10 Most Underused Doctor Who Characters

Derek Jacobi's turn as the Master was brilliant. Despite only playing the iconic villain for a few minutes, he gobbled the role up, chewed it heartily, and spat it right in our faces, and it's largely because of him that Utopia ranks so highly with Who fans.

Considering how much bang-per-buck he gave us, it might sound a little entitled to complain that we didn't get enough of him, but that's exactly what we're going to do!

Now yes, the story that Russell T Davies concocted for his grand re-introduction of the Master demanded that the character regenerate into a younger, more sprightly body, but even with that in mind, you could argue two things: one, that it was a waste to use Jacobi as this "warm-up" Master, and two, that RTD could've easily stretched Jacobi's role into The Sound Of Drums, an episode that desperately needed a bit more plot to fill out its runtime.

That said, the role - and Jacobi's performance - was terrific as-is, so our main gripe here is that we simply wanted to see more of this great character.

What happened between the TV movie and NuWho? How did he end up spearheading the Utopia project? What other adventures did he get up to? Big Finish has filled in several gaps, but fans of the show have been left in the cold.