one of our incarnations that ever would... and he’s not here.”
She paused for a moment as though remembering something, but in her mind she rejected that immediately. Not true. Never happened. Fake news.
“I thought we had something!” the Master said. His hand trembled as his grip weakened. “I thought you felt it too! Not love, like I do for...” He stopped himself for a second and took in a deep breath. “Not love, but… but there was something!”
“Unexplainable attraction?” Missy asked.
The Master nodded, as his hands continued to tremble.
“Yeah,” said Missy. “This is the main reason two of us shouldn’t meet. You’ve always been full of yourself, it’s always gonna end like this.”
Inside the TARDIS, which was now travelling at random through the time vortex, Jo turned off the scanner. “That’s enough of that," she said.
“I wonder where we will end up now?” asked Nardole. His voice had gone high-pitched. Scared.
Jo took his hand reassuringly. “I hope that we end up where the Doctor is," she said. “He would know what to do. Both of him.”
-
The Hostile Action Displacement System is one of the more random and unpredictable features of the Doctor’s TARDIS. But on this occasion it worked wonders. The TARDIS ended up in the safest possible place whenever this system was required, and at this moment that location was just a few floors below, specifically an underground basement where a vault was found and where two Doctors were left stranded.
As soon as the familiar sound was heard, the two Doctors stood to their feet immediately and started to look around frantically trying to figure out where it was going to end up.
“Good heavens!” said the Third Doctor. “It’s been far too long since I heard that sound! I hadn’t realised how much I missed it.”
“Nardole, oh Nardole no, what are you doing?” shouted the Twelfth Doctor. “I told you not to go to the TARDIS, I said it was too dangerous!”
The TARDIS landed inside the vault. Both Doctors looked inside it and saw the blue box stood there waiting for them. “Is this one yours?” asked the younger Doctor.
“It must be," said the older one, as he let himself in. “Nardole, I told you not to use it!” shouted the Doctor.
“Sorry sir!” said Nardole “But it was the only thing I could think of!”
“I tried to stop him," Jo said. “Now Missy has stolen one of the fluid links for the Master’s plot.”
“And it was the only thing he needed to complete his plan," said Nardole. “But if we can get back to them quickly then maybe we can still stop them!”
He walked towards the door but before he got to them the younger Doctor had entered the console room.
“You’ve redecorated this place," he observed. “I say, I rather like it for once, dear chap; could you kindly tell which desktop is this one?”
“I don’t know what it’s called," the older Doctor replied. “I was hoping to get some more of these round things, but I seem to have misplaced them.”
Nardole pointed to the door. “Shouldn’t we get going back to the lecture theatre?” he asked. “The Master and Missy could stop fighting any moment and team up again!”
“No, I don’t think so!” the older Doctor said. He started to plug in coordinates, press buttons, and pull levers. Suddenly the TARDIS leapt into the air. It passed through ceilings and floors and walls and then it settled on the spot. “Let’s just take a shortcut instead.”
The Twelfth Doctor stood beside the Third Doctor at the doors of the TARDIS. They nodded at each other and then each pushed one of the two doors outwards and stepped outside.
-
A few moments before this happened, the Master fired his weapon at Missy and she reeled in shock as the wave of energy hit her in her chest. She fell down immediately with a grunt.
The Master laughed. “That’ll teach you!” he said.
To his surprise, the next thing he saw was Missy getting up again. “That," she said, “was very very rude! I expected better of myself than that.” She leapt at the Master and grabbed the TCE from his hands. He fell over and watched as she grabbed it from the ground. With one shot she destroyed the device he’d been working on. Then she stomped on the TCE with one of her big boots. The weapon shattered, destroyed beyond repair.
“How could you do that?” he shouted up at her. “I am the Master! You are the Master too! You shouldn’t do that!”
“Says you!” she crooned. “Even after you just tried to kill me?”
“How did it not work?” he asked. “Why aren’t you regenerating?”
“You little flirt," she said with a smile. “You’re almost as bad as the man downstairs.”
“You should be dying!!” he yelled. “I just shot you! You should die!”
“Nope. Just winded," she replied. “Don’t feel like dying today. Besides, that weapon was tuned-in to your bio-print. It wouldn’t work on you, any of you, not unless you changed that. And why would you ever want to?” Again a memory entered her mind, again she dismissed it.
The Master stood himself up. “You are nothing like me!” he shouted. “You had the Doctor’s companions in your grasp and let them get away.”
“Yes, funny that.” She turned her back to the Master and walked to the front of the room. She sat down, on top of the desk this time, and reached inside her dress producing the fluid link from inside it. “You still need this?” she asked.
The Master stared at it. “You will hand that over to me," he said. “I am the Master…”
“Yes, yes, yes, and I will obey you, I know how that one ends. Are you trying that line again? Even after what I said before?” Missy laughed. “As if that would ever work on yourself!”
The Master lunged at her. She slightly adjusted her position and the Master fell right over the desk and his head connected with the wall, with a loud bump. When he didn’t get up, Missy quickly got down behind the desk to check on his pulse, still alive. Phew. If she’d accidentally erased herself from existence, that would’ve been a bit awkward.
She gave him a kiss and focussed hard with her mind on the events of that evening. “When you come to, in a few hours time, this will all be forgotten," she said. “Well, maybe not all of it. I’ll leave you with some pieces so you know what to do when you’re me.” She tucked him away underneath the desk. From what little she could remember of her time in that life, she knew he had to be left there alone.
