#decayed!master

In ‘The Deadly Assassin,’ the Master’s disappearance is explained to us when he comes up with a clever plot, sending the Doctor back home to Gallifrey in order to uncover a mystery into the future premotionions of the Lord President’s death (and of course he’s behind it.) This Master is FAR more dark than his previous self, hell-bent on only his survival, even if it means taking the rest of Gallifrey with him to achieve it. Only his hate and need for revenge keeps him going. Although it may seem the Master has finally lost, this is only when we start to realize how great of a survivor he can be when it comes to death.

Making a return in ‘The Keeper of Traken,’ he’s still focused on attaining a body that can handle the presence of a Time Lord. Although he isn’t able to obtain the Doctor’s, using his cunning, the Master ends up stealing the body of Tremas of Traken, finding a way to extend his life a little longer.

Important Character Traits for Crispy!Master:

High sense of Self-Preservation. He doesn’t care what it takes to stay alive. This is the first time we see it with the Master, even if he’s going completely against the Doctor to do so.

Known for being the most ruthless of the Master’s incarnations (and that’s saying something.)

His physical state of being rotten and decayed can be used as a metaphor for how evil he is as an individual. As Geoffrey Beevers remarked; this is what the Master is like without his smooth looks and charm: as he put it, "the essence of the creature.”

However, in Big Finish, thanks to Beevers himself, and the writers, Crispy gets more of a development. Despite being just ruthless because of his current situation, ‘being faced with his own mortality also gives him plenty of poetic and calm moments.’ 

The Many Explanations for his Crispy State:

Geoffrey Beevers remarked that this is what the Master is like without his smooth looks and charm: as he put it, "the essence of the creature". This seems to be a running theme with this Master. The first Crispy Master is the ugliest and cruellest of all, while the second Crispy seems to have "healed" a little and is a step back towards Delgado behaviour (how much of the "healed" appearance is intentional and how much of it is due to the limitations of Beevers' makeup compared to Pratt's mask is unknown).