The Pantheon
The Pantheon, (COMIC: Imaginary Enemies [+]Loading...["Imaginary Enemies (comic story)"], TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"], etc.) also known as the Pantheon of Discord, (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"], PROSE: Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia [+]Loading...{"page":"264","ed":"2011 reprint","1":"Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia (reference book)"}, "Time for Friends!" [+]Part of Doctor, Doctor! 273, Loading...{"name":"\"dwa\"","page":"29","namedpart":"Time for Friends!","1":"Doctor, Doctor! (DWA 273 short story)"}, AUDIO: Pantheon of Discord [+]Loading...["Pantheon of Discord (audio story)"]) were an "extra-dimensional enclave"'s worth (PROSE: Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia [+]Loading...{"page":"264","ed":"2011 reprint","1":"Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia (reference book)"}) of "vast powers", "creatures from beyond the universe", (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"], The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"]) reluctantly acknowledged as gods by the Doctor, who sometimes referred to this group simply as "the gods". (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"], The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"])
Mr Smith defined the Pantheon of Discord as being a coalition of semi-mythical extra-dimensional beings. (TV: SJAF 1 [+]Loading...["SJAF 1"])
Sutekh, originally a member of the Osirian Court, (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Loading...["Pyramids of Mars (TV story)"], AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh [+]Loading...["The Judgment of Sutekh (audio story)"]) came to hold himself to be the King of the other gods making up this group. (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"])
Nature
As a Pantheon defined by the Trickster
Several accounts of the Pantheon of Discord showed them as being largely aligned with the Trickster and his behaviour. (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"], PROSE: Companion Compendium [+]Loading...["Companion Compendium (reference book)"], COMIC: Imaginary Enemies [+]Loading...["Imaginary Enemies (comic story)"]) When the Tenth Doctor first met the Trickster, the Trickster declared it to be "the meeting of the Pantheon of Discord and the last of the Time Lords", with the Doctor agreeing that he had only heard legends of the Pantheon and never met one of their members. The Doctor said that the Trickster was "one of" the Pantheon, but also said that he was "looking a bit lonely for a pantheon", to which the Trickster retorted by saying "I embody multitudes", indicating that the Pantheon was composed of himself. To get the Trickster's attention, Clyde Langer later declared "I wish to serve you. I wish to join the Pantheon." (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"])
One account indicated the Pantheon of Discord was a name for "the creatures" that worked for the Trickster, (PROSE: Companion Compendium [+]Loading...["Companion Compendium (reference book)"]) a group elsewhere called the Trickster's Brigade. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
The Time Beetle, who worked for the Trickster, was said to be a member of the Pantheon of Discord, (PROSE: Companion Compendium [+]Loading...["Companion Compendium (reference book)"], Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia [+]Loading...{"page":"264","ed":"2011 reprint","1":"Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia (reference book)"}) which the Eleventh Doctor corroborated. Prompted by a letter asking if the Time Beetle might have "a friend" in the form of a Time Worm or Time Spider, the Eleventh Doctor once speculated that, given the Time Beetle was a member, there could also be "Time Worms, Space Parrots and Dimension-Jumping Cheese Weasels" within the Pantheon. (PROSE: "Time for Friends!" [+]Part of Doctor, Doctor! 273, Loading...{"name":"\"dwa\"","page":"29","namedpart":"Time for Friends!","1":"Doctor, Doctor! (DWA 273 short story)"})
Krampus identified himself as a member of a "Pantheon" whose principles were founded on chaos and altering history such that it was twisted into darker shapes; (COMIC: Imaginary Enemies [+]Loading...["Imaginary Enemies (comic story)"]) these were the same principles on which the Trickster (TV: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? [+]Loading...["Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (TV story)"]) and the Time Beetle acted. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
As a Pantheon of Gods
The Fifteenth Doctor had several encounters with a group of gods he referred to as "the Pantheon", (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"]) with members of the Pantheon being gods of specific domains. By these accounts, according to Harriet Arbinger Sutekh was the "King" of the Pantheon, as well as the apparently-symbolic "father and mother and other of them all". (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"])
There is the Toymaker, the god of games. There is Trickster, the god of traps. There is Maestro, the god of music; there is Reprobate, the god of spite. There is the Mara, the god of beasts, and the threefold deity of malice and mischief and misery. There are gods of skin and shame and secrets. There is Incensor, the god of disaster, and her children, called Doubt and Dread. And standing on high is the mother and father and other of them all, for the God of All Gods has returned — and his names are many. His name has been Set, and Seth, and Sithifer — and his one true name forevermore is… Sutekh.
