Infinity Doctor
In an alternate state of reality, the Infinity Doctor[nb 1] settled down for a period of time as a teacher and member of the Supreme Council on Gallifrey. Alongside his old friend the Magistrate and his student Larna, this Doctor notably ended the Rutan-Sontaran War and stopped Omega from destroying reality.
This Doctor had infinite possible past and future contexts ranging from Gallifrey's distant past to distant future, with numerous accounts specifying him to be the First or Eighth Doctor. Among other possibilities, more outré accounts indicated him to be the Doctor's son and/or father; an alternate Doctor from Bernice Summerfield's bottle universe; or even the original version of the Doctor to whom the Doctor seen in the majority of sources was a mere echo.
Biography
Nature of timeline
During his encounter with the Effect, the Doctor would reflect that he had numerous versions of his past before being a teacher which shifted and were constantly overwritten without his noticing. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Eighth Doctor had similar observations concerning his own past at times when his life intersected with aspects of this Doctor's, (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"]) with a state of flux more generally known to permeate the Doctor's entire existence. (PROSE: Celestial Intervention - A Gallifreyan Noir [+]Loading...["Celestial Intervention - A Gallifreyan Noir (short story)"], Bafflement and Devotion [+]Loading...["Bafflement and Devotion (short story)"], The Shadows of Avalon [+]Loading...["The Shadows of Avalon (novel)"], et al.) Indeed, this Doctor discovered that he was one of an infinity of Doctors, existing in the top layer of unending palimpsest iterations of a single universe ‘riddled with paradox and contradiction[nb 2] like weevils in a biscuit', (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) an Omega[nb 3] to the Doctor's possible long-overwritten Alpha as a human from the 49th century. (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"])
Alternatively, an ancient Gallifreyan proverb stated that “Time moves in circles”, (PROSE: Lungbarrow [+]Loading...["Lungbarrow (novel)"], The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) which was literally true due to the shape of time being a coiled spiral. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Pythia, originators of the proverb, (PROSE: Lungbarrow [+]Loading...["Lungbarrow (novel)"]) believed that reincarnation existed on Gallifrey before regeneration. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible [+]Loading...["Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible (novel)"]) Cut off from history and isolated from change, every generation of Time Lord society initially possessed a spirit of ambition towards a golden age of progress which eventually faded as Gallifrey fell back into tradition and change was forgotten before the pattern repeated. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) By this logic, a patrilineal chain of archetypal Doctors and Masters went far back into Time Lord history, (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"], The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}, The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}, Echo [+]Loading...["Echo (short story)"]) to even the Old Time. (PROSE: Echo [+]Loading...["Echo (short story)"], The Exiles [+]Loading...["The Exiles (short story)"], The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) Through this lens, the events of this Doctor's life as a teacher occurred numerous times throughout history in slightly different contexts, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}, et al.) with the various contradictions in the Doctor's life explainable through them having had many iterative lives. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) Notably, the Eighth Doctor's amnesia after the War in Heaven functioned similarly to the amnesia the Doctor had towards their life before being the First Doctor, (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street [+]Loading...["The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (novel)"], Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"], The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) and various aspects of the Doctor's origins were already reiterating by this time (PROSE: Lungbarrow [+]Loading...["Lungbarrow (novel)"], Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"], Escape Velocity [+]Loading...["Escape Velocity (novel)"], Sometime Never... [+]Loading...["Sometime Never... (novel)"]) suggesting that such a coiling of time could occur within a single life cycle. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}, Dear Friend [+]Loading...["Dear Friend (short story)"], WC: Shadow of a Doubt [+]Loading...["Shadow of a Doubt (audio story)"], Shada [+]Loading...["Shada (webcast)"])
Before teaching
Unclear origins
Although details were fuzzy and sometimes shifted, this Doctor knew that he was born of a Loom, with a human mother and a Time Lord explorer father from a long line of explorers, into the House of Lungbarrow. The Doctor's TARDIS was a family heirloom, and the first time he travelled in it had been on a short hop from Gallifrey to his parents' summer house. Sometime before the Doctor earned his doctorate, Savar went searching for Omega and accidentally created the Effect, which Omega used even at this time to begin changing history, creating several timelines of Gallifrey which were palimpsests by the Infinity Doctor's timeline. After barely graduating from the Time Lord Academy, the Doctor eventually became a member of the Supreme Council. The Doctor had a wife, starting a family with many children and a grandchild, but his wife and children died. He mourned for them by continuing to wear his sapphire wedding ring and keeping a Zero Room with a candle for each year since the loss; when the Doctor was a teacher 1000 years after Savar searched for Omega, he had lost his family “so long ago that everyone else forgot” and he too sometimes forgot when he didn't think of them.
While in the anti-matter universe, the Doctor was certain (albeit suspicious that this history was chosen by Omega to better manipulate him) that his departed wife was Patience, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}, Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) a friend of the family who had been with his forefathers for generations and was present at his birth. The Doctor first wooed her when they sensuously danced at a festival, scandalizing a crowd which included Mr Saldaamir, two Lords of Althrace, and a yellow-skinned Time Lord. He married Patience, with Savar present at the wedding. The Doctor and his wife had many children and eventually a grandchild, although they were massacred by the Watch during a political upheaval on Gallifrey due to charges placed against the family, including consorting with aliens (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) and, at least in another account, for reproducing biologically rather than with looms. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) The Doctor believed he had been too late to save his family, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) but another perspective of the event showed the First Doctor rescuing Patience and their newly-born granddaughter Susan, setting in motion events which would lead to Patience dying elsewhere. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"])
Notably, the portrait this Doctor kept of his wife could also be said to resemble Bernice Summerfield, with the Doctor having corresponding memories of her pregnancy (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) and other sources indicating significant romance between the two.[nb 4] (PROSE: The Dying Days [+]Loading...["The Dying Days (novel)"], Paydirt [+]Loading...["Paydirt (short story)"], AUDIO: Benny's Story [+]Loading...["Benny's Story (audio story)"]) The Doctor was also known to fall in love with the human woman Joan Redfern in repetitions across history where he settled down as an educator, (PROSE: Human Nature [+]Loading...["Human Nature (novel)"], TV: The Family of Blood [+]Loading...["The Family of Blood (TV story)"], WC: Shadow of a Doubt [+]Loading...["Shadow of a Doubt (audio story)"]) with one version of these events making the Doctor's sapphire ring a symbol of their romance. (PROSE: Human Nature [+]Loading...["Human Nature (novel)"]) Redfern and Summerfield were both owners of the cat Wolsey, (PROSE: Human Nature [+]Loading...["Human Nature (novel)"], Oh No It Isn't! [+]Loading...["Oh No It Isn't! (novel)"]) to whom the Doctor's cat Wycliff was similarly named. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) In the post-War universe, the Doctor had a relationship with Debbie Castle which paralleled elements of Patience's relationship (PROSE: Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"]) and the Doctor began wearing a sapphire ring sometime in the years after her death. (PROSE: EarthWorld [+]Loading...["EarthWorld (novel)"]) The painting of the Doctor's wife had the phrase “Death Is But A Door”, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) which was a phrase Lady Peinforte adorned her tomb with; Peinforte knew the Doctor as a “little man” with secrets from the Old Time she had access to, (TV: Silver Nemesis [+]Loading...["Silver Nemesis (TV story)"]) and the Other once appeared as a “little man” to the woman who would be the Doctor's wife. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
Numerous accounts of contexts offered greater detail to this Doctor's past.
