Origins
The creative team conceived the Master as a recurring villain, a "Professor Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes." He first appeared in Terror of the Autons (1971). The Master's title was deliberately chosen by producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks as evocative of supervillain names in fiction, but primarily because, like the Doctor, it was a title conferred by an academic degree.
Barry Letts had one man in mind for the role: Roger Delgado. Delgado had a long history of screen villainy and had already made three attempts to break into the series. He had worked previously with Barry Letts and was also a good friend of Jon Pertwee. Delgado was killed in a car accident in Turkey on 18 June 1973, while on his way to shoot footage for the French comedy The Bell of Tibet. The next Master story was replaced by Planet of the Spiders (1974).
An unrelated character called the Master of the Land of Fiction, also referred to as "the Master", had previously appeared in the 1968 Doctor Who serial The Mind Robber opposite Patrick Troughton's Doctor.
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