In spite of the assertion of Sutekh as "father and mother and other of them all", (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) Maestro's father was none other than the Toymaker. (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"]) A previous account had depicted another relative of the Toymaker's, his sister Hecuba, as having a similar modus operandi to him, but with a different theme — in her case, time and clocks. (AUDIO: The Queen of Time [+]Loading...["The Queen of Time (audio story)"])
Whilst confronting the Beast of Krop Tor in 43K2.1, the Tenth Doctor told him that he had seen "fake gods and bad gods and demigods and would-be gods" but "out of that whole pantheon", he believed in Rose Tyler. The Beast himself claimed to be the devil of all religions (TV: The Satan Pit [+]Loading...["The Satan Pit (TV story)"]) and enemy of God, his names including Abaddon, Satan and Lucifer. (TV: The Impossible Planet [+]Loading...["The Impossible Planet (TV story)"]) The Fourth Doctor acknowledged Satan, along with Set and Sodos, as being among the names for Sutekh, who he claimed was "abominated in every civilised world". (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Loading...["Pyramids of Mars (TV story)"]) Abaddon, introduced by Bilis Manger as the son of "the Great Beast", surfaced in Cardiff before being destroyed by Captain Jack Harkness in the 2000s. (TV: End of Days [+]Loading...["End of Days (TV story)"])
Residence
As "one of the Pantheon of Discord", the Trickster was described by the Tenth Doctor as "a creature from beyond the universe, forever trying to break into our reality". (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"]) The Fifteenth Doctor similarly described the Pantheon as "vast powers beyond the universe" (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"]) and recognised the Scream Sommelier as one of the entites from "Out there. Beyond the universe. Where the rules are different". (COMIC: Everyone Must Go! (part 3) [+]Loading...{"part":"3","1":"Everyone Must Go! (comic story)"}) Amy Pond referred to Krampus as having come from some "dirty little corner of existence" when he crossed over into Leadworth; Krampus himself had previously referred to the walls between the respective "worlds" of himself and Veronica Stackmore, which had proven easier to pierce thanks to the crack which had formed nearby. (COMIC: Imaginary Enemies [+]Loading...["Imaginary Enemies (comic story)"])
The Fourteenth Doctor described the Toymaker's domain as "a hollow beneath the Under-Universe". (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])
Perhaps notably, in accounts which made no mention (COMIC: Endgame [+]Loading...["Endgame (DWM comic story)"], TV: Kinda [+]Loading...["Kinda (TV story)"]) of their shared membership of the same Pantheon, (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) both the Toymaker and the Mara were separately recorded as hailing from the Dark Places. (COMIC: Endgame [+]Loading...["Endgame (DWM comic story)"], TV: Kinda [+]Loading...["Kinda (TV story)"]) The Dark Places, or Dark Places of the Inside, were a reality or realities connected to the darker aspects of consciousness, (TV: Kinda [+]Loading...["Kinda (TV story)"], PROSE: Mark of the Medusa [+]Loading...["Mark of the Medusa (short story)"], COMIC: The Body in Question [+]Loading...["The Body in Question (comic story)"]) existing "a stilled heart-beat away" from the conventional universe. (COMIC: The Body in Question [+]Loading...["The Body in Question (comic story)"])
Sutekh, though claimed by Harriet Arbinger to be the oldest and highest-ranking member of the group, was seemingly an exception to this rule, as (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) his own narrative of his activities since battling the Fourth Doctor asserted that he had only "evolved" into his "true godhood" after beginning to cling to the Doctor's TARDIS, after which he spent millennia actively travelling within the universe — never spending any significant time outside it prior to the point at which he was spoken of as a member of the Pantheon. (TV: Empire of Death [+]Loading...["Empire of Death (TV story)"])
Members
| Name | Debut | Identified as Pantheon member | Domain | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dimension-Jumping Cheese Weasels | N/A | PROSE: "Time for Friends!" [+]Part of Doctor, Doctor! 273, Loading...{"name":"\"dwa\"","page":"29","namedpart":"Time for Friends!","1":"Doctor, Doctor! (DWA 273 short story)"} | N/A | Mentioned only as a possibility. The plural form may be rhetorical. |
| Doubt | TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"] | Doubt | Mentioned only. | |
| Dread | Dread | |||
| "Gods of skin and shame and secrets" | "Skin and shame and secrets" | Mentioned only. The dialogue in TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"] does not clarify whether this is an expedient way of listing three distinct gods — one of skin, one of shame, one of secrets — or if they constitute a group who together attend to a mixture of all three concepts, which, taken as one, would seem to imply that these unspecified entities would be gods of sexuality. | ||
