Ok - totally my bad. looks like my session had timed out and i had not sucessfully turned off DNS. With DNS off the Master/Slave choice goes away. So now i have 2 domains that I created with DNS on... PLESK manual says:
QUOTE
If you are running remote DNS, and therefore want to turn DNS off, you should create the appropriate NS entries to be stored in the template. To add a nameserver: click Add DNS record, enter the nameserver in the appropriate input field, and click OK.
1. Looks like this means add an
ns
record with the value NS1.THEPLANET.COM
??
2. Do I have bad ns.<domain>. records on the box that need to be purged?
:shock:

Ha ha -paying for my mistake!