Sunday, May 10, 2009

AS SEEN ON TV: CHARLES HAMILTON AKA "THE MASTER"

It's been a while since I featured a 'Doctor Who' "As Seen On TV" showcase..... AS SEEN IN:
'Doctor Who' - "The Mind Robber"

AS PLAYED BY:
Emrys Jones

On 'Doctor Who', the title of "The Master" wasn't used only for the arch-nemesis of the Doctor. In the Second Doctor adventure of "The Mind Robber", the Master was a human enslaved by the Master Brain computer to serve as its avatar ruler over the dimension known as the Land of Fiction.

In any other sci-fi series, the Master would have been a purely fictional construct. But he revealed to the Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie that he used to write stories back in the "real world" (Toobworld to us) about the exploits of Captain Jack Harkaway.

As there were pulp fiction stories about Captain Jack Harkaway published in the real world, that means the Master was in fact Frank Richards - which was the nom de plume for Charles Hamilton.

From Wikipedia:

Charles Harold St. John Hamilton (8 August 1876 – 24 December 1961), was an English writer, specializing in writing long-running series of stories for weekly magazines about recurrent casts of characters, his most frequent and famous genre being boys public school stories. He used a variety of pen-names, generally using a different name for each set of characters he wrote about, the most famous being Frank Richards for Greyfriars School stories (featuring Billy Bunter). Other important pen-names included Martin Clifford (for St Jim's), Owen Conquest (for Rookwood) and Ralph Redway (for The Rio Kid). He also wrote some stories under his real name such as the Ken King stories for the Modern Boy.

He is estimated to have written about 100 million words in his lifetime (Lofts & Adley 1970:170) and has featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most prolific author.

The Doctor freed the Master from the control of the Master Brain computer. It's assumed that Mr. Hamilton was returned to Earth not long after his departure and lived out his life along the lines dictated by real world history.....

BCnU!

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