| Incensor | Disaster | Mentioned only. | ||
| Krampus | COMIC: Imaginary Enemies [+]Loading...["Imaginary Enemies (comic story)"] | N/A | Although the mythological figure had been mentioned before in Doctor Who media, COMIC: Imaginary Enemies [+]Loading...["Imaginary Enemies (comic story)"] was both his debut as a diegetically real character within the Doctor's universe and his first mention as a Pantheon member. The later confrontation COMIC: Holiday Special [+]Loading...["Holiday Special (comic story)"] dealt with Krampus in much the same way as Imaginary Enemies but did not directly mention that story's events, nor explicitly reassert Krampus's identification as a Pantheon member. | |
| Maestro | TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"] | Music | N/A | |
| The Mara | TV: Kinda [+]Loading...["Kinda (TV story)"] | TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"] | Beasts | |
| Reprobate | N/A | Spite | Mentioned only. | |
| The Scream Sommelier | COMIC: Untitled [+]Loading...["Untitled (FCBD2024 comic story)"] | COMIC: Everyone Must Go! [+]Loading...["Everyone Must Go! (comic story)"] | Fear | Although not identified as a member of the Pantheon by name, the Sommelier is likeined by the Fifteenth Doctor to the Toymaker and Maestro and confirmed to originate from the same plane "beyond the universe". |
| Space Parrots | N/A | PROSE: "Time for Friends!" [+]Part of Doctor, Doctor! 273, Loading...{"name":"\"dwa\"","page":"29","namedpart":"Time for Friends!","1":"Doctor, Doctor! (DWA 273 short story)"} | N/A | Mentioned only as a possibility. The plural form may be rhetorical. |
| Sutekh | TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Loading...["Pyramids of Mars (TV story)"] | TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"] | Death | First mentioned in relation to the Pantheon as "the One Who Waits" in TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"] and as "the Oldest One" in TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"], but these monikers were not revealed to apply to Sutekh until TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]. |
| "Threefold deity of malice and mischief and misery" | N/A | TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"] | "Malice and mischief and misery" | Widely interpreted as a veiled allusion to the three Gods of Ragnarok introduced in TV: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy [+]Loading...["The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (TV story)"], although this has yet to be confirmed by any official source. |
| The Time Beetle | TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"] | PROSE: Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia [+]Loading...{"page":"264","ed":"2011 reprint","1":"Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia (reference book)"} | N/A | Depicted in its debut as a member of the Trickster's Brigade but not stated to be a member of the Pantheon in its own rate. Its identification as one in PROSE: Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia [+]Loading...{"page":"264","ed":"2011 reprint","1":"Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia (reference book)"} and PROSE: "Time for Friends!" [+]Part of Doctor, Doctor! 273, Loading...{"name":"\"dwa\"","page":"29","namedpart":"Time for Friends!","1":"Doctor, Doctor! (DWA 273 short story)"} may relate to PROSE: Companion Compendium [+]Loading...["Companion Compendium (reference book)"]'s conflation of the Pantheon with the Brigade altogether, as subordinates to the Trickster, but nothing in either of the sources actually states as much, leaving open the reading that the Beetle is indeed being asserted as a being on a level with the Trickster, albeit in his employ. |
| The Time Spider | N/A | PROSE: "Time for Friends!" [+]Part of Doctor, Doctor! 273, Loading...{"name":"\"dwa\"","page":"29","namedpart":"Time for Friends!","1":"Doctor, Doctor! (DWA 273 short story)"} | Mentioned only as an inquisitive hypothetical. Plural "Time Spiders" would go on to appear in AUDIO: The End [+]Loading...["The End (11DC audio story)"], most probably by coincidence. | |
| The Time Worm/Time Worms | Mentioned only, in the singular as an inquisitive hypothetical, and in the plural by the Eleventh Doctor as a possibility. Even the plural form may only be rhetorical. A singular, godlike Timewyrm had previously been a nemesis of the Seventh Doctor starting in PROSE: Timewyrm: Genesys [+]Loading...["Timewyrm: Genesys (novel)"], while the Crinis, a species seen in The Twelfth Doctor Interactive Story, were designed as "'time worm'-style monsters". | |||
| The Toymaker | TV: The Celestial Toymaker [+]Loading...["The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)"] | TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"] | Games | Russell T Davies's conception of the Toymaker, in line with which he would go on to reintroduce the Pantheon, debuted in TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"], but that story remained ambiguous about the Toymaker's exact nature, only coming as close as calling him "an elemeental force with the power of a god" rather than a god outright.
