We've already had a go at ranking every single incarnation of the Doctor and the fans have had their say, with a ranking here based on IMDb user data – so what's next?

Obviously, it's time to turn our attentions to Doctor Who's greatest and most enduring villain, the Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes: the Master. (Please note: we said greatest villain, not monster, so cool your jets, Dalek fans.)

Who is the greatest Master of them all? Here's our definitive verdict. Yes, we said "definitive" – we demand your submission and your obedience to our will!

Ground rules: We're only counting actors who played the role on television, so Big Finish's finest – Alex Macqueen, James Dreyfus and Sam Kisgart (*wink*) – miss out, and we're not including Norman Stanley (who played the Master in disguise as a telephone engineer in 1971's 'Terror of the Autons') because that'd just be ridiculous.

10. Gordon Tipple

BBC

Ah, poor unfortunate Gordon Tipple.

Despite having no lines in 1996's Doctor Who TV movie and having his face obscured from view – Tipple's Master appears only briefly, as a prisoner of the Daleks, in the film's opening sequence – the Canadian actor is prominently credited on the Paul McGann-starrer as "The Old Master".

That's because his role was originally supposed to be larger, with Tipple set to deliver the film's opening voiceover. This idea was later scrapped and his monologue was replaced with a different one by McGann, but you can hear the original unedited recording of Tipple's spiel here.

He makes a decent stab of things in his deleted speech, but given it ended up on the cutting room floor, we can't in good conscience put him anywhere but the bottom of our list.

9. William Hughes

BBC

Child actor Hughes went uncredited as a pre-pubescent version of the Master (we're assuming Time Lords go through puberty) who first appeared in flashback in 2007's 'The Sound of Drums'.

He appears only briefly and has no dialogue, but there's something pleasingly unsettling about his wide-eyed stare as the young Master stares into the Untempered Schism and is driven mad. Serious 'Damien in The Omen' vibes.

(Bonus fact: Hughes also played a different minor role in 'Sleeper', a 2008 episode of Torchwood.)

8. Peter Pratt

BBC

Pratt was the first actor to play a deformed, and even more deranged, version of the Master – a role also later essayed by Geoffrey Beevers – in 1976's vintage Tom Baker four-parter 'The Deadly Assassin'.

As only the second actor to play the Master, Pratt faced a near-impossible task in replacing the late Roger Delgado, but he and the production team wisely took the character in a totally new direction, with this grotesque villain a universe away from Delgado's urbane antagonist.

Pratt's version loses points, though, for the limiting prosthetics the actor is forced to wear – he does some terrific voice work, but it's near-impossible to emote through that bug-eyed 'death mask' he's got on.

7. Eric Roberts

BBC

He's better than you remember. Honest.

Much of the flak that Roberts, the TV movie's Master, has copped over the years is down to his work in the film's final act, in which – having captured his old foe – he, decides for no apparent reason, to don flamboyant Time Lord robes. ("We have no time to waste!" he insists. "But time to change!" the Doctor, quite understandably, retorts.)

Forced to wear a ridiculous outfit, Roberts clearly shifts his performance accordingly – he's far more cartoonish and flamboyant from this point on ("I always drezzzzz for the occasion!") compared to the early parts of the movie.

Go back and watch the film again: for much of it, Roberts is superbly chilly and deadpan. "You're sick!" a nurse accuses in one scene. "Thank you," Roberts' Master smirks back, cool as anything. Later, when the Doctor mentions that he knew Madame Curie "intimately", Grace asks, "Does she kiss as good as me?" and has her grammar corrected by a brilliantly petty Master. "As well as you."

We can't wait to hear him reprise the role next year in a new Big Finish audio play.

6. Derek Jacobi

BBC

In a neat twist on the old shtick of having the Master hiding in plain sight under a (often painfully transparent) disguise, the majority of 2007's 'Utopia' saw Derek Jacobi play Professor Yana, a kindly scientist who had no idea his entire persona was a fake concocted by the Master.

It's only in the episode's dramatic final scenes that the Master personality resurfaces, which means we get precious little time to enjoy Jacobi's version before he regenerates into Simm at the climax. This being Sir Derek Jacobi, though, he of course does a lot with a little: his short-lived take is utterly merciless and one of the most chilling incarnations as a result. Poor Chantho!