Roots as the First Doctor or earlier
By some accounts, this Doctor was an iteration from before the First Doctor. His time as a teacher was said to be two million years after the Intuitive Revelation, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) rather than the ten million of the Sixth Doctor's era. (TV: The Ultimate Foe [+]Loading...["The Ultimate Foe (TV story)"]) Additionally, as Patience's husband on the Supreme Council at the time that Patience and her thirteen children were thought killed by the Watch, this Doctor was thought to exist thousands of years before the Fifth Doctor's era. The Fifth Doctor had faint memories of Patience referring to her husband as a Doctor at this time. The ancient Doctor continued the tradition of his family of explorers and brought “charts and trophies from every corner of the universe” back to Gallifrey from abroad, (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) just as the teacher Doctor was known to keep many maps and objects from his space-time travels in his quarters. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) Patience's husband had some level of overlap with the other, (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) a mythical figure even by the Infinity Doctor's time, although the Infinity Doctor once had a possible slip of the tongue indicating he had been present during the Vampire Wars of the Other's era. The Other once alluded, while talking with Patience, to his name being “Who”, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) and was once hazily remembered as a silver-haired human from Earth.[nb 5] (PROSE: Human Nature [+]Loading...["Human Nature (novel)"])
Reflecting on his life on Gallifrey as a whole, this Doctor noted that since his first trip offworld he'd been fascinated with hints of a mysterious time traveller which he eventually suspected was his own future post-Gallifrey self. He searched all of Gallifrey for knowledge of this traveller, including the video archives, but found nothing. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) Conversely, the Fourth Doctor once visited the Time Lord video archives (COMIC: The Soul of a Cyberman, The Stolen Tardis [+]Loading...["The Stolen Tardis (comic story)"]) and watched a tape of a young Gallifreyan named Plutar who had many attributes which the Doctor would be remembered having as a youth; (COMIC: The Stolen Tardis [+]Loading...["The Stolen Tardis (comic story)"], TV: The Ribos Operation, The Armageddon Factor, PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) when Plutar's tape ended, the Doctor noted that he couldn't find records in the archive which showed the rest of Plutar's life-story, although he did imply he was personally familiar with it. (COMIC: The Stolen Tardis [+]Loading...["The Stolen Tardis (comic story)"])
At one point, the Doctor believed his father worked at Berkley University and was definitely not named Ulysses, and that his mother was either named Annalisse or Penelope.[nb 6] (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) An account in which Ulysses and Penelope were the Doctor's parents showed them to operate on a Gallifrey ruled by a Supreme Council. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) The Doctor was mentioned in a number of prophecies, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) one of which was fated to apply only once in a period of millions of years, either in the generation of Ulysses or that of his son, the First Doctor. Marnal's Error, an event which occurred shortly after the First Doctor was born, (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) was described as being the most recent instance the Time Lords had needed to show might. At the time this Doctor was teaching, Varnax, Faction Paradox, Catavolcus, and the Timewyrm were among future threats Gallifrey was “destined to survive” before falling to the Enemy of Last Contact; (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) at the time the Doctor was born, Ulysses and Penelope had an similar expanded list that began with Omega and also included Sontarans and Tannis, (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) and when the Infinity Doctor later prepared to confront Omega, Helios paraphrased the prophecy by stating that that particular confrontation was one which Gallifrey was destined to survive on that path to falling to the Enemy. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Doctor was also destined to find the lost Scrolls of Rassilon and lead Gallifrey out of Darkness; (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) the Infinity Doctor had a memory of climbing a mountain and discovering something while sheltering in an ancient cave.[nb 7][nb 8] (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
By some accounts, the Infinity Doctor was a young First Doctor, the incarnation who followed on from the Doctors who were Patience's husband, (TV: The Brain of Morbius, PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) who was known in his youth as Plutar, (COMIC: The Stolen Tardis [+]Loading...["The Stolen Tardis (comic story)"]) and who was the son of Ulysses and Penelope subject to several prophecies. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}, Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], Celestial Intervention - A Gallifreyan Noir [+]Loading...["Celestial Intervention - A Gallifreyan Noir (short story)"], TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"]) The Infinity Doctor fondly remembered exploring Low Town with his oldest friend the Magistrate, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) similar to memories the Doctor had of his first incarnation with the Master. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors [+]Loading...["The Eight Doctors (novel)"]) Near the end of the First Doctor's pre-renegade Gallifrey period, he was the highly respected Protector of a “Lady Larn”, (PROSE: Birth of a Renegade [+]Loading...["Birth of a Renegade (short story)"]) similar to how the Doctor cared for Lady Larna. The Infinity Doctor's era occurred a thousand years after Savar lost his eyes, which happened while the Doctor was married but not yet with grandchild, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) much as the First Doctor's life occurred at least a thousand years after earlier Doctors' relationship with Patience. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"])
The Book of Lies indicated that when Rassilon led the newly-regenerated Eighth Doctor on a trip through his past lives, (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], The Eight Doctors [+]Loading...["The Eight Doctors (novel)"]) Faction Paradox had been biodata-manipulating from the shadows to ensure the Doctor's timeline was folded back on itself to create a new past that better benefitted Rassilon. (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"]) The Doctor of the timeline that followed originated from a Gallifrey resembling the Infinity Doctor's (PROSE: The Eight Doctors [+]Loading...["The Eight Doctors (novel)"], Seeing I [+]Loading...["Seeing I (novel)"], Dead Time [+]Loading...["Dead Time (short story)"], Interference, The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"], The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) and believed the Faction could insert coexisting contradiction into his history as far back as his birth, (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon [+]Loading...["The Shadows of Avalon (novel)"]) indicating that the Infinity Doctor's reality could have been created at this time as a version of the Doctor's origin with elements folded back from the future. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}, Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"]) This biodata chaos also caused a past adventure which may have been a “side step”, occurring to a Fifth Doctor whose origins included a grandfather (PROSE: A Town Called Eternity [+]Loading...["A Town Called Eternity (short story)"]) similar to the teacher Doctor's origin.[nb 9] (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
Roots between leaving Gallifrey and the War
Seemingly unlike the First Doctor, (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet [+]Loading...["Christmas on a Rational Planet (novel)"], et al.) the Infinity Doctor was familiar with Earth while on Gallifrey, having already travelled in space and time. Indeed, Earth was his favourite planet, and he kept a collection of objects from across its history in his quarters. He had also fought monsters in his time away from Gallifrey, including Centro.[nb 10] The teacher Doctor was familiar with Daleks and Cybermen, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) species the First Doctor would not meet until leaving his homeworld. (TV: The Daleks [+]Loading...["The Daleks (TV story)"], The Tenth Planet) While this was not usually true in numbered Doctors' eras, (TV: The Deadly Assassin, et al.) Gallifrey was a version of itself ruled by a Supreme Council when the Fourth Doctor became President. (TV: The Invasion of Time) The Infinity Doctor would reencounter Patience after she met the Fifth Doctor, (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"], The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) a reencountering which the Ferutu had prophesied to happen in the Fifth Doctor's relative future. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) The Infinity Doctor cited the Cybermen destroying Earth before the human race had reached its full potential as a threat to Established History; (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) the Sixth Doctor found that he had been unwittingly maneuvered by the Time Lords into thwarting a plot by future Cybermen to change history by destroying Earth in 1985. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen) The Sixth Doctor once expressed that Gallifrey was so corrupt that he would have done more to combat evil by staying at home, (TV: The Ultimate Foe [+]Loading...["The Ultimate Foe (TV story)"]) a sentiment which Savar once echoed and cited as the reason the Doctor “came back” to Gallifrey to be a teacher. The Infinity Doctor had known Helios's past self, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) whose possible identities included Merlin the Wise (COMIC: The Tides of Time [+]Loading...["The Tides of Time (comic story)"], PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) and Griffin the Unnaturalist. (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) When flashing through experiences and people from his distant and immediate past, the Doctor saw a heavily pregnant Bernice Summerfield, Izzy Sinclair, and a blonde Sam Jones, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors) friends and companions of the Eighth Doctor. (PROSE: The Dying Days [+]Loading...["The Dying Days (novel)"], The Eight Doctors [+]Loading...["The Eight Doctors (novel)"], COMIC: Endgame, et al.)
