Eleventh General

Eleventh General
Species:	Time Lord
Job:	General
Affiliated with:	War Council, Obsidian Fleet
Place of origin:	Gallifrey
First appearance:	The Day of the Doctor
Appearances:	TV: Hell Bent PROSE: Lords and Masters PROSE: The Third Wise Man COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen AUDIO: Dreadshade
Main actor:	Ken Bones
Memorable moment
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Incarnations of the General

The Eleventh General was an incarnation of the General who acted in the Time Lord military.

The only of their incarnations to be male, he appeared as a grey-eyed middle-aged light-skinned bald man. (TV: The Day of the Doctor, PROSE: Lords and Masters)

Biography

Fighting in the Time War

Feeling that his people were unprepared to fight in such a brutal conflict, the General complied a compendium of the Doctor's own experiences against the Daleks for the infantry to consult, even using the Matrix to extrapolate encounters between the Doctor and the Daleks following the Time War. The General annotated each entry with a tactical analysis on how the Time Lords might make use of the Dalek weaknesses that the Doctor's victories had revealed. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

In the first year of the Last Great Time War, the General led a strike force of Battle TARDISes to the Gates of Elysium. There he saved the War Doctor from the Nightmare Child shortly before Davros was killed. (PROSE: The Third Wise Man)

By the time of Rassilon coming to power, the General had been sent away from Gallifrey to the front. (AUDIO: Assassins) The General once found the Master in the Siege of the Chronotide, screaming for mercy as the Multiform closed in. (PROSE: Lords and Masters)

After reading Cardinal Ollistra's report on the Uzmal incident, the General placed the Twelve in stasis in the Omega Arsenal, telling her about the Dreadshade on the way. (AUDIO: Dreadshade)

After the Valeyard erased the Daleks from the universe, (AUDIO: The War Valeyard) the General was left leading the decommissioning of the war effort despite the Time Lords being unable to recall who their enemy had been. When the Eighth Doctor arrived in the Capitol, the General reluctantly worked with him and together they went to the Omega Arsenal to consult the Twelve, discovering she had escaped by manipulating the Dreadshade and had unleashed all of the sentient creatures in the Arsenal. They realised the Twelve was targeting the High Council and arrived in the Panopticon in time to confront her. He remembered the Daleks after the Twelve brought them up, which caused her to be lost in the Dreadshade's attacks, and believed Gallifrey would return to non-interference. (AUDIO: Dreadshade)

When the Dalek Emperor led a Dalek saucer armed with null zone technology to Gallifrey, Rassilon ordered the General be contacted for reinforcements. (AUDIO: Homecoming)

In the final days of the Time War, the General led the War Council and its efforts to defend Gallifrey from the Dalek onslaught. In the aftermath of the Fall of Arcadia, he was informed of the War Doctor's appearance there, leaving the message "NO MORE". He was then alerted to a security breach in the Time Vaults, where discovered that the War Doctor had taken the Moment from the Omega Arsenal and deduced he intended to use it.

The General was later contacted, much to his displeasure, by the War Doctor, the Tenth Doctor and Eleventh Doctor. They revealed to him their plan to save Gallifrey by freezing it before its destruction and shifting it to a pocket universe. The General was sceptical, shocked by the thought of being lost and forgotten in another universe and stated that the calculations would take centuries. The Doctors informed him that they have recruited all their incarnations to help and that while the Time Lords would be lost, they'd at least have hope which they didn't have at that point with the Daleks bombarding Gallifrey heavily. The Doctors also told the General that the alternative was burning and no one wanted that. As the General continued to hesitate, the Dalek Fleet realised something was wrong and increased their firepower. Realising he was out of options, the General ordered the Doctor to "just do it." The thirteen Doctors then succeeded in freezing Gallifrey and shifting it to a pocket universe, causing the Dalek fleet to destroy themselves while the Time Lords were saved. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

After the Time War

The General sent Missy on a mission with Yayani to stop Kalub from developing his experiments further, as they would expose Gallifrey if successful. He was present at the location where Missy sent Yayani's shrunken dead body back to Gallifrey. (PROSE: Lords and Masters)

Regeneration

The General regenerates. (TV: Hell Bent)