Long before the introduction of the Pantheon in any form, COMIC: Endgame [+]Loading...["Endgame (DWM comic story)"] suggested that the Toymaker originated in the Dark Places, also home to the Mara. |
| The Trickster | TV: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? [+]Loading...["Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (TV story)"] | TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"] | Traps | The Trickster in TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"] replied "I embody multitudes" when the Doctor remarked that he was "looking a bit lonely for a Pantheon", seemingly suggesting the Pantheon and the Trickster were synonymous. |
Subordinates
Harbingers
"The gods" were known to create personal Harbingers, human-like creatures who heralded their presence. On Earth, Maestro's Harbinger went by Henry Arbinger, (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"]) and Sutekh's by Harriet Arbinger. (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"])
Others
Both the Tenth Doctor and Captain Jack Harkness were familiar with the Trickster's Brigade, (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"], Immortal Sins [+]Loading...["Immortal Sins (TV story)"]) a shadowy group of nonhuman beings who enjoyed interfering with time to feed on potential energy. As per their name, they claimed allegiance to the Trickster; they were more widely, visibly active than their patron, with Jack Harkness privately doubting whether there even was a Trickster or if he was simply a symbol and figurehead for the group. (WC: Monster File: The Trickster's Brigade [+]Loading...["Monster File: The Trickster's Brigade (webcast)"]) The Time Beetle was a member of the Brigade, (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"]) as were at least some of the Graske; (WC: Monster File: The Trickster's Brigade [+]Loading...["Monster File: The Trickster's Brigade (webcast)"]) the Graske once infiltrated Earth using Changelings, only to be fought by the Tenth Doctor, (GAME: Attack of the Graske [+]Loading...["Attack of the Graske (video game)"]) who later stated that he had fought the Trickster's "shadows and Changelings" prior to meeting him in person. (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"]) The Trickster's Brigade also once smuggled a Brainspawn to Earth in an effort to throw off American history in the 1920s. (TV: Immortal Sins [+]Loading...["Immortal Sins (TV story)"])
Krampus had a trio of burly Goblins called Otto, Ludwig and Siegfried under his command, carrying them into reality with Krampus themself inside dimensionally transcendental Christmas tree ornaments when he emerged in Leadworth. (COMIC: Imaginary Enemies [+]Loading...["Imaginary Enemies (comic story)"]) The Thirteenth Doctor encountered a swarm of many identical minions of Krampus, who appeared as small imp-like creatures. Having entered reality alone through their own means, Krampus once had to resort to abducting and hypnotising alien workers to build a machine through which to summon their "minions" into the universe. (COMIC: Holiday Special [+]Loading...["Holiday Special (comic story)"])
When he was defeated at UNIT HQ, the Toymaker claimed that "[his] legions [we]re coming". (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) The Fifteenth Doctor later inferred that "his legions" had followed the Toymaker into the universe. In fact, he believed the Goblins he encountered during his first adventure with Ruby Sunday to be part of "the Toymaker's legacy", (PROSE: Error: code 3 - no source given in template transclusion.) although he also gave some consideration Ruby's theory that the Goblins might have caused every accident throughout history. (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"]) The Toymaker was also infamous for making the ordinary people who lost his games into living toys slaved to his will. (TV: The Celestial Toymaker [+]Loading...["The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)"], PROSE: Divided Loyalties [+]Loading...["Divided Loyalties (novel)"])
History
Origins
Although Harriet Arbinger claimed Sutekh to be the "mother and father and other" of the members of the Pantheon she listed, this seemed to be symbolic as (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) many of them had disparate, documented origins prior to congregating into a single organisation.
