The Valeyard

The Valeyard
Main aliases:	The Doctor Zimmerman J.J. Chambers Mr Popplewick Jack the Ripper Tim Hope Timothy Yard-Vale
Species:	Time Lord
Place of origin:	Gallifrey
First appearance:	The Mysterious Planet
Appearances:	See list
Main actor:	Michael Jayston
Other actors:	Geoffrey Hughes
Other voice actors:	Anthony Howell
Memorable moment
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Incarnations of the Doctor
Widely accepted
Others / unplaced incarnations
More ambiguous

You may be looking for the BFDWU Valeyard.

The Valeyard was, according to the Tremas Master, "an amalgamation of the darker side of the Doctor's nature", taken from somewhere between his "twelfth and final incarnations". (TV: The Ultimate Foe) He sought to take the Sixth Doctor's remaining regenerations and have them for himself, eliminating his "other self" to be free of his influence, as well as murdering the Time Lords present at the trial. He was stopped by the Doctor, but escaped being captured. (TV: The Ultimate Foe)

Biography

Origin

The Valeyard's origins were a mystery to the Doctor, and possibly the Time Lords as well. He once told a story of his past, but this was seemed to be a deception on his part, although the Doctor predicted that there was a grain of truth to it.

The Valeyard claimed that he was created during a period when the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor was experimenting with ways to break the twelve-regeneration limit imposed on Time Lords by Rassilon. The Valeyard was created as a Time Tot on a mud planet orbiting Etarho. At the age of twenty the Valeyard was found wandering the mud swamps of the planet by a group of scavengers, who gave him something to eat. When they learned what race the Valeyard belonged to, the scavengers sent him to Gallifrey.

The Time Lords examined the Valeyard's biodata and found that it was an exact match for that of the Doctor's. Knowing that this meant that the Valeyard was a temporal anomaly, they sent the Valeyard to a Shadow House. In the Shadow House the Valeyard met a Time Lord who had been damaged due to temporal interventions by his future self and therefore had his regeneration permanently stuck in a paradox. The man told the Valeyard to study the science of regeneration, in order to gain revenge on the Time Lords for what they had done to every member of the Shadow House.

Interesting to note that the Valeyard also claimed to have knowledge and memories of the Doctor's past and future — curiously saying that the Sixth Doctor would one day "become [him]," and predicting that the Doctor could not foresee the dark days ahead of him. This would seem to contradict his story. The Sixth Doctor and the Inquisitor agreed that most of his story was likely a fabricated fiction, but the Doctor believed that there was a grain of truth to either it or the that he told of Rassilon. (AUDIO: Trial of the Valeyard)

First meeting with the Doctor

On behalf of the corrupt High Council, seeking to cover up the Ravolox affair that the Sixth Doctor had accidentally uncovered, the Valeyard acted as the prosecutor in the Doctor's trial in exchange for his seven remaining regenerations. (TV: The Ultimate Foe) Keeping his end of the bargain, the Valeyard presented extracts from the Matrix depicting recent past events in the Doctor's life as evidence of the Doctor violating the Time Lords' non-interference policy. (TV: The Mysterious Planet, TV: Mindwarp)

Unbeknownst to the Time Lord jury present at the trial, the Valeyard had tampered with the Matrix extracts to show the Doctor in the worst possible light and steer the trial to a guilty verdict. He created the impression the Doctor had betrayed his companion, Peri Brown, to save himself. (TV: Mindwarp) He also added the charge of Genocide of the Vervoids despite their artificial nature, and the fact this was from the Doctor's future. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids)

Attempting to secure a guilty verdict, the Valeyard was somehow able to 'force' an alternate timeline where the Doctor would be judged guilty and arranged to oversee his execution, intending for this timeline to become 'real' once the Doctor had been shot. However, the Doctor was saved from execution when his eighth incarnation arrived to save him, the temporal stasis created when two incarnations met allowing the Sixth Doctor to retreat into the Eighth's TARDIS. Although the timeline that created him was erased after his departure, and the Sixth Doctor travelling with the Eighth vanished a short while later, he existed long enough to assist the Eighth Doctor in setting up an inquiry into the trial using their previous role as President. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)

Back on the station, the Master eventually stepped in after taking delight in seeing the Doctor's plight, sending Sabalom Glitz and Melanie Bush to act as witnesses for the Doctor's version of events, and revealed the Valeyard's origin and motives. The Valeyard escaped into the Matrix via the Seventh Door, which he opened with a copy of the Key of Rassilon. He was pursued and finally defeated by the Sixth Doctor when he tried to use a particle disseminator to destroy the court at the Doctor's trial. The Doctor programmed the disseminator to feed back into the Matrix and escaped before the resulting blast apparently destroyed the Valeyard. The Inquisitor dismissed the trial. However, as the Sixth Doctor and his companion Melanie Bush departed, the Valeyard was secretly still present – having somehow escaped under the guise of the Keeper of the Matrix. (TV: The Ultimate Foe) Back on Gallifrey, the Eighth Doctor's Commission of Inquiry into his past self's trial that resulted in the dismissal of the renegade High Council responsible, as well as the temporary restoration of Borusa to guide Gallifrey through the immediate turmoil caused by the exposure of their crimes. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)