The Quantum Archangel created a parallel universe where the Doctor's life proceeded as normal until the Second Doctor's trial, at which point the Doctor was pardoned and accepted back into Gallifreyan society. He continued to live on Gallifrey, dedicated to turning his people into a positive force in the universe. Unlike in the prime reality, the Doctor continued to know the Master only as his closest friend and brother, the two serving on the High Council together. This Doctor spent time around the same statues of the Founders of Gallifrey (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel [+]Loading...["The Quantum Archangel (novel)"]) which the teacher Doctor once met the Magistrate at. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
Through the Nexus on Mimas, Chris Cwej witnessed a near-infinite number of the Doctor's possible timelines, one of whom “had gone home to Gallifrey and was organising the first bloodless revolution in Time Lord history.” (PROSE: So Vile a Sin)
Some accounts indicated the teacher Doctor was an alternate version of a young Eighth Doctor, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}, Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"]) an incarnation whose history was observed to be a chaos of “temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences.” (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) The sign of infinity was, after all, a sideways eight (PROSE: Sometime Never... [+]Loading...["Sometime Never... (novel)"]) Savar lost his eyes when the Doctor was studying for his doctorate on Gallifrey (PROSE: Seeing I [+]Loading...["Seeing I (novel)"], The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) and this Doctor was a teacher on Gallifrey a thousand years after that happened, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) meaning that if the First Doctor was the one who studied on Gallifrey (PROSE: Divided Loyalties, et al.) then the Infinity Doctor was of a similar overall age to the Eighth Doctor. (PROSE: The Dying Days [+]Loading...["The Dying Days (novel)"]) Larna, a protege of the Infinity Doctor, would take anxious efforts to avoid being near the Eighth Doctor who travelled with Sam and Fitz. (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"])
Larna acknowledged that a number of alien species had attempted to access the Matrix in the past, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) matching the Cloister Wars which both Missy and the Twelfth Doctor referred to. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice, Hell Bent) Human historians believed that these conflicts were waged after the Sontaran invasion of Gallifrey exposed the existence of the Matrix to the universe. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) The Time Lords themselves said the wars were fought early in their history and were the period from which the prophecy of the Hybrid emerged. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Contemporaneous to the Eighth Doctor's first meeting with Bernice Summerfield, (PROSE: The Dying Days [+]Loading...["The Dying Days (novel)"], Oh No It Isn't! [+]Loading...["Oh No It Isn't! (novel)"]) the Black Guardian mounted a continuity-disrupting attack on the Doctor's past which the Fourth Doctor escaped from by removing himself from reality at the risk of becoming a fictional character. (PROSE: The Well-Mannered War) The Doctor once made a remark about being on page 229 of a book with 51 pages to go, perfectly describing the pacing of the adventure he was living through. Temporal complexities of this Doctor's reality were often described through a lens of fiction and writing, with the flow of time resembling one page of a book following the next and holes in time to prior timelines resembling tears in a book revealing pages beneath the page the Doctor lived in. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) This language also described the complexity of timelines in the Eighth Doctor's lifetime (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}, Going Once, Going Twice [+]Loading...["Going Once, Going Twice (short story)"] alongside more direct accounts of the Doctor's long life functioning as a series of stories (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress [+]Loading...["The Scarlet Empress (novel)"], Bafflement and Devotion [+]Loading...["Bafflement and Devotion (short story)"], The Blue Angel [+]Loading...["The Blue Angel (novel)"]) which included Doctor Who and the Infinity Doctors. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion [+]Loading...["Bafflement and Devotion (short story)"])
The Infinity Doctor knew Tractites as a faction capable of rewriting history. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) In the timeline that existed until the Eighth Doctor's early life, Tractites were a minor species made extinct by humanity, (PROSE: Genocide [+]Loading...["Genocide (novel)"]) but a sequence of events stemming from the I obtaining Savar's eyes (PROSE: Seeing I [+]Loading...["Seeing I (novel)"], Longest Day) led to Tractites diverging history into a paradoxical alternate universe where they were a powerful species ruling a humanless Earth. This alternate universe was unstable and collapsing chronologically backwards into a terrifyingly infinite grey void of non-reality (PROSE: Genocide [+]Loading...["Genocide (novel)"]) exactly like the teacher Doctor's universe was, suggesting them to be the same. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Eighth Doctor and Sam destroyed this universe and changed Tractite history in their universe so that Tractis would outlive the Earth Empire, (PROSE: Genocide [+]Loading...["Genocide (novel)"]) thus creating the possibility that the teacher Doctor lived at a point after this when the Tractites had grown in power in the Doctor's own universe. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
The Eighth Doctor, known to spend years on side trips from his main travels, (PROSE: Vampire Science [+]Loading...["Vampire Science (novel)"]) once visited Gallifrey alone to return Savar's eyes, planning on staying “for a bit” because he expected “complications” and didn't think his companion Sam wanted to travel with him anymore; (PROSE: Seeing I [+]Loading...["Seeing I (novel)"]) Gallifrey was in a state of constant historical shifting at this time, so the Eighth Doctor's time as a teacher could have happened and unhappened in this period.[nb 11] (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"])
Universe-threatening events on Tyler's Folly occurred near the end of this Doctor's time as a teacher, causing higher powers to begin evacuating the universe. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) Some sources indicate these events occurred in a bottle universe parallel to the Eighth Doctor's reality which contained the adventures of Bernice Summerfield[nb 12] (PROSE: Interference - Book Two [+]Loading...["Interference - Book Two (novel)"], Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"]) or were a part of the War in Heaven. (PROSE: The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"], AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire [+]Loading...["The Eleven Day Empire (audio story)"]) Several accounts indicated the teacher Doctor taught on Gallifrey shortly before the outbreak of the War,[nb 13] (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5 [+]Loading...["The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)"], The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"], A Farewell to Arms [+]Loading...["A Farewell to Arms (short story)"]) living either in a timeline which would be averted when it bled into the Eighth Doctor's early travels with Sam (PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"]) or on a Gallifrey which was the original and not the same as the cloneworld in Kasterborous (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5 [+]Loading...["The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)"], "Modern Time" [+]Part of Crimes Against History, Loading...{"namedpart":"Modern Time","1":"Crimes Against History (short story)"}, "The Nine Homeworlds" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"namedpart":"The Nine Homeworlds","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"}) that the Eighth Doctor considered home. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"])
Roots as a later Eighth Doctor and beyond
In yet another account, the Infinity Doctor was a later Eighth Doctor from after the restoration of Gallifrey in the post-War universe.[nb 14] The Eighth Doctor once reflected to Davros that he feared that—one day, after he had lost the last of his friends—he would find himself heading home to Gallifrey "to collect dust" with the rest of his people. (AUDIO: Terror Firma [+]Loading...["Terror Firma (audio story)"]) Larna once indicated that she came from a version of Gallifrey after the planet's inevitable fall against the Enemy. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"})
During the Master's time as the Great Black Eye, he had identical god-like power to Omega's Effect, thus making him fully capable of creating the teacher Doctor's status quo; (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}, The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) the Master offered to shift history to instantly restore Gallifrey but the Doctor declined, leading Fitz to later advise the Doctor, “even if some weird timestormy parallel paradoxy universy thing came along, and outer space went all wobbly and Gallifrey came back, just as it was… well, you'd still be the man who did what you did. All you can do now is go forwards.” Marnal had a different proposal of creating a city for the saved by downloading the Matrix-recorded minds of all 153,841 dead Time Lords of Gallifrey from their slumber in the Doctor's brain into a supercomputer sanctuary called New Gallifrey; (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) in the context of Oldharbour Clock and Gallifreyan society's tendency to resemble a clock, Time Lords from a parallel Gallifrey were distinguished as “analogue”, suggesting the teacher Doctor's people to be digital. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
An account connected to the Infinity Doctor's Gallifrey posited that minds within the Matrix were in some sense literally living in their own pasts. (PROSE: Dead Time [+]Loading...["Dead Time (short story)"]) The Eighth Doctor felt an intense nostalgic desire to return to life on Gallifrey and promised to do everything in his power to restore the planet. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) Thinking of his people in a less positive sense, the Eighth Doctor also once mused that he would one day return to Gallifrey "to collect dust" with the rest of his kind. He believed this future to be inevitable because he was a Time Lord, certain his nature would catch up to him once his travels and his companions were all past him. (AUDIO: Terror Firma [+]Loading...["Terror Firma (audio story)"]) The Eighth Doctor had multiple futures ahead of him, with the path to settling down on a restored Gallifrey potentially also including time as an Emperor. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"})