Known as the “god of games”, (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) the Toymaker described himself as a “vastness that would never cease”, that was neither good nor evil but only focused on winning or losing. (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) His exact origins were shrouded in mystery as he liked to play "games" with his origins and blur his tracks. (PROSE: Divided Loyalties [+]Loading...["Divided Loyalties (novel)"], AUDIO: The Nightmare Fair [+]Loading...["The Nightmare Fair (audio story)"], etc.) Maestro, the “god of music”, (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) was a child of the Toymaker. Describing their youth, Maestro said, "Daddy was so bad to me. Daddy was so mean. Daddy was so tough". (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"])
The Mara, the “god of beasts”, (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) was a gestalt entity created from the evil of the people of Manussa and given independence by the Great Crystal. It founded and ruled the Sumaran Empire until being overthrown by the first Federator who banished it to the Dark Places of the Inside. (TV: Snakedance [+]Loading...["Snakedance (TV story)"]) Taking the form of a giant snake, the Mara was repelled by the sight of its own reflection. (TV: Kinda [+]Loading...["Kinda (TV story)"])
Before coming to be acknowledged as leader of this extra-universal pantheon, (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) Sutekh was born as a member of the Osirian Court, (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years [+]Loading...["The Ship of a Billion Years (audio story)"]) and acknowledged as such by the Fourth Doctor. (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Loading...["Pyramids of Mars (TV story)"]) According to one account, Sutekh, believing that he deserved to take over the throne of the Osirian Court, since it owed its survival to him, made himself far more powerful than his fellow Osirians by taming the forces of the Outer Desert, of which even Ra was afraid. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years [+]Loading...["The Ship of a Billion Years (audio story)","The Ship of a Billion Years"]) According to River Song, in the Dark Times he made a bargain with the Kotturuh, who allowed him to carry their "Gift of Death" himself. (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times [+]Loading...["The Guide to the Dark Times (short story)","The Guide to the Dark Times"]) After orchestrating the death of Osiris to seize the Osirian throne, Sutekh was defeated by Horus and imprisoned in Egypt, held in place by a signal transmitted from the Eye of Horus on Mars. In 1911 his prison was disturbed by Marcus Scarman, enabling Sutekh to scheme his escape. His plans were disrupted by the Fourth Doctor, who sabotaged the time corridor he was using to leave his prison. Though the Doctor believed him destroyed, (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Loading...["Pyramids of Mars (TV story)"]) Sutekh survived being cast into the Time Vortex by latching onto the Doctor’s TARDIS where he remained in secret for centuries. In doing so he grew stronger, (TV: Empire of Death [+]Loading...["Empire of Death (TV story)"]) with the Fifteenth Doctor describing him as having become a “titan”. (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Loading...["Pyramids of Mars (TotT TV story)"]) When he finally returned on Earth in 2020s, Sutekh was hailed by his Harbinger as the God of Death and the "mother and father and other of them all". (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"])
Legends and accounts
The Doctor had heard legends of the Pantheon of Discord when he was a child. (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"]) He told Panna he’d heard legends of the Mara. (TV: Kinda [+]Loading...["Kinda (TV story)"])
Maestro claimed that their name were cited in the Chorus of Ancient Songs. (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"])
The Doctor meets the Toymaker
The Toymaker was the “god of games”. (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) Claiming good and evil meant nothing to him, the Toymaker believed all that existed was to win or lose. The Toymaker had a brief encounter with a young Doctor, who managed to escape him, refusing to engage in any games. (TV: The Celestial Toymaker [+]Loading...["The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)"], PROSE: Divided Loyalties [+]Loading...["Divided Loyalties (novel)"]) However, after he let his TARDIS fall into a "hollow beneath the Under-Universe", (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) the Toymaker trapped the First Doctor, Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet in his Celestial Toyroom and forced them to play games to win their freedom. The travellers eventually defeated the Toymaker, with the effect of destroying the Toyroom, though he’d already admitted he would build another. (TV: The Celestial Toymaker [+]Loading...["The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)"])
By some accounts the Doctor would have several more encounters with the Toymaker in various incarnations, (COMIC: Endgame [+]Loading...["Endgame (DWM comic story)"], Relative Dimensions [+]Loading...["Relative Dimensions (comic story)"], PROSE: Divided Loyalties [+]Loading...["Divided Loyalties (novel)"], The Nightmare Fair [+]Loading...["The Nightmare Fair (novelisation)"], AUDIO: Matryoshka [+]Loading...["Matryoshka (audio story)"], The Magic Mousetrap [+]Loading...["The Magic Mousetrap (audio story)"], Solitaire [+]Loading...["Solitaire (audio story)"]) however another suggested they did not meet again until the life of the Fourteenth Doctor. (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])
Manifestations of the Mara
