Penelope Gate

This article needs a big cleanup.

This page needs serious study. It cannot be that every reference to "the Doctor's mother" means a reference to Penelope Gate. Eoin Colfer is not referring to Penelope Gate in his 2013 short story. Can't be. We need to look carefully at both this and Ulysses and probably create separate pages for the Doctor's father and the Doctor's mother.

These problems might be so great that the article's factual accuracy has been compromised. Talk about it here or check the revision history or Manual of Style for more information.

Penelope Gate
Species:	Human
Place of origin:	Earth
Appearances:	PROSE: The Room With No Doors PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles PROSE: A Big Hand for the Doctor

Penelope Gate was the human creator of a time machine. She was also the mother of the Doctor, according to some accounts.

Biography

The first time she successfully used her time machine, she used a lightning strike to charge it up. She travelled to 1996 where she obtained a mutated Tzun battery. She used that to power her machine. Penelope met the Seventh Doctor, who took her back to her own time of 1883. (PROSE: The Room With No Doors)

Later in her life she would meet the Time Lord Ulysses, whom she married. She moved to Gallifrey. Unbeknownst to the High Council, they had a son together. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)

The Doctor said that his mother used to sing the Zagreus nursery rhyme to him. (AUDIO: Seasons of Fear) When the Doctor was just a "small child", Penelope sat by the side of his bed and told him the story of Grandfather Paradox. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)

When the Doctor was young, Ulysses and Penelope went on a trek in the mountains of Gallifrey with him. Ulysses and Penelope owned a summer house on the other side of Kasterborous to Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors)

Penelope and Ulysses became friends with Mr Saldaamir, whom they frequently went exploring with. Penelope, Saldaamir and Ulysses also associated themselves with Lady Larna, who was from their future.

When the Time Lord Marnal threatened to expose Penelope's and Ulysses's activities, they used the telepathic circuits of his TARDIS, which would later belong to the Doctor to wipe his memory and dumped him on Earth in England, 1883, to board with Penelope's mother. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)

It was unknown what happened to Penelope after this point, but she was not with her husband when he became a renegade and went to live on Earth. (PROSE: Unnatural History)

References

• The First Doctor once had a hallucination of his mother stroking his hair and asking him to tell her about his adventures. He thought to himself that she was a beautiful as ever. (PROSE: A Big Hand for the Doctor)
• The Eighth Doctor said that he couldn't remember if he had a mother or if he was created out of a gene-splicing machine. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, Bafflement and Devotion)
• The sentient quantum field of the planet Albert told the Eighth Doctor that there was a reality where he knew his mother's voice. (PROSE: Grimm Reality)

Appearance

The Doctor remembered that his mother had long red hair and a cut-glass voice. On Gallifrey Penelope wore an ankle-length skirt and prim white blouse, with long red hair that "hung wild to her waist". (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)

Behind the scenes

The character of Penelope Gate's Time Lord husband Ulysses derives from Philip Segal's backstory for a proposed late 1990s revival of Doctor Who for which his television movie introducing the Eighth Doctor served as an unsuccessful pilot. The Doctor's search for his father would have served as a story arc for that series.

Russell T Davies has stated that the unnamed woman, implied to be a Time Lord, in the End of Time was meant to be the Doctor's mother. Accepting the television series and New Adventures and Eighth Doctor Adventures novels to exist in the same continuity, this would make her Penelope Gate. However, he has also said that who the woman is up to judgment, and she could be someone else.