The Infinity Doctor looked identical to the Emperor, a later Eighth Doctor who founded a revival Time Lord Imperial Family on the Needle alongside a Man with the Rosette who resembled the Magistrate. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}, The Story So Far...) The Children of Kasterborous were seen to have the same generational patterns which Larna observed on her Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Emperor held the title “President of the Supreme Council”. (PROSE: Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"]) One historical source indicated Bernice Summerfield married and had 13 half-immortal children with a version of the Doctor (PROSE: Paydirt [+]Loading...["Paydirt (short story)"], Just War [+]Loading...["Just War (novel)"]) who was the last survivor of a race of time travellers. (PROSE: Paydirt [+]Loading...["Paydirt (short story)"])
The Klade developed during the thousand years of Imperial rule, (PROSE: Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"]) to the point of being threats to Gallifrey during the Doctor's time as a teacher, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) and eventually overthrew the Imperial family in bloodshed that apparently only left one survivor, (PROSE: Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"]) creating a situation similar to the massacre which haunted the Doctor as a teacher. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Emperor's surviving daughter went on to bring peace as Empress and gave birth to Susan, (PROSE: Sometime Never... [+]Loading...["Sometime Never... (novel)"]) and under her rule there was an Imperial Throneworld which greatly resembled Gallifrey Eight, (PROSE: Hope [+]Loading...["Hope (novel)"]) leaving potential for the teacher Doctor's status quo to be established. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"})
In a timeline sometimes referenced in the same sources which referenced the Infinity Doctor's lifetime, (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], The Taking of Planet 5 [+]Loading...["The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)"], The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) the Thirteenth Doctor was ready to settle down from adventuring after an incident which caused the Master to renounce evil, with the two beginning an overtly romantic relationship together. (TV: The Curse of Fatal Death [+]Loading...["The Curse of Fatal Death (TV story)"]) Larna once noted of the Infinity Doctor and the Magistrate: “although they'd had their differences in the past, it was clear that they loved one another.” (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
This Doctor may have had origins further futurewards along the Doctor's timeline.[nb 15][nb 16] One incarnation whose history was connected to the teacher Doctor's (PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"], The Taking of Planet 5 [+]Loading...["The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)"], "Appendix I" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"name":"Appendix I","namedpart":"Appendix I","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"}) was thought to exist in an era after the Eighth Doctor's life, being the final incarnation of the Doctor. (PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"]) Muldwych, an incarnation in the Seventh Doctor's future, was known to wear the Doctor's sapphire ring. (PROSE: Birthright [+]Loading...["Birthright (novel)"])
On the teacher Doctor's Gallifrey, it was customary (as seen with Hedin) for children to take the name of one of their parents, families filling the same role through generations. Savar perceived the Doctor to have a very similar personality and outlook as his father. The Doctor's father associated with numerous aliens during the Doctor's childhood, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) many of whom had been close allies with Gallifrey in the eras of the Fourth (PROSE: K9 and the Zeta Rescue [+]Loading...["K9 and the Zeta Rescue (novel)"]) Fifth, (COMIC: The Tides of Time [+]Loading...["The Tides of Time (comic story)"]) and Eighth Doctors, (COMIC: The Final Chapter [+]Loading...["The Final Chapter (comic story)"]) but in the teacher Doctor's youth were violently removed from the planet. The father was also closely associated with Mr Saldaamir, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) who the Eighth Doctor briefly experienced as a close friend in memories from his future self. (PROSE: Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"]) Therefore, the Infinity Doctor could have been the son of the Doctor.[nb 17] (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
The teacher Doctor's Gallifrey had an ancient history of “Time Wars” fought “a generation or so” after Rassilon. While details such as the Wars creating the rationalistic universe, spanning 30,000 years, beginning at the same time as the Rutan-Sontaran War, and involving Rigel (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) made them continuous with the Time Wars which the Fourth and Seventh Doctors knew as ancient conflicts (PROSE: Sky Pirates!, Heart of TARDIS, So Vile a Sin, COMIC: Star Death [+]Loading...["Star Death (comic story)"], 4-D War [+]Loading...["4-D War (comic story)"], Black Sun Rising [+]Loading...["Black Sun Rising (comic story)"]) fought a generation after Rassilon, (COMIC: Black Sun Rising [+]Loading...["Black Sun Rising (comic story)"]) the Doctor's life cycle beginning with the First Doctor was indicated by one source to have existed only a generation or so after Rassilon (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey [+]Loading...["The Legacy of Gallifrey (short story)"]) and several time wars occurred in this cycle within a relatively short span. The Millennium Wars were fought on a thousand worlds and brought to an end by the combined minds of all Higher Evolutionaries before the Wars nearly destroyed the universe, (COMIC: The Tides of Time [+]Loading...["The Tides of Time (comic story)"]) the War in Heaven involved multiple Gallifreys (PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"]) and left large sections of space and time broken and dead, (PROSE: Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"]) and the Last Great Time War followed the War in Heaven; (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}, Engines of War, The Eyeless [+]Loading...["The Eyeless (novel)"]) the Infinity Doctor remembered the Time Wars as spanning a thousand planets, being stopped from destroyed the universe by “the intervention of certain higher powers”, involving parallel Gallifreys, and damaging whole areas of space and time beyond repair, thus suggesting he lived about 2 million years after the Doctors who witnessed such Wars. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
Among the infinite prior iterations of the universe mentioned by Omega were a version of Gallifrey without Rassilon where the Time Lords were Gods thanks only to himself and a version where Rassilon continued to rule from deep within the Matrix; (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) the former history existed in the Third Doctor's present (TV: The Three Doctors) and the latter existed in the Fifth Doctor's present (COMIC: The Tides of Time [+]Loading...["The Tides of Time (comic story)"], et al.) the Sixth Doctor's past, (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey [+]Loading...["The Legacy of Gallifrey (short story)"]) and the Eighth Doctor's future, (COMIC: The Final Chapter [+]Loading...["The Final Chapter (comic story)"]) indicating the Infinity Doctor to exist in an iteration of the timeline subsequent to the regular Doctor's timeline. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
Teaching on Gallifrey
The Doctor formed friendships easily and maintained them despite his anarchic nature. His best and oldest friend was the Magistrate of the Citadel, a fellow member of the Supreme Council, although the two had had some differences in the past. The Doctor and the Magistrate were the only members of the Council under 2000 years old. By this time, the Infinity Doctor's TARDIS was stuck in a single exterior form.
The Doctor taught at the Time Lord Academy and inspired his students to think for themselves (again earning the ire of his colleagues). The Doctor earned the ire of some of his peers, mostly because of his iconoclastic and eccentric nature, but also because of his socially progressive mindset. Larna was one of his greatest students, with the Doctor developing a close bond with her. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
The teacher Doctor once met the Eighth Doctor in a shared dream, which the Eighth Doctor experienced as “a memory he'd never had” alongside several glimpses of his near future; at this time, both Doctors looked of similar appearance and age, with the main difference being that the Eighth Doctor had long hair. In the dream, they were standing at an English coast as “everything was at stake” and Earth was destroyed by something vast which blotted out an unusually large sun. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}, Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"]) By the Eighth Doctor's account, the vast object was the Supremacy of a potential future which he would soon prevent, (PROSE: Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"]) but the teacher Doctor saw it as an ancient beast “from the past and the future” which mocked him with deafening laughter and scoured the Earth with solid beams of darkness, possibly being a premonition of the Enemy.[nb 18] (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
Through years of arguments and cowboy diplomacy the Doctor got the Rutans and the Sontarans to sit down and discuss a ceasefire. Sadly, this met with stonewalling from both sides and opposition from the Time Lord Council, necessitating the Doctor to take more radical actions to force a peace. The Doctor was distracted from this negotiation by dire events on Gallifrey.
Rushing to save Larna from a cruel version of Savar warped by Omega's control, the Doctor found Gallifrey threatened by history-warping emanations from the Effect in the far future. Seeing that the Agathon Equations could be overcome, the Doctor internally decided to use the Effect to change the past and save his wife. An attempt to warn the Supreme Council of the Effect's true nature only resulted in the war-hungry Voran being put in charge of the situation and making it worse. The Doctor and Larna sabotaged the timegate to the far future before a universe-threatening war could be started with the deployment of Anathema. In the moments before the timegate's collapse, Larna sensed the Doctor's intentions with the Effect and tried to stop him leaping through to the future. In a rush, the Doctor tried to non-fatally stab Larna with a force knife, but she refused to let him brush her aside and twisted the knife so that she died without regenerating. The Doctor then jumped into the dwindling timegate with blood on his hands.