The Mara frequently manifested on Deva Loka, the home of the Kinda. Panna, the wise woman of the Kinda, described this influence as the Great Wheel of Life which when turned made civilisations rise and then fall, and gave the Fifth Doctor an apocalyptic vision which he understood was both the past and the future if the Mara was not stopped. (TV: Kinda [+]Loading...["Kinda (TV story)"]) The Mara also manifested on Earth in the 1920s, using The Serpentine Club in London to spread its influence including possessing Reginald Dellafield, an agent of Torchwood One. Reginald’s butler, AC Forster, created a containment field to restrict the Mara to Reginald’s body and killed all of its other hosts by destroying the Club, intending to force the Mara to continue serving Torchwood as long as Reginald’s body lasted. (AUDIO: Art Decadence [+]Loading...["Art Decadence (audio story)"])
When the Fifth Doctor arrived on Deva Loka, the Mara manifested via his companion Tegan Jovanka. Despite being banished once more, (TV: Kinda [+]Loading...["Kinda (TV story)"]) the Mara would continue to attempt to possess Tegan again on multiple occasions to try to escape the Dark Places of the Inside. (TV: Snakedance [+]Loading...["Snakedance (TV story)"], AUDIO: The Cradle of the Snake [+]Loading...["The Cradle of the Snake (audio story)"], WC: The Passenger [+]Loading...["The Passenger (webcast)"]) Much later in his life, the Eleventh Doctor encountered the Mara during the Siege of Trenzalore when it infiltrated the town of Christmas on Trenzalore, attempting to force him to speak his name and escalate the siege into another time war by speaking his name. (PROSE: The Dreaming [+]Loading...["The Dreaming (short story)"])
The Trickster's schemes
The Trickster, the “god of traps”, (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) had a lust for chaos, believing it good. (TV: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? [+]Loading...["Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (TV story)"]) An “eternal exile” according to the Tenth Doctor, (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"]) the Trickster was able to alter time by making deals with individuals however his influence would be reversed if they rejected the bargain. (TV: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? [+]Loading...["Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (TV story)"]) He was also vulnerable to artron energy produced by TARDISes. (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"])
The Trickster personally targeted Sarah Jane Smith to remove her from time at a moment she would prevent a meteor wiping out Earth, creating pure chaos as billions died for no reason at all. He rewrote history by making a deal with Andrea Yates for Sarah to die in her place in a childhood accident. One of Sarah’s friends, Maria Jackson was able to recall the original timeline due to exposure to a Verron puzzle box which Sarah had given her. As the meteor approached she and her father, Alan Jackson, convinced Andrea to reject the deal, restoring the original timeline and enabling Sarah to avert catastrophe. (TV: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? [+]Loading...["Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (TV story)"])
The Trickster subsequently sought revenge on Sarah. First he attempted to trick her into allowing him access into reality by changing her own parents’ deaths via a time fissure, which she prevented by restoring the correct series of events. (TV: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"]) He made a deal to save Peter Dalton as part of a plan to entrap Sarah by marrying him, in doing so falling under his power. On learning the truth Sarah convinced Peter to break the deal. (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"]) The Trickster later disrupted Sarah’s memorial but his plan was thwarted in ten minutes by the attendees of the service – many former companions of the Doctor and of Sarah – who managed to shrink the Trickster down to the size of a doll, lock him in a treasure chest and send him to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for the next thousand years. (WC: Farewell, Sarah Jane [+]Loading...["Farewell, Sarah Jane (webcast)"])
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The Doctor claimed to have fought the Trickster’s “shadows and changelings”. (TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"]) A Time Beetle of the Trickster's Brigade targeted Donna Noble on Shan Shen, creating a parallel world where she never met the Tenth Doctor resulting in his death and Earth suffering under numerous alien incursions without his aid. Via time travel Donna was able to correct the event which had altered the timeline, killing the beetle. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"]) William wrote a letter to Doctor Who Adventures, asking if the Time Beetle had any friends, such a Time Worm or a Time Spider; the Eleventh Doctor responded, firstly explaining that the Time Beetle belonged to the Pantheon of Discord, alongside the Trickster. Further speculating that, given their love of chaos, other members could include the aforementioned Time Worms, or Space Parrots or Dimension-Jumping Cheese Weasels. He confessed that he would like to be friends with everyone, so long as they gave up their life of meddling with time. (PROSE: "Time for Friends!" [+]Part of Doctor, Doctor! 273, Loading...{"name":"\"dwa\"","page":"29","namedpart":"Time for Friends!","1":"Doctor, Doctor! (DWA 273 short story)"})
Other members of the Brigade organised a plot to create a new history in 1927 involving a Brainspawn driving future American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt insane, causing him to drop America out of World War II resulting in Nazi Germany winning the war. This plan was foiled by Jack Harkness and Angelo Colasanto. (TV: Immortal Sins [+]Loading...["Immortal Sins (TV story)"])
The Trickster was able to get involved in the ultimate war, intending to draw power from the chaos, which would grant him the strength to fully materialise his brigade. Confident that nobody would be able to stop him, he issued a direct challenge to what he assessed to be a "pathetic group of Doctors and allies" as he vowed that their reality would become his, insisting that they were no match for the powers of the Pantheon of Discord. (GAME: Legacy [+]Loading...["Legacy (video game)"])
Krampus
