It was widely considered a weird move when David McIntee introduced a new incarnation of The Master in the novel First Frontier who was deliberately written with the assumption that, were Doctor Who still a TV show and not a novel series at the time, he would be portrayed by Basil Rathbone. After all, Rathbone was far too famous to be on Doctor Who, and also he had been dead for 25 years at the time.
By the time of the BBC “War Doctor Adventures” line, of course, it made sense to introduce another incarnation of the character in his “War King” persona. Though the exact details of the choice were, if anything, even harder to understand…
