by Atwood » Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:42 pm
You rang? X3
The Master is very atypical as Time Lord life cycles go. It's generally thought that he was on his first regeneration during Three's time (i.e. the Roger Delgado incarnation), though there might have been one before that (if he actually was the War Chief), so at the beginning of the series he had pretty much his full complement of regenerations available. However, in Delgado's incarnation he was tricked into a trap by Susan and burnt through all of his remaining regenerations in his effort to escape/survive, leaving him corpse-like with his body degenerating and kept alive solely by his hatred of the Doctor and his drive to gain a new set of regenerations. He managed to briefly expose himself to the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey, which regenerated him partially, and then he merged himself with Tremas, a Traken, thus stabilizing himself and mostly replacing his body with Tremas's, resulting in him looking like a younger version of Tremas (the Anthony Ainley incarnation). How he did this, I do not know - basically he walked into Tremas and kind of shimmered into the same space as him and disappeared while Tremas youthened. It's similar in effect to what Cassandra did to Rose in New Earth, moving her spirit into Rose and taking over the body while compressing the original inhabitant's spirit, but with Tremas the Master did it completely so Tremas was effectively killed, leaving the Master as the sole controller of the body. The Master kept trying to get more regenerations, and the Time Lord Council offered him a full new set of regenerations at one point, so it seems it was a fairly straightforward thing to add regenerations or raise/evade the limit - it was only the Doctor's interference that stopped him from getting his extra regenerations.
The Ainley Master survived up until around the end of the Seventh Doctor's time, at which point his degeneration started up again, possibly due to contamination from both the Traken DNA (which he was able to get removed from him) and the Cheetah virus, which he was stuck with (and still seems to be mildly affected by up to the present Master as well, in some aspects at least: ah, those tasty humans X3). He was given to the Daleks by the Time Lords as a peace offering of sorts, and he was tried and executed by the Daleks, but that may have been a deliberate scheme arranged by the Master and the Daleks (who he never had a problem with helping), and he comes back as... a slimy ectoplasmic occasionally-invisible sea cucumber with fangs. Just go with it. I've seen that thing called a morphant, and it may have been a separate creature that the Master merged himself with prior to his body being destroyed by the Daleks, like what he did with Tremas. He then takes over the body of Bruce, a human paramedic, but that body begins decaying almost immediately and he ends up falling into the Eye of Harmony (which is now on the TARDIS for no reason, and again, just go with it), where it's implied he was destroyed completely.
The Time Lords resurrected him, and he regenerated normally from Yana to Saxon, so it seems he's been given at least another set of regenerations, or possibly has no limit at all anymore due to the Time War. Personally, I suspect the limit was removed for the Time War, since it would be really silly to limit regenerations on an otherwise mostly immortal being when that being is probably going to get shot or killed a lot (remember the Doctor had to partially regenerate after just a glancing blow from a Dalek), especially when that is just an artificial limit. That's supported by what Scarf pointed out, and also the Master refused to regenerate when he was shot, and the Doctor just assumed that he could regenerate, even though he knew that the Master'd had no regenerations left before the Time War, which suggests something was done during the Time War to remove the limits or greatly raise them. Of course, the Master had stored his genetic programming in the ring and Lucy and so was brought back that way without using a regeneration at all, which gives another way the Doctor could survive death (on top of the many other methods that have been introduced with Eleven), though that wouldn't solve the production problem of needing the Doctor to 'regenerate' so they can replace the actor.
In short, there are lots of ways to get around the regeneration limit, if it still exists at all. X3 I'm inclined to think there is one, just because the Doctor did give a number to Clyde instead of just answering 'as many times as I want' or something, but now, (Let's Kill Hitler spoilers) thanks to River's contribution, he may have had his regeneration number reset since she still had almost all of her regenerations left. She'd only spent two of hers (going from the little girl to Mel to River), so that's the energy of ten full regenerations he got from her. If nothing else, that's ten more regenerations that the producers don't have to worry about getting for him, if there is still a limit.