In the future, the Doctor was reunited with the Magistrate on Space Station Zenobia. He very quickly went to the Needle using a transmat bracelet and encountered the Needle People. Here, he was faced with a few tantalizing hints of hints of his own future, having a meaningful conversation with Helios. In order to get past the Needle People and into a door to Omega's anti-matter universe, the Doctor programmed his transmat bracelet to not destroy his original body when he transmatted, leaving the Needle People with a sleeping husk.
Through the door into the anti-matter universe, the Doctor found Omega and his dead wife, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) the woman once known as Patience. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) Demonstrating the Effect, Omega changed history so that the Doctor had never killed Larna. With the Doctor in the anti-matter universe to keep it in existence, Omega could return to the matter universe and inhabit the mindless husk of the Doctor's body. The Doctor was content to live in the anti-matter universe with his wife. However, the paradise turned into a dark thunder storm when he considered his wife may have not originally been a part of his life, and merely inserted into his history by Omega as a manipulation. After acknowledging that the outside universe was doomed if the Doctor did not return, his wife urged him to return and defeat Omega. Inspired by her, he said goodbye and left that realm, leaving her permanently dead.
The Doctor was able to leave the anti-matter universe through the raw singularity in the Eye of Harmony which Omega had exposed in attempting to destroy Gallifrey. Facing off against his evil mirror image, the Doctor debated Omega on the value of infinite godhood, both of them possessing the ability to rewrite reality from their time in the anti-matter universe. Using these powers, the Doctor defined himself as an "anti-singularity", a made-up concept which nonetheless saved the day when he touched Omega and the resulting contact between anti-singularity and singularity made Omega vanish and restored the Doctor to being a normal Gallifreyan.
After that adventure, the Doctor wanted to leave Gallifrey again. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
Moving beyond teaching
Moving forward
The Doctor was one of Four Names decreed by Rassilon to be assassinated by the Watch to prevent the rise of the Enemy Within. This was only to be done after a certain action which the Doctor had not yet done.
On the Needle, Willhuff had purposely shown the Doctor a book of Gallifreyan history from the Doctor's future, The Other Scrolls, because of the Doctor's role in this history. The Doctor read a single random sentence on one of the book's final pages and was terrified by it. Helios indicated that this horrible event involved the Enemy and that the Doctor's confrontation with Omega had been the event which set this future into place, inevitable in spite of the Doctor's free will and otherwise unfixed future.[nb 19] (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) By one account, The Other Scrolls were an account of the origins of the War in Heaven in the Event, detailing the Third Doctor's infection with a Faction Paradox biodata virus on Dust, I.M. Foreman's creation of a bottle universe which spawned the true Enemy, and the Eighth Doctor's final days before his dark fate as Grandfather Paradox. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"])
The Infinity Doctor's confrontation with Omega had resonances across the Doctor's timeline, with aspects of the adventure appearing more or less identically in other adventures of the Third, (TV: The Three Doctors) Fourth (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Time Witch, TV: The Invasion of Time) Fifth, (TV: Arc of Infinity) and Eighth Doctors. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) Additionally, distinct elements of the Infinity Doctor's Gallifrey were also seen in the versions of Time Lord society known as home by the Fifth (AUDIO: Time in Office) Sixth, (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element) Seventh, (PROSE: Just War [+]Loading...["Just War (novel)"]) Eighth, (PROSE: Dead Time [+]Loading...["Dead Time (short story)"], The Eight Doctors [+]Loading...["The Eight Doctors (novel)"], Interference - Book Two, The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"], Seeing I [+]Loading...["Seeing I (novel)"], The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}, AUDIO: Day of the Master) Tenth, (PROSE: The Eyeless [+]Loading...["The Eyeless (novel)"]) and Twelfth Doctors. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
During the teacher Doctor's confrontation with Omega, they shifted Skaro's history multiple times, so that it was destroyed and undestroyed and destroyed again, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) thereby creating the state of history in which the Seventh Doctor destroyed the planet (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) but for the Eighth Doctor it had never been destroyed. (PROSE: War of the Daleks, TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"]) Indeed, consequences and individuals from this incarnation's adventures were known to frequently intersect with the life of the Eighth Doctor. (PROSE: Seeing I [+]Loading...["Seeing I (novel)"], Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], Interference - Book Two, The Taking of Planet 5 [+]Loading...["The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)"], The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"], Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"], Hope [+]Loading...["Hope (novel)"], The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"})
Just as this Doctor had infinite pasts, he had many fluxing futures. From the perspective of these futures, the Doctor's past as a teacher on Gallifrey was sometimes only one of many fluxing pasts, a palimpsest universe itself. (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], Celestial Intervention - A Gallifreyan Noir [+]Loading...["Celestial Intervention - A Gallifreyan Noir (short story)"], Bafflement and Devotion [+]Loading...["Bafflement and Devotion (short story)"]) In any one pathway of the Infinity Doctor's life, the post-teacher future need not correspond with the pre-teacher past, given that the cyclical nature of the Doctor's timeline meant that the Doctors who knew Patience and the First Doctor could be the Eighth Doctor's future just as much as he was their future. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows)
Futures & legacies as the First Doctor or earlier
As an early iteration of the Doctor, records of this era of Time Lord history eventually dissipated (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) but survived among myth, as shown when an amnesiac Marnal wrote a novel from trace-memories of Gallifreyan culture which had “stuff about black holes and people being stabbed dead one minute and alive and well the next and giant space needles,” (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) all things which happened when this Doctor faced Omega. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Doctor would have very faint memories of this life while in contact with Patience, leading him to remember this Doctor had led an expedition into deep time, (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) as this Doctor had led an expedition beyond Gallifrey' territory to the far future (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) known as deep-time. (PROSE: "The Anchoring of the Thread" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"namedpart":"The Anchoring of the Thread","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"}) When Gallifrey's timeline collapsed in on itself due to the Edifice, a giant statue resembling the Eighth Doctor with a crew cut appeared among the statues of the Founders of Gallifrey, separate from the Other -- however, further temporal manipulations turned the represented Doctor into a future-originating vessel for the concept of Grandfather Paradox. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"])
At another perspective, this Doctor was uncertain of his own name but certain that his father was not named “Ulysses”. Given his love of the Iliad (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) and that his journey into deep time was described as an “Odyssey”, (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) this Doctor may have become Ulysses, the Doctor's father, (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) fulfilling the circular shape of time which caused history to repeat “father to son”. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) In one history, Ulysses' name was banned by the Time Lords for “consorting with aliens”, (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"]) a charge which the Doctor faced when he lost his family. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"], The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) Ulysses would continue to work with Larna on the Advanced Research Project (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"]) along with Mr Saldaamir. The Doctor's human mother was involved in her husband's collaborations with Saldaamir, (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) and Bernice Summerfield once had a mysterious flash of recognition when she met Saldaamir, being unable to place when exactly she'd been close friends with him (PROSE: Beige Planet Mars [+]Loading...["Beige Planet Mars (novel)"]) in a similar manner to how the Doctor felt when he met Patience. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"], The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
The First Doctor was known to leave Gallifrey with his granddaughter Susan. By one account, Susan was the Doctor's grandchild who had been thought killed with the rest of his family (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) but was actually rescued via time travel by the First Doctor. (PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"]) By another account, the Doctor's time knowing Lady Larn was wiped from his memory and he falsely assumed her to be his own granddaughter when they later travelled together. (PROSE: Birth of a Renegade [+]Loading...["Birth of a Renegade (short story)"]) At the time they left Gallifrey, Susan was aware her grandfather had already been to other times and planets during his time as an ambassador. The Doctor mentioned he had been in a time machine model different from a Type 40 TARDIS which was piloted by a crew of Time Technicians, (PROSE: The Exiles [+]Loading...["The Exiles (short story)"]) with that description matching Space Station Zenobia. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The First Doctor's TARDIS contained furniture from the Doctor's rooms on Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}, TV: An Unearthly Child, et al.) The First Doctor continued to wear his sapphire wedding ring for the rest of his incarnation. (TV: An Unearthly Child, The Power of the Daleks)
