Compassion

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Compassion
Main aliases:	Laura Tobin (pre-Remembrance Tank)
Place of origin:	Anathema
Appearances:	EDA: Interference - Book Two EDA: The Blue Angel EDA: The Taking of Planet 5 EDA: Parallel 59 EDA: The Shadows of Avalon EDA: The Fall of Yquatine EDA: Coldheart EDA: The Space Age EDA: The Banquo Legacy EDA: The Ancestor Cell FP: The Book of the War FP: Warring States FP: Of the City of the Saved...

Compassion was a remembrance of a Human who joined the Remote. She traveled with the Doctor, during which time she evolved into a living TARDIS.

Profile

Biography

Compassion was originally Laura Tobin, a woman residing on the original colony of the planet Anathema. She, like all the colony residents, either was or became sterile. They therefore reproduced using Remembrance Tanks, and over the millennia that the ship that Anathema was based upon took to get to Earth, all the colonists were "remembered" using biomass inside the remembrance tanks. Compassion is the result of this process. (EDA: Interference - Book Two)

Compassion was a member of the Remote, an offshoot of Faction Paradox. Following her encounter with the Doctor on Earth she chose to travel with him and Fitz (whom she, as Laura Tobin once knew). She also knew Kode, who was the remembered version of Fitz).

As Compassion came from a media/signal orientated culture she always wore an ear piece (or receiver). In an attempt to protect her from any 'harmful' signals she might encounter during their travels, the Doctor interfaced her receiver with the TARDIS systems. This interface had unforeseen results, warping her biodata along Block Transfer Computations, culminating in her 'birth' as a sentient TARDIS. (EDA: The Shadows of Avalon).

With his own TARDIS having been apparently destroyed in a dimensional rift, and the Time Lords now seeking Compassion to use her as breeding stock to create their own sentient TARDISes, the Doctor and Fitz were forced to use Compassion to go on the run. Eventually, however, they were drawn to Gallifrey by the presence of the Edifice just before the Faction Paradox attack and Gallifrey's eventual destruction. After the destruction of Gallifrey, Compassion took the Doctor and the TARDIS- now totally drained of all its energy- to 19th century Earth, subsequently taking Fitz Kreiner to 2001 so that he could meet the Doctor after the TARDIS had repaired itself, and left to explore the Universe with a Gallifreyan technician, Nivet. (EDA: The Ancestor Cell, Escape Velocity).

After an unknown amount of time, she's contacted by the embodiment of human technology, they strike a deal that results in the creation of the City of the Saved (FP: Of the City of the Saved...). The City exists just beyond the end of the current universe and the creation of the next.

Other information

Physically, a fictionalised version of Compassion evidently resembled the actress Nicole Kidman. (EDA: Interference - Book Two). However, she is described (less flatteringly) as being "gerbil-faced and chubby". This description (and interestingly the other) fluctuate throughout the series with Fitz thinking she's rather plain but with enough "curves" to make her appealing.She has coppery-red hair and freckles. Obviously, once she became a TARDIS, her appearance was more a matter of her whims at the time. When she appears in Warring States her freckles are are described as being "far too symmetrical to be natural".

Once she became a TARDIS, her internal dimensions were mapped to her psychology, full of twisted forests, and dark echoing spaces that she forced the Doctor and Fitz to inhabit. Her console is described as a black version of the one in the TARDIS she was familiar with (therefore the TV movie console) but with a crystal spire in the center of it, the controls constantly moving based upon how helpful Compassion felt towards the Doctor at any one time (a number of systems the Doctor was expecting to see are missing, symbolising that Compassion has ultimate control over their travels prior to the Doctor forcing a Randomiser on her). As she was now psychic, she began to influence Fitz's dreams, he admitted to suffering from nightmares when the travelled together, but after Fitz and Compassion reached an understanding, those nightmares seemed to abate and Fitz began to feel more comfortable (although he was never truly comfortable inside Compassion).

Behind the scenes

• Compassion is one of the only ongoing characters from Doctor Who to also appear in the spin-off book series, Faction Paradox.