Patience

Patience
Place of origin:	Gallifrey
Appearances:	MA: Cold Fusion PDA: The Infinity Doctors

Patience was the wife of Omega, the Other and the Doctor.

Biography

Patience's real name is unknown. She was given the name by the Fifth Doctor and Tegan.

Patience was born in the House of Blyledge on Gallifrey, one of the last Womb-born Gallifreyans. She is apparently "immortal barring accidents" and lives to be two million years old by the events of The Infinity Doctors. She was a young woman when the Pythia cursed Gallifrey with sterility. Her husband, one of the first to explore the Time Vortex, married her upon his return to Gallifrey. She was widowed when Omega disappeared after causing Qqaba to go supernova.

Omega himself was thought dead. In actuality, he had entered an anti-matter universe. (DW: The Three Doctors)

Patience became the Other's nurse and tutor, as she was to his father and grandfather. They fell in love, got married, and had thirteen children. When the Lord President of that time targeted the Other's family, the Other took Patience to the Machine for safety. The Machine crashed on an ice planet, where it was eventually found by Human colonists in the 26th century. (MA: Cold Fusion)

The Other threw himself in a Loom in order to reincarnate as a future Time Lord, which he did as the newly Loomed Doctor. (NA: Lungbarrow) The Doctor retained only fragmentary memories of the Other's incarnations.

It is unknown what order the Other experienced the above events in. If the events of the flashback in Cold Fusion occurred before the events of the flashbacks in Lungbarrow, this would contradict the Other's implication in the latter that he cannot regenerate, as the character in the Cold Fusion flashback is implied to have regenerated. If the Lungbarrow flashbacks come first, this would seem to suggest that the Other seen in the Cold Fusion flashbacks was a reincarnation of the Other before the First Doctor.

It's equally unclear whether the information about her being the Doctor's wife given in The Infinity Doctors is the same for the normal Doctor.

Patience, meanwhile, regenerated shortly after the Doctor discovered her. Provost-General Tertullian Medford, believing Patience to be a threat, shot her in the head, and her body vanished. (MA: Cold Fusion) The Ferutu tell the Fifth Doctor that "It's not the first time you've meet her nor will it be the last."

The unknown Doctor of The Infinity Doctors had a picture of her on the wall of his rooms on Gallifrey. The caption reads "Death is but a door."

Patience hadn't died; she was rescued by Omega, who took her to the anti-matter universe. The Doctor was reunited with her there, but lost her again soon afterwards. Faced with the choice of eternal happyness with her in a fictional world or returning to stop Omega, The Doctor chooses to leave and help others. His departure from Omega's universe apparently causes the world to collapse taking Patience with it. (PDA: The Infinity Doctors)

One of the many fan theories about the identity of the Woman in The End of Time is that she was Patience. Russell T. Davies' only comment on the identity of that character was that she could be any "trustworthy Time Lord," such as the Doctor's mother (the popular theory) or Romana. His lack of mention of Patience doesn't rule her out, but also isn't a particularly strong endorsement.