When Maris investigated the First Doctor's escape from Gallifrey, she found that in one of his many timelines he had had a wife on Gallifrey. (PROSE: Celestial Intervention - A Gallifreyan Noir [+]Loading...["Celestial Intervention - A Gallifreyan Noir (short story)"])
The Eighth Doctor would sometimes recall having origins which aligned with the Infinity Doctor's origins. He remembered when Savar was blinded, (PROSE: Seeing I [+]Loading...["Seeing I (novel)"]) an event which occurred in the Infinity Doctor's youth. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) He recognized a prophecy that he would use his half-human lineage to lead his people out of the Time of Darkness and unite them against a great evil while being guided by an “old man spirit”. While attempting to torment the Doctor with the knowledge that his and Gallifrey's past were constantly changing and being overwritten without the Doctor noticing, a member of Faction Paradox sang a bastardized version of a song the Doctor had known his whole life (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"]) which was associated with the teacher Doctor's Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Faction child also stole a childhood memory which aligned with the Infinity Doctor's childhood, saying that that timeline was “one of my favourite origins”. (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"])
The Third Doctor would encounter the Master again, now enemies in spite of their friendship on Gallifrey, (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Sea Devils, et al.) and expressed familiarity with Sontarans when he met one. (TV: The Time Warrior) Many of the threats prophesied during the Doctor's time on Gallifrey would be defeated by his later incarnations: (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) Catavolcus and his danger on Gallifrey by the Fourth and Fifth Doctors, (COMIC: The Neutron Knights, The Tides of Time [+]Loading...["The Tides of Time (comic story)"]) the Timewyrm by the Seventh Doctor, (PROSE: Revelation) and both Faction Paradox and (in a demonstration of free will against a predetermined future) a version of the Enemy by the Eighth Doctor. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"])
The Seventh Doctor once used an Infinity Chamber, (PROSE: Just War [+]Loading...["Just War (novel)"]) a piece of technology prominent on the Infinity Doctor's Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Chamber was generated by an alternate universe Third Doctor's TARDIS, (PROSE: Blood Heat) but the Gallifrey it came from was identical to the “real universe”'s Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Dimension Riders, No Future, et al.)
Futures as a post-First Doctor incarnation
The Eighth Doctor was once confused by jumbled memories which included being exiled on Gallifrey as the Infinity Doctor, possibly instead of the Third Doctor's exile on Earth; Iris Wildthyme helped him realise that “extra adventures” were being slipped into his past, expanding it into something without a proper order. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion [+]Loading...["Bafflement and Devotion (short story)"])
As the Quantum Archangel's parallel universe continued, the Doctor was persuaded to become Lord President and lead his people in a version of the War in Heaven against an “Enemy” who were the Daleks. The Master returned to stand at his brother the Doctor's side at the War's beginning, secretly corrupted during his time away. At the War's end, the Doctor, in a body resembling the Sixth Doctor, was betrayed for the first time by a Master who had allied with the Daleks, leading the Doctor to destroy the universe with the Armageddon Sapphire to prevent Enemy victory. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel [+]Loading...["The Quantum Archangel (novel)"])
The Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones would destroy the alternate universe they encountered which was threatened by the Greyness, eliminating all of its inhabitants. (PROSE: Genocide [+]Loading...["Genocide (novel)"])
In one timeline of the future, the Event outlined in the Other Scrolls (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"]) was averted due to foreknowledge, only for the War in Heaven to begin instead in the Cataclysm on Dronid. (PROSE: "Appendix I" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"name":"Appendix I","namedpart":"Appendix I","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"}) The Doctor, (PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"]) still a "rather optimistic House diplomat" living on the original Homeworld, (PROSE: "Appendix I" [+]Part of The Book of the War, Loading...{"name":"Appendix I","namedpart":"Appendix I","1":"The Book of the War (novel)"}) tried to negotiate with the Celestis on the Time Lords' behalf just before the Cataclysm. He was thought to die here, with his corpse becoming the Relic. (PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"]) His contemporary the War King later fondly remembered the Doctor's negotiations between the Sontarans and the Rutans as an event from a more innocent time shortly before the War. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5 [+]Loading...["The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)"]) This timeline was averted after this Doctor's corpse was encountered by the Eighth Doctor during his early travels with Sam Jones, creating a new history where the Eighth Doctor would not go on the path towards dying on Dronid. (PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"]) Later temporal manipulations reinstated a short-haired future version of the Eighth Doctor who fought in the War, although this Doctor was a vessel for the concept of Grandfather Paradox.[nb 20] (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"])
By another strand, a week after the Doctor defeated Omega and decided to leave Gallifrey, the Supreme Council was poised to make a decision on the rising threat of the All-High Gods. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) They decided to invade Christine Summerfield's bottle universe and establish it as their new home, using as a staging ground the same ice planet (PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"]) which the Doctor had witnessed Anathema orbiting. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) The Doctor was involved in these events only as a demonized figural Evil Renegade used to maintain loyalty in soldiers such as Chris Cwej. (PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"]) The reality this occurred in was itself a bottle universe, (PROSE: Interference) which began seeping into and merging with the Eighth Doctor's universe circa the War in Heaven. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"], Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"])
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By another future, this Doctor went on to be one of the four surviving elementals alongside the Magistrate and Larna, (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) all of them having left Gallifrey directly after the Omega incident. Having encountered the Needle for the first time during the Omega incident, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) the Doctor founded a thousand year empire there as the Emperor. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) The Doctor's peace between Rutan and Sontaran forces continued into this era, with a merged group of “shapeshifting goblins” under the Emperor's rule. (PROSE: Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"])
In a future alongside restored Time Lords, the Doctor was projected to eventually encounter Nimons (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) which the Eighth Doctor was known to have done with Charley Pollard, (AUDIO: Seasons of Fear) indicating that the Doctor resumed his old life of adventuring as intended (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) and took on a chain of new companions starting with Gemma and Samson Griffin which led to him travelling with Charley (AUDIO: Terror Firma [+]Loading...["Terror Firma (audio story)"]) in a universe with Time Lords. (AUDIO: Neverland, et al.) These Time Lords had a shared history with pre-destruction Gallifrey that diverged with the absence of War (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"], AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element, Neverland) and themselves had their history restructured by anti-time (AUDIO: Neverland) in a manner similar to the Effect. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) Marnal once observed (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) an early event in this sequence which had the Doctor reiterating an adventure (WC: Shada) that also occurred to the Fourth Doctor. (TV: Shada, et al.) The Daleks had grown in power between Gallifrey's destruction and restoration, (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...{"name":"TGC","1":"The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"}) and the Last Great Time War against the Daleks began within the lifetime of the Eighth Doctor who had lived through the War in Heaven, leading to Gallifrey being seemingly destroyed again. (PROSE: The Eyeless [+]Loading...["The Eyeless (novel)"], The Day of the Doctor, et al.)
Despite the Doctor's insistence on free will and the capability of future history to infinitely flux, his visit to the very end of the universe indicated he had an ultimate fate. Helios was the wise old leader of a group speculated by one of its members to be the Children of Kasterborous, the final generation after so many cycles of Gallifreyan history. Helios was slightly different to his companions, and was speculated to be Merlin, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) an eventual identity of the Doctor's. (PROSE: Battlefield) Helios could not remember all of his past, but knew he came to the Needle to continue his father's work[nb 21] and that he had once had a wife and family. Helios and the Infinity Doctor shared a moment of profound recognition when they spoke to each other alone. Helios gave many warnings of things to come, which he knew to be futile because the events of the Doctor's future were already Helios' past. There would come a day when the Doctor lost everything, and Helios had already lost everything -- “everything but [his] faith”. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
Appearance
The Doctor had a long oval face with a high forehead, an aristocratic nose, a full mouth, and sad blue eyes; (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"}) these descriptors also described the Eighth Doctor's face. (PROSE: The Dying Days [+]Loading...["The Dying Days (novel)"], Father Time [+]Loading...["Father Time (novel)"], Trading Futures [+]Loading...["Trading Futures (novel)"], The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...["The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"]) However, unlike the regular Eighth Doctor, he wore his hair close-cropped.
