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In The War Games, an alien race known as War Lords kidnap soldiers from various wars in Earth's history to play war games on an unknown planet. Helping the War Lords is the War Chief, a Time Lord who has provided the War Lords with TARDIS-like travel machines used to kidnap the human soldiers.

When the War Chief and the Doctor come face to face, they recognize each other. The War Chief wants the Doctor's help to double-cross the War Lords and seize power for himself. The Doctor refuses and summons the Time Lords for help. The War Chief's plans are found out by the War Lords and he is hastily executed.

The Master?

Although the War Chief is apparently killed at the end of The War Games, many fans choose to believe that the Master -- the Doctor's arch-enemy, introduced in Terror of the Autons a couple of years later -- is the War Chief in a new guise.

(Certainly it makes more more sense to link the War Chief and the Master than, as the FASA Doctor Who role-playing game did, to link the Meddling Monk and the Master.)

Points put forward in favour of the thesis include:

• The War Chief looks the part of the Master, sporting similar clothes, beard and hairstyle to both Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley.
• The War Chief is very charming, cunning and devious; very similar to what the Master would become.
• The War Chief and the Doctor have a past history together, as do the Master and the Doctor. (The Monk and the Doctor, incidentally, do not.)
• The Master wants to either destroy the universe or become Master of it. Normally the Master's usual tactic is to work for another bunch of baddies and then double-cross them; this is exactly what the War Chief was planning in The War Games. (The Monk on the other hand is more a casual thief and meddler.)
• During the Pertwee Era, the Master offered to share power with the Doctor. The War Chief also tries this tactic in The War Games.
• Although executed by the War Lord, it is possible that the War Chief regenerated, and escaped in his TARDIS only to reappear in Terror of the Autons.

The matter was never explicitly addressed in the series (arguably, the makers of the series probably just didn't think it mattered), and -- if one is prepared to assume that the War Chief's execution wasn't fatal -- nothing ever came up that ruled it out.

The spin-off novels, however, include both a novel featuring the return of the War Chief and a novel featuring the Master set before The War Games, clearly demonstrating that the two are not one and the same.