During the Eleventh Doctor's lifetime, Krampus, a member of the Pantheon, managed to emerge in Leadworth thanks to the crack in time in Amelia Pond's bedroom. He managed to fully enter reality by getting Veronica, the spoiled daughter of the Mayor, to accept the Link, a lump of coal which stabilised him in the universe, having disguised it as a doll. Intending to create chaos by disrupting Amelia, Rory and Mels Zucker's destinities, he spent his goblin servants Otto, Ludwig and Siegfried. When they failed, he personally captured them and took them to the school library. In order for him to have the power to kill the children, he needed Veronica to wish for him to banish them; before he could persuade her to do so, Amelia got Veronica to see through the Link's glamour and she rejected it, sending it back through the mirror through which Krampus had originally contacted her. As a result, Krampus and the goblins were sucked back into "whatever dirty little corner of existence they ha[d] come from". (COMIC: Imaginary Enemies [+]Loading...["Imaginary Enemies (comic story)"])
Increased incursions
After the Fourteenth Doctor cast salt at the edge of the universe, symbolically damaging the walls of reality, (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"]) the Toymaker, now in a new body, "found his way into reality". He rampaged through the Doctor's universe, playing games with many other powerful beings, from the Guardians of Time and Space to the Master. He plagued the human race with the Giggle and forced the Doctor into a game with him, later forcing his regeneration into the Fifteenth Doctor, only for this to trigger a bi-generation which gave the Doctor(s) the edge (t)he(y) needed to defeat him. As he was sealed away, the Toymaker warned them that his legions would be coming in his wake. (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) The Fifteenth Doctor subsequently encountered a group of Goblins whom he speculated were a part of the legions. (PROSE: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (novelisation)"])
When parked near the edge of reality, the Doctor's TARDIS also emitted a strange groan for the first time. (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"]) The Toymaker also told the Fourteenth Doctor there was "only one player [he] didn't dare face: the One Who Waits". The Toymaker recalled that he "saw it hiding" and "ran". (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) This turned out to refer to none other than the Pantheon's self-proclaimed King, Sutekh, who had been clinging to the Doctor's TARDIS since their initial encounter in 1911. (TV: Empire of Death [+]Loading...["Empire of Death (TV story)"])
Early in his travels with Ruby Sunday, the Doctor encountered the Toymaker's child Maestro in 1963 attempting to steal humanity’s music as part of a grand plan to build their strength to one day claim the Music of the Spheres itself and halt the entire universe. Though the Doctor’s initial attempt to banish them via a chord failed, his plan was completed by the Beatles who finished the tune. As they were banished Maestro warned the Doctor that "the One Who Waits" was "almost here". (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"])
This came to pass in UNIT HQ when the Doctor discovered that, for some time now, his TARDIS had been "seduced" and overtaken by Sutekh. Heralded by his own Harbinger, Harriet, who had infiltrated UNIT, Sutekh revealed himself, with Harriet proclaiming him as the King of the group of gods also including the Toymaker, Maestro, and the Trickster, as well as several others and the Mara, (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"]) whom the Doctor had faced in the past without identifying them as members of a shared group. (TV: Kinda [+]Loading...["Kinda (TV story)"], Snakedance [+]Loading...["Snakedance (TV story)"]) The Doctor believed Sutekh had evolved, becoming a “titan” compared to how strong he’d been in their first encounter. (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Loading...["Pyramids of Mars (TotT TV story)"]) Sutekh used the Angel of Death he’d planted across the universe whilst on the TARDIS to spread his Dust of Death across time and space, killing everything it touched. The Doctor and Ruby managed to hatch a plan to pull him from the TARDIS and used the ship to drag him into the Time Vortex, where his touch killed his own Dust, undoing its effects and restoring all its victims to life. The Doctor then finally separated Sutekh from the TARDIS, causing him to be destroyed by the Vortex. (TV: Empire of Death [+]Loading...["Empire of Death (TV story)"])
The Doctor later faced Maestro a second time when they reemerged in the Royal Albert Hall to play bad music so they could feed on the dissonance in the audience that it created. On this occasion, the Vlinx, detecting the incursion, identified Maestro as one of "the Pantheon of Discord". However, the Doctor managed to exploit musical logic to defeat them once more by having the audience applaud to end her music, causing their physical form to explode. (AUDIO: Pantheon of Discord [+]Loading...["Pantheon of Discord (audio story)"])
Behind the scenes
Origins in the 2000s
- The Pantheon of Discord was originally conceived of by Gareth Roberts while writing The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"]. The name was mentioned in early drafts of that story, but removed for the finished version.[1]
- In an early draft of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"], the Tenth Doctor was to say that, beyond the Trickster, other members of the Pantheon of Discord were the Reapers, Time-Beetles, Graskes, and the Guardians.[1]
- A connection between the Trickster and the Guardians had already been hinted in the Trickster's first appearance in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? [+]Loading...["Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (TV story)"], with the Trickster paraphrasing a statement of power made by the Black Guardian in Mawdryn Undead [+]Loading...["Mawdryn Undead (TV story)"], "Waking or sleeping. I shall be with you..."
