| NOTE: This page is solely for the "Missy" incarnation of the Master. For the other versions, see here: The Master. |
|
| “ | Say something nice. | „ |
| ~ Missy's catchphrase. |
| “ | Missy: Oh, you know who I am. I'm Missy. The Doctor: Who's Missy? Missy: Ugh, please try to keep up. Short for "Mistress". Well… couldn't very well keep calling myself the Master, now could I? |
„ |
| ~ Missy revealing her true identity to the Twelfth Doctor. |
| “ | I need you to know we're not so different! I need my friend back. | „ |
| ~ Missy explains her motives to the Twelfth Doctor. |
The Mistress, better known as Missy, is an incarnation of the Master that serves as the overarching antagonist of Series 7 and the main antagonist of the Twelfth Doctor's tenure in the British sci-fi series Doctor Who.
After regenerating into her first female incarnation, Missy set out on a quest to rekindle her friendship with the Doctor, initially trying to make him join her in causing chaos and destruction, but eventually became more heroic the more time she spent with him. She eventually encountered her previous incarnation and the two ended up mortally wounding each other, causing her younger self to regenerate into her and her present self to die.
She was portrayed by Michelle Gomez, who also played Madame Satan in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Madame Rouge on Doom Patrol, Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatian Street, and Morag in The Loud House Movie.
Biography[]
Past[]
- Main article: The Master (Harold Saxon)
Missy, The Master's female incarnation.
Following his encounter with the Twelfth Doctor, having fuzzy memories of the event due to meeting her, The Master regenerated into his next incarnation: a woman who calls herself Missy (short for Mistress). Acting on a desire to reconnect with the Doctor, Missy desired to bring him down to her moral level by first arranging his Eleventh incarnation to meet Clara Oswald. She then acquired a Matrix data slice to create a Nethersphere to house the minds of recently deceased from across Earth's history, including the Half Face Man despite originally being a machine. These also included those that had died in the Doctor's recent adventures, such as the aforementioned Half Faced Man and the soldier Gretchen. Arranging the formation of the 3W facility, Missy orchestrated the Cybermen to upgrade the deceased bodies and become an army under her control.
Being left somewhat busy, Missy began monitoring the Doctor and Clara, being proud in her choice of companion for him after the events of Flatline. She also witnessed Earth being saved from a solar flare during In the Forest of the Night.
Missy reveals herself as the Master to the Twelfth Doctor.
Death in Heaven[]
After the death of Clara's boyfriend, Danny Pink, the Twelfth Doctor arrived to the 3W facility, situated within St. Paul's cathedral, Missy initially posed as an android, but eventually revealed herself as the Cybermen proceed to convert all of Earth's dead. Missy was quickly captured by UNIT, having anonymously tipped them off on the Cybermen's presence. As according to her plan, the Cybermen created from St Paul's would fly to locations across England and release cyber-pollen, to convert corpses into Cybermen.
Taken onto Boat One along with the Doctor, she gleefully revealed that she knew where Gallifrey was, but refused to tell him. Missy later freed herself, casually killing one of the Osgoods which would disrupt human/Zygon relations, and sent out a signal to the Cybermen to attack the plane, revealing to the Doctor that she was the one who set him up with Clara in the first place. In the Nethersphere, Missy and her A.I. assistant Seb watched the Doctor free falling and save himself by using his key to summon the TARDIS. When Seb got annoyingly giddy, Missy casually disintegrated him.
From there, she revealed that she arranged their creation for him, Missy tempts the Doctor into using the Cybermen to act out his own desires. However, the Doctor rejected her plan, instead giving command to Danny, who instead had the Cyber-Army burn up the clouds of Cyber pollen. While the plan was foiled, Missy claimed that Gallifrey had returned to it's original coordinates, and made a final attempt to force the Doctor to lower himself by killing her to keep Clara from becoming a murderer. But one surviving Cyberman (the Doctor's deceased ally Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart) vaporized Missy before destroying himself.
The Witch's Familiar[]
However, it turned out that Missy survived by using the Cyberman's blast to charge her vortex manipulator and escape. After receiving the Doctor's Confessional Dial, Time Lord's equivalent of a "last will and testament", Missy enlisted Clara to find the Doctor. They travel to 12th century Essex and find the Doctor there. But they were forced by snake-like being named Colony Sarff, who takes them to Skaro so a dying Davros can meet the Doctor. After the two escape the Daleks, with the Doctor assuming they died, Missy and Clara sneak back into the city via its sewer/graveyard with the latter tricked into entering a Dalek casing. After Missy saves the Doctor, she attempted to trick him into killing Clara before he realized the truth. Missy takes her leave, she runs into Daleks who see that she is a Time Lord and prepare to exterminate her. But Missy says that she has "a very clever idea", hinting that she survives after this encounter.