5. Geoffrey Beevers

BBC

The creepiest Master? There's just something about Beevers' version that makes the hairs on the back of our neck stand up.

Again, our time with this incarnation was brief: Beevers took over the role of the deformed Master from Peter Pratt for a one-off appearance in 1981 story 'The Keeper of Traken', before Anthony Ainley took up the part on a permanent basis.

Like his predecessor, Beevers had a wonderful voice, but benefited from prosthetics that were less restrictive. With his trembling vocals and creeping gait, this Master was total nightmare fuel.

4. John Simm

BBC

Simm gave us three very distinct versions of his Master in his sporadic appearances across a decade of Doctor Who.

The first was the Harold Saxon edition, who became Prime Minister of Great Britain: a sinister clown, a bloodthirsty bundle of manic energy. The second – with his peroxide hair and black hoodie – was a more ferocious and unhinged creature.

Simm's latest appearance opposite Peter Capaldi saw him deliver a more suave and cruel Master, one more akin to the earliest versions of the character. "I had the opportunity to play it differently," he said, adding that his decision to sport a beard this time round was "a nod to the Delgado and Ainley Masters".

One of the more multi-faceted Masters, Simm's was, as a result, also one of the most compelling and interesting.

3. Anthony Ainley

BBC

Heh heh heh heh.

The longest-serving Master, Ainley was a thorn in the sides of Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy from 1981 to 1989.

Though contemporary reviews often, unfairly, dismissed his performance as a poor imitation of his predecessor Delgado's, Ainley in fact brought a wild-eyed charisma all of his own to the part.

Related: Tom Baker "diminished" by Doctor Who producer who caused him to quit

His version of the would-be universal conquerer is more hysterical, more outrageous, working best as a counterpoint to Davison's more restrained Doctor. Yes, he's a little cartoonish, but only so much as befits an era that often saw him decked up in dodgy disguises, and making repeated inexplicable escapes from certain death.

Having inherited a large sum of money, Ainley had mostly retired from acting by the mid-1980s, but continued to play the Master purely for the love of it, and his passion for the role clearly shines through in every single one of the 11 stories in which he appeared.

Even his staunchest critics tend to acknowledge the power of his performance in 'Survival' – the final serial of Doctor Who's classic series – as a Master corrupted by the cheetah virus.

2. Michelle Gomez

BBC

If this ranking has made one thing clear, it's that (much like the part of the Doctor) there's no wrong or right way to play the Master. The role invites and welcomes reinvention and different interpretations.

That being said, there is one common thread running through all but one version of the character: the Master is a bit of a rotter.

The biggest departure that Doctor Who gave us with Michelle Gomez's Missy was not, in fact, the gender-swap. It wasn't even the name change. What was different about Gomez's version was that she had a heart. (Yes, technically the Master always had two hearts, but you take our meaning.)

Faced with a greater acting challenge than any actor who'd previously played the Master, Gomez gave us a 'villain' who was certainly psychotic and occasionally homicidal, but also profoundly broken and a bit tragic.

So game-changing was this most recent portrayal that it's difficult to imagine how the show might convincingly revert to the idea of an outright 'evil' Master, if / when the character resurfaces.

1. Roger Delgado

BBC

"Predictable as ever."

But come on, it just has to be, doesn't it? Roger Delgado's original Master isn't just one of the best Doctor Who villains of all time, he's one of the best screen villains ever.

Clad all in black with his arched eyebrows and sinister beard, Jon Pertwee's nemesis should be laughable: in many ways, he's a ludicrous bad-guy cliché, but there's an arch quality to both the scripts of the time and to Delgado's knowing, twinkly-eyed performance that make his Master something different, something special.

Debonair, imposing, power-mad, but with a coy sense of humour, this Master was a dark reflection of 'his' Doctor, with Delgado more than equalling his co-star and close friend Pertwee in terms of screen presence and personality.

Delgado was killed in a car accident in 1973, forcing the Doctor Who team to abandon a planned story which would've written the Master out of the series for good. Though unquestionably a tragedy, the loss of Delgado not only secured the future of the character he'd established, it also forever immortalised his still-unrivalled performance.

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