She walked back from behind the desk and sat down on one of the chairs. She didn’t recall what the Master’s plan had been anymore, that was gone now after her mindwipe. Never mind that, it was irrelevant now. She could see the TARDIS materialising. Then she saw two Doctors step out from inside it in perfect unison.
“Missy!” said the Scottish Doctor.
“I surrender," she said calmly. She placed the fluid link on the ground in front of her and kneeled down. “I surrender. You’ve got me.”
-
With Missy now locked back inside the vault, the Twelfth Doctor was hard at work fixing the ceiling area around the steps down to it. He’d been doing this for a couple hours but the job wasn’t nearly so hard as he had thought it might’ve been. Maybe that might have had something to do with him quickly taking a trip to the planet Athena Major to procure some handheld antigrav tractor beams from a cow merchant there. Nardole was sure to say he was cheating by doing that, but the Doctor figured if he didn’t tell Nardole then what he didn’t know wouldn’t bother him.
Also he’d had some help. The earlier Doctor was stood at a distance commanding the rebuild, with Jo next to him. The newest Doctor didn’t feel like he needed it, but he didn’t mind it. It was his only chance at intelligent conversation, he joked. Nardole didn’t appreciate that.
The younger Doctor had tried to send Jo to make some tea for him, but the older one put a stop to that and sent Nardole. The tea had tasted horrible, but the Doctors appreciated it all the same. They needed it after an hour or so trapped underground.
After the rebuilding was finished – it only took a few minutes in the end thanks to the alien tech – the two Doctors walked together back to the carpark where the younger one had left Bessie. Jo and Nardole weren’t far behind.
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand," said the Third. “Why are you protecting the Master? And why don’t you use your TARDIS anymore?”
“So that’s two things?” Nardole said quietly. Jo laughed but neither of the Doctors had heard it.
“You pick that over your Master still being at large?” asked the Twelfth.
“I don’t need to worry about that too much," admitted the Third Doctor. “I’m bound to run into him sooner or later.”
“I made a promise. I swore that I would guard the vault for a thousand years. And someone special, someone who died, made me stand by that. I’m doing it for her.” The older Doctor paused. “And because she told Nardole to kick my arse if I didn’t.”
“If you say so, my good man.” They had reached Bessie now and the younger Doctor climbed aboard. “But take it from me. If my TARDIS was working again, like it is by your time, then as much as I love this world I wouldn’t be staying put here.”
The Twelfth and Third Doctors met the other’s gaze but neither said anything. The older one knew of the younger one’s exile of course. What the younger one didn’t know was that it was almost at an end.
“I made my choice," the older Doctor said. “Without witness or reward, I made my choice.”
“If you say so, Doctor," said the younger Doctor. “I look forward to seeing how I get there.”
The Doctor said nothing. He knew better than that having lived through it. But his younger self would have to find this out the hard way.
“But here’s an idea," he went on. “You can’t leave Earth, you say, nor leave the current timezone. So answer me this, have you any unfinished business on this world?”
The older Doctor smiled at his past self. “Maybe," he said. “I’m sure Nardole wouldn’t stop me doing that.”
“It’s good to see my future is safe, whatever happens," the Third Doctor said.
“Say hello to Allistair from me," said the Twelfth Doctor.
-
After the Doctor and Nardole had watched the Doctor and Jo drive away, they returned to the vault.
“Unfinished business on Earth," mimicked Nardole. “Sir, you can’t leave this –”
“Yes, I know.” The Doctor smiled at his friend. “But as long as it’s in the present day… I can think of something.”
Nardole watched as the Doctor turned and ran back to where they’d left the TARDIS. “I know that look, Doctor!” he shouted. “Wait for me, wait for me! Where are we going?”
The Doctor turned back to face Nardole. “New York!”
“New York?” shouted Nardole back at him.
“Yes, there’s a big time paradox I made there a while ago, needs fixing. And after that, some old friends to drop in on…” the Doctor started running again, a big wide grin on his face.
-
Elsewhere, the Master awoke with a start. He didn’t recognise where he was and realised he couldn’t recall how he’d got there. Yet here he was.
He stood up. A lecture theatre? But this was the nighttime! Then he saw his TCE broken on the floor and the ruins of the device he’d been making lay next to it. He knew where he could get a new TCE one day. Terserus. Not that he was in a hurry.
How had this happened? He tried to remember but his mind was blank, almost as if someone had gotten rid of it. He reached for his head and ran his hands through his hair where he felt a lump. How had that happened?
He went out of the lecture theatre and down the corridor as he made his way to his office.
Room 11 – Professor Magister
The Master forced his way into the room and collapsed through the door of his waiting TARDIS. He pressed buttons on the console and set off on his way.
What had happened to him today? He had no idea. But for whatever reason, he wanted to get out of here as soon as he could.
“Until the next time, Doctor!” he shouted, as his ship flew off through the time vortex. He laughed his evillest laugh as he went on his way.
Several lifetimes later, the Master was alone in her vault. “Until the next time, Master!” she said to herself trying to remember the events of the past. “You’ll see me soon. The long way round.”
writer - Z.P. MOO
cover art - AUDREY ARMSTRONG
story editor - SAMUEL MALESKI
producers - ED GOUNDREY-SMITH & SAMUEL MALESKI
cover art - AUDREY ARMSTRONG
story editor - SAMUEL MALESKI
producers - ED GOUNDREY-SMITH & SAMUEL MALESKI