Imprisonment in the Vault[]
Missy was captured at some point and prepared to be sentenced to death on another planet. The Doctor is called upon to carry out the execution, as only a time lord can kill another time lord. Missy begs the Doctor to spare her life, saying that she will make the effort to change. The Doctor messes with the execution, which results in Missy being knocked out. The Doctor has his companion Nardole move her to a vault, in which he will watch over her and help her on the road to redemption. The Vault is moved underneath an university, where the Doctor spends 70 years teaching whilst guarding it.
World Enough and Time[]
Having become remorseful of the deaths she had caused, Missy appears to have gradually reformed. The Doctor tests her reformation by letting her play "Doctor Who" in helping what they learned to be a Mondasian colony ship, only resulting with the Doctor suffering one of his greatest tragedies against the Cybermen while Missy encounters her previous male incarnation. This led Missy to find her loyalties torn between her promise to the Doctor and the lure of her former self. After initially betraying the Doctor and leaving him to face the Cybermen alone, Missy later stabs the Master to enact his regeneration while intending to come to the Doctor's aid. But the Master, refusing to accept the person he will become, uses his Laser Screwdriver to fatally wound Missy while negating her ability to regenerate. The Missy incarnation dies, but whether the Master as a whole survives or not is ambiguous.
Possible Future[]
- Main article: The Master (O)
Personality[]
Missy was unique among many other incarnations of The Master for several reasons, one of which being her personality. Out of all of the Masters Missy was perhaps the most unhinged and obviously insane however she also expressed several attributes that other incarnations lacked i.e she was genuinely quite affable, friendly, charming and polite and was perfectly capable of working with others for reasons beyond her own personal gain.
She also genuinely did seem to care about The Doctor possibly to the point of having romantic feelings for him and was the first incarnation seen in the revival series to actually have restored some aspects of her old friendship with him. That being said however she was still just a violent, abrasive, arrogant and sadistic as any other incarnation for much of her lifetime.
Following spending time trapped in the vault however Missy genuinely began to reform and see the error of her old selves' ways, having realised that being evil isn't actually a good thing and the whole weight of all of the crimes she committed remorselessly for nearly a millennia broke her and left her feeling extreme amounts of regret and guilt to the surprise of everyone, especially The Doctor.
While it seemed she had relapsed back into villainy after encountering and teaming up with one of her previous incarnations Harold Saxon she had in fact grown weary of him and although had given him advice ultimately decided he was too dangerous and evil to keep alive so subsequently killed him by stabbing him in the abdomen and triggering a regeneration. Unfortunately for Missy however The Doctor never learned of her genuine reform as she herself was killed by Saxon after the latter was outraged and disgusted to hear that he was going to become her who was now willing to come to The Doctor's aid.
Trivia[]
- Fans of the series often speculate that Missy is actually the final incarnation of The Master and that her death was actually the chronological final death for the character, in spite of the fact that the O incarnation appeared after her death. This is primarily down to two reasons. 1- Missy's character development would have been wasted had she regenerated into yet another evil and depraved incarnation of The Master who was out to kill The Doctor after having reformed. 2- The Master himself told his future incarnation after attacking her with the laser screwdriver to not even try to regenerate as he deliberately used a setting which was fatal to even time lords meaning her chances of surviving the event were little to none, (although The Master has been shown to beat similar odds before out of a stubborn refusal to die).
- However, an official video posted by the Doctor Who YouTube Channel about the history of the Master heavily implies he is Missy's successor.
- A brief story also had Missy regenerate into a pure good version of herself, who ended up killed ironically by Missy herself for constantly interfering with her schemes; creating the O Master.
- Missy is without a doubt the least evil incarnation of The Master and the only one to ever be shown as genuinely redeemable. She wanted to be friends with the Doctor again and even went "cold turkey" from murder for nearly a century, allowing her to stop surpressing her guilt.
- Ironically, the Delgado incarnation of the Master was originally supposed to be redeemed and have a sympathetic sendoff, which is likely what influenced Missy's redemption arc.
- Missy's appearance was inspired by Mary Poppins.
- On a special following the premiere of Series 8, a fan Tweeted that they thought Missy was the Master; surprisingly accurate.