He wore glasses, a battered cashmere jacket, pressed silk shirt and tailored tan trousers. He wore his old college scarf when greeting the Sontarans and Rutans on Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"})
Behind the scenes
- In an interview with the Doctor Who Reprint Society, author Lance Parkin asserted that this incarnation of the Doctor "looks like Paul McGann."[6] He used a picture of the short-haired Paul McGann from his initial Doctor Who announcement photoshoot to illustrate "the Infinity Doctor" on a social media post in 2024.[1]
- Commenting on the glimpse of a pregnant Bernice Summerfield in The Infinity Doctors, Parkin claimed it to be a result of The Dying Days [+]Loading...["The Dying Days (novel)"].[7] Benny's continued romance and resultant thirteen children with the Doctor were also mentioned in Parkin's short stories Worm [+]Loading...["Worm (short story)"], Fishy Business [+]Loading...["Fishy Business (short story)"], Iris Explains [+]Loading...["Iris Explains (short story)"], and Paydirt [+]Loading...["Paydirt (short story)"]. He later speculated that The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...{"name":"TID","1":"The Infinity Doctors (novel)"} took place in a universe where Virgin Books continued publishing Doctor Who stories after The Dying Days [+]Loading...["The Dying Days (novel)"].[8]
- Alluded to at points in the final novel, the original pitch for The Infinity Doctors would have been a Fourth Doctor and Romana I Past Doctor Adventure. After a prologue with the "Robert Banks Stewart Doctor" and Patience fighting Centro, this version has its first half set on Earth rather than Gallifrey. Halfway through, Centro travels to the Needle and collaborates with Omega to build an Agathon Engine using Centro's Agathon equations, briefly leading to an altered present in which the Doctor never left Gallifrey and is now a teacher with Romana as his pupil and the Master at his side. This teacher Doctor then travels to the Needle and seemingly reasserts his history back to normal, but his subsequent confrontation with Omega results in his death and regeneration into a Fifth Doctor played by Geoffrey Bayldon. This storyline would have continued either across several Past Doctor Adventure novels[4] or in an Eighth Doctor Adventure novel by Kate Orman and Jon Blum. The concept of a Past Doctor Adventure ending with a Doctor's premature regeneration would later be used in Interference and Bayldon would later play an alternate Doctor who had never left Gallifrey in several Doctor Who Unbound stories.
- In reference to the unproduced possibility of the book that became Seeing I being the second half of The Infinity Doctors, Orman and Blum include a short sequence in Unnatural History where the Eighth Doctor gives in to his biodata and becomes “the i Doctors”, a dazzling joyous blur of “every single Doctor you could imagine at once” with infinitely contradicting histories that cannot be easily explained.
- As observed by Jayce Black, one of Johnny Byrne's proposed scripts for what became the 1996 TV Movie, The Return of Varnax, involved the Eighth Doctor being sentenced to stay on Gallifrey as a teacher after breaking the laws of the Time Lords by deliberately creating a time warp. This corresponds to the Infinity Doctor's status quo of reluctantly living on Gallifrey as a teacher, and would match Parkin's interest in both The Infinity Doctors [+]Loading...["The Infinity Doctors (novel)"] and The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...["The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"] in referencing and working in elements of the mythology from the various unmade TV movies documented in The Nth Doctor, where Jean-Marc Lofficier had argued that they should all be considered "canonical" despite their unproduced status and occasional apparent contradictions.[9]
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Although never used directly in a narrative source, this widely-used fan term was adopted by the book's own author Lance Parkin in discussion of The Infinity Doctors.[1]
- ↑ Continuity and contradiction play a large role in interpretation of The Infinity Doctors. Lance Parkin has repeatedly described a central inspiration of the novel's setting to be the paradox that “by including every single nugget of detail we knew then about Gallifrey (including… all the stuff that contradicted itself), by taking that ultra-inclusive line, it become utterly impossible to place the book in canon.”[2]
- ↑ The Infinity Doctors positions Omega as a mirror to the Infinity Doctor's character, representing an opposing form of infinity. This is tied back to Omega's creation, when he was originally conceived as “OHM”, an upside down mirror of “WHO”. This connection is intriguingly commented on in Search for the Doctor [+]Loading...["Search for the Doctor (novel)"], written before the creation of the Other:
"If you destroyed Omega altogether, I might not be here… At first I thought that we were somehow opposite sides of the same coin, like Jekyll and Hyde. So when I finally did escape [the anti-matter universe] I got in touch with the Keeper of the Rolls on Gallifrey. He pointed out that my first idea was ridiculous since Omega was born many generations before I was. Then, when he looked into it, he discovered that Omega could have been a direct ancestor of mine. So, you see, there could be a link. If it weren't for him, possibly I wouldn't be here."
This genealogy may tacitly exist as the Infinity Doctor's backstory, with Patience having originally been Omega's wife and the Doctor coming from a long line of noteworthy male explorers accompanied by Patience.
- ↑ Concurrently to the novel's release, another possible look at the world of the Infinity Doctor came in Lance Parkin's charity anthology short stories Worm [+]Loading...["Worm (short story)"] and Fishy Business [+]Loading...["Fishy Business (short story)"]. These show an alternate Eighth Doctor and Bernice Summerfield who stayed together after the events of The Dying Days [+]Loading...["The Dying Days (novel)"], very possibly being backstory to the Infinity Doctor. This divergence indicates the Doctor to be “compromised” by Last Contact, in a manner seemingly related to the contents of the Other Scrolls; this could be related to the oblique allusion in Parkin's Warlords of Utopia [+]Loading...["Warlords of Utopia (novel)"] to the Enemy being "Who".
- ↑ Cold Fusion indicates a connection between Patience's husband and Peter Cushing's Dr. Who. Thus, with his relatively short hair, spectacles, and scarf, as well as his participation in reiterating events, Dr. Who could be considered a candidate for the Infinity Doctor.
- ↑ The Doctor's confusion over his parents' names reflects the variations in scripts leading up to the TV Movie.
- ↑ This memory is an allusion to the Doctor's introduction in John Leekley's unproduced Fathers and Brothers script, in which the Doctor discovers an ancient cave containing the Scrolls of Rassilon which prophesize that he will end the Time of Darkness. Fathers and Brothers functions as the origin story of a young First Doctor the producers wanted to be played by Paul McGann, thus making its Doctor a prime candidate for the Infinity Doctor. Many aspects of the Infinity Doctor's backstory could be read as references to the events of Fathers and Brothers, with the proposed movie showing the Doctor being the child of Ulysses and Annalise, obtaining a TARDIS passed down from his father which gets stuck as a police box, travelling across space-time and falling in love with Earth when he visits it for the first time, battling the Master, and falling in love with a human woman just as his father had.[3] In light of Fathers and Brothers being intended as continuous with the (already intensely contradictory) Doctor Who universe (and, indeed, the basis for the Doctor's half-human lineage in the final film), one could consider The Infinity Doctors as a straightforward origin story for the First Doctor, contradictions and all.
- ↑ Jean-Marc Lofficier suggests[source needed] that alongside Fathers and Brothers most of the proposed stories of The Nth Doctor could exist together along the Doctor's timeline. The Infinity Doctors has continuity with these stories in other ways (thus suggesting them to be within the past or future of the Infinity Doctor): the Doctor's position as a Gallifreyan teacher reflects his status in The Return of Varnax of being called back from his life of adventuring to teach law on his homeworld; the novel's opening paragraphs quote Gallifreyan history from Fathers and Brothers; Varnax is mentioned as a threat to Gallifrey per his destruction of it in Last of the Time Lords; Lady Zurvana may be named for the Doctor's Time Lord ex-lover whose name varies between “Zilla” and “Morgana" across drafts of Last of the Time Lords; the concept of a massive TARDIS threatening to overwrite the universe echoes Varnax the Creator; other details of the Doctor's parents as well as the Master's status on Gallifrey echo The Time of My Life; and the general ambiguity of whether the novel is set in Doctor Who's past, future, or alternative present reflects Lofficier's comments on The Time of My Life which led to a scene in The End of Time in which the Seventh Doctor travels through the “infinity of timelines” to meet an alternative Doctor.