On trial

The Valeyard was found by the Time Lords on the moon of Etarho, and was captured and ordered to reveal the secret research into regeneration the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor had allegedly performed there. The Valeyard refused, and as a result was he placed on trial with a faked charge of having hacked into the Matrix. He asked for the Sixth Doctor to be his defence. The Valeyard told the Doctor and Inquisitor Darkel of his supposed origins, during which he voiced heresy against the limit Rassilon had imposed on regeneration, suggesting it was only a measure of control from Rassilon's side and was possible to break. As a result he was judged to immediate termination, but he managed to fake his execution by using a hidden Matrix door placed under the dock, and he escaped through it onto the surface of Etarho's moon.

On the moon of Etarho, the Valeyard impersonated the Thirteenth Doctor, and tricked the Doctor into taking a bomb from him. The Doctor discovered his ruse, and the Valeyard escaped again by entering another Matrix door. The Doctor assumed that the Valeyard would likely try to again at some point to exact revenge on both himself and Darkel, and warned Darkel that it was very likely the Valeyard had received help from someone powerful on the Time Lord council, pointing out that it would have been very difficult for him to sneak a Matrix door into the courtroom all by himself. (AUDIO: Trial of the Valeyard)

Return

The Valeyard subsequently devised the identity of a man called Zimmerman to send assassins after the Sixth Doctor and sell various Time Lord secrets. However, both plans failed when the Doctor's investigation into the assassins' activities revealed Zimmerman's actions (Although not his identity) while his link to the Matrix would ensure that the Time Lords learned about them as well. The Doctor later managed to get the assassins off his trail by using a stolen temporal circuit to put himself in temporal stasis, frozen between heartbeats and thus legally dead, resulting in the assassins being forced to accept that they had technically killed him even if he was alive later (PROSE: Mission: Impractical).

The Valeyard later tangled with the Doctor in his seventh incarnation, revealing his mastery of the Dark Matrix, a counterpart of the original. He assumed the identity of Jack the Ripper and used the Ripper murders to 'feed' the Matrix. He tried to use its power to give himself a true body, unconcerned with the dangers his actions posed to history. While he committed the Ripper murders, he used the Dark Matrix to reach into his past to corrupt the Doctor's other selves to do his work, such as driving the Doctor to destroy other Time Lords as he left Gallifrey in his first incarnation, his fourth incarnation into destroying the Daleks at their beginning, and his fifth incarnation into drinking the bat's milk himself while Peri died in his place. These corrupted incarnations became wraiths in the Valeyard's TARDIS, resembled cloaked, twisted versions of themselves, which he could subsequently use to animate golems to act as his agents.

After the Seventh Doctor was attacked by one of the Valeyard's golems, he attempted to leave Ace with the First Doctor for safety, only to arrive in the alternate 1963 that would result from the Valeyard's presence in London. He learned the full details of the new timeline from that world's versions of Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. He travelled back to 1888 to investigate the Ripper murders after identifying them as the divergent point with Barbara's help, but nearly fell under the Valeyard's influence before he sealed his conscious mind in the TARDIS' telepathic circuits. After wandering London as an amnesic cardsharp by the name 'Johnny', he reunited with the circuits in time to save Ace from being the Ripper's sixth victim.

The Doctor provoked the Matrix into rebellion against the Valeyard's control, informing it that it was still as trapped now as it had been on Gallifrey, resulting in it lashing out from its prison in The Valeyard's TARDIS. He fought the Valeyard, who now called himself the Ripper, atop the church where the Valeyard had hidden his TARDIS. The destruction of the Valeyard's TARDIS and the subsequent release of energy caused by the 'rebellion' of the Dark Matrix seemingly killed the Valeyard and restored history to normal. (PROSE: Matrix)

Once on Trenzalore, the Great Intelligence stated that the Valeyard would be one of the Doctor's future aliases. Whether this will still be the case is unknown, as the statement was made in a timeline that was negated when the Time Lords granted the dying Doctor a second regeneration cycle at the end of the Siege of Trenzalore. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)

False Valeyards

The Sixth Doctor found himself in an alternate version of London created by Ashley Chapel's use of the Millennium Codex. He manifested magical powers suitable to the new, unstable universe's laws of physics. Using these powers began to transform him into a variant of the Valeyard. The Doctor's fears of becoming the Valeyard allowed his potential in the Doctor to combine with the Great Kingdom’s unique physical properties and the Doctor’s ability to regenerate. This temporarily made him the Valeyard. The Doctor's true self was able to re-manifest with the aid of the TARDIS. (PROSE: Millennial Rites)