- As noted elsewhere on this page, fiction in the early 2010s would sometimes call the Time Beetle a member of the Pantheon of Discord.
2020s reimagining
- In the Doctor Who: Unleashed episode associated with The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"], Russell T Davies mentioned that he and other writers liked to call the Pantheon "the Gods of Chaos", but was not sure that this was "official". He also clarified that, although he liked to come across as the supreme being of the Pantheon, the Toymaker was not actually its most powerful member, as hinted in The Devil's Chord itself with mentions of the Oldest One. The The Sarah Jane Adventures story The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"] had previously used the name of "Pantheon of Discord", but no link was established between the two groups until the airing of The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"], which conflated them by citing the Trickster among the members of the (not-so-)new Pantheon.
- Although the "threefold deity of malice, mischief and misery" may be read as a reference to the Gods of Ragnarok, and was interpreted as such by some,[2][3] this has yet to be confirmed in any official source.
- The episode Gods of the Whoniverse of New to Who? suggested several more entities than those mentioned in The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"] as being gods in the same sense as those gods. These were Zellin (suggested to be the god of nightmares), the Gods of Ragnarok, the White and Black Guardians, and the Beast.
- A later upload of the Doctor Who YouTube channel, posted on 16 August 2024, compiled clips of "the Pantheon of Gods" throughout televised Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures, incorporating clips of the Beast in The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, including the Tenth Doctor's reference to "that whole pantheon" of "fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods", the Time Beetle in Turn Left, and the Gods of Ragnarok in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy in addition to the expected footage of the Toymaker, Maestro, the Mara, the Trickster, and Sutekh. In fact, the video's original thumbnail used the Beast as one of its two sample members of the organisation alongside the Trickster.
- Introduced in The Impossible Planet, the Beast was notably voiced by Gabriel Woolf, who had previously voiced Sutekh. The Beast was noted to have been known by numerous names including Satan, which was also true of Sutekh. In addition, the nature of the Beast as being the supposed origin of the devil across all religions echoed the Fourth Doctor's claim that Sutekh's name was "abominated in every civilised world". Despite these similarities, however, no source has explicitly identified Sutekh and the Beast as being one and the same being, an identification which their respective circumstances would seem to preclude; indeed, the Doctor does not treat the Beast as an entity he's faced before. Though the Tenth Doctor does make reference to a "pantheon" of supposed gods in The Satan Pit, the line preceded the establishment of the Pantheon of Discord and appears to be a rhetorical flourish referring to the variety of unrelated god-like beings the Doctor has faced over the years, not to a specific organisaton to which the Beast might belong.
Footnotes
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Pixley, Andrew (20 April 2011). DWMSE 28 - The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith p. 24, 28. Panini Magazines.
- ↑ Jamie H. Cowan (15 June 2024). Tweet. Twitter. Archived from the original on 21 June 2024. “(…) like the Gods of Ragnarok (who are alluded in the list of gods, I do believe, with that threefold deity line), and the Trickster, and the Mara; all in decades gone by (…)”
- ↑ Josiah Rowe (15 June 2024). Tweet. Twitter. Archived from the original on 21 June 2024. “I think the 'threefold deity of malice and mischief and misery' is the Gods of Ragnarok.”
Notes
- ↑ The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith [+]Loading...["The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (TV story)"] was the first appearance of the name of the Pantheon of Discord. However, the Trickster, the first character conceptualised as belonging to it, had already debuted in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? [+]Loading...["Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (TV story)"]. The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"] and The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"] would later establish various preexisting beings as members of the Pantheon; assuming one follows the implication that these entities had been members of the Pantheon all along, this would push the group's retroactive debut as far back as The Celestial Toymaker [+]Loading...["The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)"].