When the Twelfth Doctor returned to Gallifrey, the General discussed the event with Rassilon and the High Council. He told Rassilon that the Doctor had the respect of his men as he was the one who won the Time War and had served with many of them. When Rassilon ordered the firing squad to kill the Doctor, the General protested but made no move to stop them. The squad purposefully missed and sided with the Doctor. When military ships arrived, Rassilon assumed the General had summoned them. However, the Doctor told Rassilon he'd called the ships, all of which chose to provide the Doctor with backup. As Rassilon prepared to kill the Doctor with his gauntlet, the General stopped him, telling Rassilon, "Lord President, with respect, get off his planet." The General then dropped his gun and stood at the Doctor's side against Rassilon. Rassilon was exiled from Gallifrey and the General informed the Doctor that Gallifrey was at "the end of the universe, give or take a star system", and as such, Rassilon could have nowhere to go. (TV: Hell Bent) The General knew that, one day, Rassilon would return and seek revenge. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)

When the General continued to call Rassilon the President, the Doctor corrected him that he was the President now. The Doctor agreed to assist the High Council in learning the true identity of the Hybrid. To do this, he claimed that Clara Oswald had vital information and insisted that she be extracted from the point of her death and brought to him on Gallifrey. The General facilitated this but quickly discovered that the Doctor had merely lied in an extraordinary attempt to save Clara.

The General insisted that any attempt to prevent Clara's death as an established historical event would have grave consequences for the timeline. Attempting to prevent the Doctor from escaping with Clara, the General was threatened by the Doctor who stole his gun. The General and Clara attempted to talk sense to the Doctor with the General reminding the Doctor that the gun had no stun setting. Finally, the Doctor asked which regeneration the General was on. The General realised what the Doctor intended and stated that he was on his tenth regeneration and thus his eleventh incarnation. After the Doctor and the General wished each other luck, the Doctor shot the General which caused him to immediately regenerate, giving the Doctor time to flee with Clara. (TV: Hell Bent)

Personality

During the Last Great Time War, the General was devoted to defeating the Daleks and saving his species. He was shown to be a greatly respected military leader who didn't seem impressed with Rassilon and the High Council's plans to save their species. He was also shown to not think highly of the War Doctor, calling him "the mad fool" and saying that three Doctors arriving was "all [his] worst nightmares at once" and that twelve of them turning up was even worse. He was also stunned by the idea that Gallifrey and the Time Lords' only option was to be frozen in a pocket universe and was knowledgeable about the fact that it would take a very long time to make such calculations. However, he was shown to be able to make quick decisions when the need arose, such as when the Dalek Fleet increased their firepower on Gallifrey and he ordered the Doctor to "just do it" rather than continuing to hesitate over his decision. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

Following the end of the Last Great Time War, the General gained a great respect for the Twelfth Doctor. When Rassilon questioned who the Doctor thought he was ignoring the military, the General called him "the man who won the Time War" with a respectful tone. When Rassilon ordered the Doctor's execution, the General protested but chose not to disobey orders like his men. However, he also did nothing to stop his men as they sided with the Doctor. When the General defected to the Doctor's side, he ordered Rassilon off Gallifrey in a way that showed he was disgusted with the former Lord President. He did, however, question the Doctor's decision to banish Rassilon, as there could be nowhere for him to go and Rassilon was once a good man. He accepted the decision regardless though.

When he realised the Doctor had manipulated the situation to save Clara Oswald, the General showed no fear as he stood his ground against an armed Doctor, merely trying to get him to stand down. When the Doctor wished him good luck before shooting him, the General did the same, remaining magnanimous towards him to the end despite the fact that the Doctor was about to shoot him. (TV: Hell Bent)

Behind the scenes

• Ken Bones, who played the Eleventh General, also provided the Time Lord voice asking the Question, "Doctor who?", in The Time of the Doctor. A connection between them was never made explicit, although the subtitles on the Blu-Ray and DVD identify the voice as that of "the General".
• The General's birth name Kenossium, as revealed in COMIC: The Clockwise War, is a combination of the name Ken and the Latin word "ossium" meaning "bones". It is, therefore, a subtle reference to the actor Ken Bones.