Years later, Es'Cartrss of the Tactire assumed the form of the meta-crisis Doctor to steal the Tenth Doctor's memories from within the TARDIS matrix. Unlike the real meta-crisis Doctor, this illusionary form had a malevolent appearance, sporting a beard and primarily black outfit that mirrored the Doctor's clothes. Before revealing his true identity, Es'Cartrss suggested to the Doctor that he was in fact the Valeyard. The Doctor dismissed this suggestion, leading to the revelation of Es'Cartrss identity. In the form of the Valeyard, Es'Cartrss also wielded the Master's tissue compression eliminator, which the Tenth Doctor chided him for doing, since the Master had moved on to using a laser screwdriver. The Tenth Doctor eventually used Es'Cartrss's decision to impersonate the Valeyard against him. Es'Cartrss had assumed a Time Lord body, which no longer existed beyond the Doctor himself. The Doctor reminded the Matrix of this knowledge and purged the system of the erroneous data creating an additional Time Lord, which was Es'Cartrss itself. This nearly killed the parasite and allowed the Doctor to reclaim his mind, who then booted the incapacitated creature out of his TARDIS. (COMIC: The Forgotten)

Personality

The Valeyard was similar to several of the Doctor's incarnations, cunning and verbal, with a knack for manipulation. He had a bit of a temper, and was prone to outbursts, but generally calm and collected, traits of several incarnations of the Doctor. However, his actions were constantly defined by his egotism. The Valeyard would risk or sacrifice anything to ensure his own existence, even break the Laws of Time and kill his own past self and try to control the Dark Matrix despite the dangers its presence would pose to established history. (TV: The Mysterious Planet, The Ultimate Foe, PROSE: Matrix)

The Valeyard seemed to possess memories of the incarnations of the Doctor that fell before him. He predicted to the Sixth Doctor that he had "no idea" what was approaching in his life. He offered to tell him of his next incarnation, whom he claimed was filled with "plots and schemes," all to "win a game that was never his to win." He described the Doctor's eighth incarnation as one that "won't ever be able to shake the shadow of death," and predicts that "there will be deaths" in the Doctor's future. (AUDIO: Trial of the Valeyard)

Appearance

The Valeyard appeared as a middle-aged man, with light grey eyes and short black hair. In full courtly dress, the Valeyard wore long black robes with a stiff black collar edged in white, and a black skullcap. After the trial of the Doctor, the Valeyard at least temporarily became the Keeper of the Matrix; this time he wore an orange version of his previous outfit with a stiff collar. (TV: Mindwarp, TV: The Ultimate Foe)

Inside the Matrix, he disguised himself as Mr Popplewick, a slightly overweight man with curly blond hair. In this capacity, he wore human clothes typical of the 19th / early 20th century that included a white shirt and a vest under a large blue jacket. He also wore a bow tie and a pair of glasses. (TV: The Ultimate Foe)

While in London 1888, he was typically shown wearing a long dark robe that concealed most of his features (PROSE: Matrix).

Behind the scenes

• Some of the background for the Valeyard was lost due to creative differences between John Nathan-Turner, Doctor Who's producer, and script editor Eric Saward. An earlier draft of The Ultimate Foe made it clear that the Doctor would definitely, at some stage, turn into the Valeyard, desperate to extend his life after his remaining regenerations had run out — a situation not dissimilar to the one earlier faced by the Master. Nathan-Turner did not favour the dark nature of these and other developments in the script, and felt this plot point would allow cancellation of the series for bookending the Doctor's future destiny. This fear was justified by the then-recent hiatus placed on the show by BBC controller Michael Grade. Saward, who with Robert Holmes wrote the original script for The Ultimate Foe, refused to allow any elements of it into the final product. Pip and Jane Baker ended up patching up the continuity — without reference to the scripts, for legal reasons.
• Writer's guidelines for the Virgin New Adventures specifically asked writers not to discuss the continuity issues created by the Valeyard or the Doctor's trial in The Trial of a Time Lord, branding the Valeyard "a continuity nightmare, and a rather dull villain", and took the official line that those events had taken place in the Doctor's personal future.
• The Valeyard appeared in the unauthorised fan novel charity publication Time's Champion begun by Craig Hinton and completed by Chris McKeon.
• The character of the Dream Lord shared aspects of the Valeyard, as he also was created from the dark side of the Doctor, in a dream induced by psychic pollen. (TV: Amy's Choice)
• Contrary to popular belief, "Valeyard" is not a genuine legal title meaning doctor of law. The word was entirely made-up by writer Robert Holmes. The title does bear some similarity to the French word "vieillard", meaning "old man".
• The Time Traveller's Companion, a supplement for the Doctor Who – Adventures in Time and Space: The Roleplaying Game, implies that the Valeyard is a rogue Watcher, similar to the one produced in Logopolis, generated during the regeneration of the twelfth into the thirteenth incarnation. This Watcher, presumed to possess all the most negative traits of the Doctor's darker nature, refused to rejoin with the Time Lord and escaped into the wider universe to eventually put the Doctor on trial.
• The reference book The Doctor: His Lives and Times implies that the High Council of Time Lords "plucked" the Valeyard from within the Doctor's time stream.