- ↑ In light of the unproduced Leekley material in which the Doctor's grandfather was Borusa, one could combine the notion of The Infinity Doctors as the Eighth Doctor's altered past with the notion of The Infinity Doctors as the world of the ‘90s movies that almost were. The history-altering focus of the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures was incited by lines about half-human lineage in that Doctor's film debut, which were themselves references to the Doctor's origins in the preceding unproduced scripts.
- ↑ The original pitch for The Infinity Doctors would have been a Fourth Doctor and Romana I Past Doctor Adventure in which they fought Centro, a long-lived robot who had been the Robert Banks Stewart Doctor's arch enemy. The pitch has the teacher Doctor's timeline as an alternate present of the Doctor and Romana created when Centro builds an Agathon Engine with Omega's help.[4] The final novel, which is not necessarily set in an alternate timeline, explicitly rules out Centro as responsible for the teacher Doctor's status quo.
- ↑ The conspicuous Gallifrey gap in Seeing I reflects the novel's DNA from the unproduced continuation of The Infinity Doctors which could have taken its place. The Eighth Doctor novels of this time were dealing with their own storyline of the Doctor's past and present being altered, with the events of The Eight Doctors at the beginning of the incarnation's life seemingly undoing the Virgin New Adventures Gallifrey continuity and replacing the original dark-haired version of Sam Jones with a tamer blonde Sam Jones to keep the Doctor distracted. (PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"], Seeing I [+]Loading...["Seeing I (novel)"], Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"], Interference) However, given the Infinity Doctor has memories of a blonde Sam, his timeline does not seem to be the future erased by The Eight Doctors.
- ↑ From an out-of-universe perspective, Lawrence Miles' bottle universe concept was a method of situating the stories published by Virgin Publishing and BBC Books as existing in separate realities. Therefore, the continuity with Bernice Summerfield novels places The Infinity Doctors in the “Virgin Publishing universe”, tying into the notion of the Infinity Doctor as existing in a reality where Virgin continued to publish Eighth Doctor Doctor Who novels.
- ↑ The charity short story My Best Enemy, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust my Archfoe, written by Jayce Black (whose corner of the Doctor Who universe later officially crossed over with elements from The Infinity Doctors), depicted an episode of the Infinity Doctor's life occurring before the events of the novel, with the Doctor unambiguously being a version of the Eighth Doctor living shortly before the start of the War.
- ↑ While the storyline of Gallifrey's destruction in the novels played out years after The Infinity Doctors' publication, an eerily similar plot appears in some of the unproduced 1990s reboot scripts which influenced Parkin. In Johnny Byrne's The Fall of Gallifrey and The Mark of Varnax, Gallifrey is destroyed by Varnax and the Doctor loses his TARDIS and memories of Gallifrey and becomes stranded on Earth for several decades starting in 1903. He eventually discovers his homeworld is ruined and defeats Varnax, with Byrne intending the story to continue in a series of films about the Doctor living on Gallifrey as he reconstructs it.
- ↑ The continuity of Lance Parkin and Mark Clapham's 42nd Doctor offers another possibility for the Infinity Doctor's identity. Either this Doctor or his prior incarnation are candidates for the Doctor with whom Bernice Summerfield is described as having thirteen children,[5] connecting them with the teacher Doctor's backstory.
- ↑ Craig Hinton's corner of the Doctor Who universe (which is connected to the Infinity Doctor's corner via The Quantum Archangel) offers another possible identity for the Infinity Doctor in the male Thirteenth Doctor seen in the charity story Aspects of Evil [+]Loading...["Aspects of Evil (short story)"]. This future Doctor's timeline continues from the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures, with Gallifrey only being restored from its destruction in the War in Heaven when a young Thirteenth Doctor erases the Valeyard from history and thus causes the Daleks to never exist, creating a temporal maelstrom which undoes the destruction of Gallifrey and remakes the Time Lords into a more moral society like “he had envisioned as the Other, yearned for as the Doctor.” After that, the Thirteenth Doctor remembers returning to his homeworld and witnessing the Rutans and Sontarans achieve peace and merge into a united CloneHost, implying he lived through the events of The Infinity Doctors. This Thirteenth Doctor's era of future-history is also visited in The Crystal Bucephalus [+]Loading...["The Crystal Bucephalus (novel)"] and Synthespians™ [+]Loading...["Synthespians™ (novel)"].
- ↑ The unproduced The Son of Doctor Who would have introduced a son of the First Doctor who was also played by William Hartnell, nearly setting a precedent at the beginning of Doctor Who history of the Doctor having a doppelganger son. The audio adaptation of Cold Fusion has Susan Foreman's father being voiced by Peter Davison, once more suggesting the Doctor's son to uncannily resemble his father.
- ↑ The dream sequence in The Infinity Doctors seems to have been originally intended to foreshadow Enemy of the Daleks, which would have featured a devastated Earth and the Enemy's Last Contact. Through referencing Last Contact, the novel Father Time indicates the events of Enemy of the Daleks still occurred in the Eighth Doctor's timeline in some form.
- ↑ The Infinity Doctor's use of “the enemy” and the concept which would later be termed “Last Contact” draw inspiration from a prophecy in Fathers and Brothers which states that “The Enemy will reveal himself… on Skaro”, with the Enemy being the Enemy Within: the Master controlling an army of Spider Daleks.[3] Therefore, one reading of the prophecy in The Infinity Doctors is that the Doctor's search for the lost Magistrate will result in a monomythic battle against a darkened brother similar to that described in the Leekley Bible.
- ↑ Lance Parkin makes this connection, albeit parodically and intentionally obtusely, in the 2001 charity story Iris Explains, which could be said to contain the author's largest public discussion of when The Infinity Doctors is set: "[Grandfather Paradox] might have been you from a parallel universe. Obviously he was from a parallel timestream, one that no longer happened, but he may have been a you from a parallel timestream within a parallel universe where things happened differently, until, of course, you did whatever you did so that they happened the same. But that itself may have originally been a distinct parallel continuity, one where you lived at home and mourned for your dead wife. If the Grandfather wasn't that you, then he certainly went to the same barbers. But the status of that you is still up in the air. I had thought he was a future you, but events have rather ruled that out. Unless events transpire to restore, y'know, thingy but if that happened you would almost certainly not be you any more. You'd be that new you. But that you wasn't an evil you. So that you may have have been a version of one of the origin story ones, you know, the one where Borusa's your spirit guide. That would make him - you, that is, or rather that particular you, not you you - a pre-canonical you, rather than a post-canonical one. Assuming of course that he's canonical in the first place. But we have to assume that, otherwise you might as well say that nothing need make any sense at all."
Relevantly, a line shortly afterwards has Iris speculating if Miranda Who is one of the Eighth Doctor's thirteen children with Bernice Summerfield, although Iris then backtracks into uncertainty over whether the Eighth Doctor did have children with Bernice or if that was in “a different bottle altogether.”
- ↑ The unproduced novel Enemy of the Daleks would have shown the Doctor's father leading an intergalactic alliance in the Klade era of the Needle, dedicated to preventing Last Contact much as Helios is.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lance Parkin (20 November 2024). Bluesky post. Bluesky. Archived from the original on 20 November 2024. Retrieved on 20 November 2024.
- ↑ Doc Oho's Reviews: Lance Parkin Q & A Part Two
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Nth Doctor
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Time Unincorporated: Volume One
- ↑ On the Fringes of War: The 42nd Doctor
- ↑ The Doctor Who Reprint Society: A word with Lance Parkin
- ↑ Rec.Arts.DrWho
- ↑ BBC Interview
- ↑ Jayce Black (16 March 2017). Tumblr post. Tumblr. Archived from the original on 20 November 2024. Retrieved on 20 November 2024.
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