The Great Intelligence -- The being is always referred to as "The Great Intelligence", with the "the" intact.
Talk about it here.
- You may be looking for the Great Intelligence Institute.
The Great Intelligence, which usually referred to itself simply as the Intelligence and was originally known as Yog-Sothoth, was a disembodied sentience who attempted to find a body and physical existence.
Existence
In the universe before this one, Yog-Sothoth had a body that was a mass of tentacles and mouths. (PROSE: Millennial Rites) Like the other Old Ones, it may have lost its body when it ran from the Fendahl. (PROSE: White Darkness) Afterwards, the Intelligence constantly sought physical existence to replace being a shapeless, formless cloud hanging in space. (TV: The Web of Fear)
The Intelligence had the power to exert influence over human minds, such as Miss Kizlet and Walter Simeon. It could consume uploaded humans to survive. It inhabited and could control telepathic snow and some computer systems. (TV: The Snowmen, The Bells of Saint John) The Intelligence possessed several people as its main instruments, namely Padmasambhava (TV: The Abominable Snowmen), Staff Sgt. Arnold (TV: The Web of Fear), Edward Travers (HOMEVID: Downtime), and Walter Simeon (TV: The Snowmen).
When not using a living being, it maintained a basic manifestation as a three-sided pyramid of control spheres (TV: The Abominable Snowmen) or an ivory pyramid. (HOMEVID: Downtime) When forcibly summoned to Earth by Anne Travers, and being combined with three sets of physical laws in the Great Kingdom, the Intelligence was an emerald tetrahedron and, because of Travers' meddling, was merged with the god Saraquazel. (PROSE: Millennial Rites)
Biology
The Great Intelligence possessed some amount of artron energy. (PROSE: Millennial Rites) At some point it became a swarm of "living snow"; carnivorous, multi-nuclear crystalline organisms which generated a low level telepathic field that could detect and respond to thoughts and memories, mimicking and mirroring whatever it found and feeding off thoughts to learn what it could. This snow-form seemed independent, with some ice crystals forming mindless predatory snowmen and a perfect duplicate of human DNA in ice form, while the main Intelligence remained separate. Thoughts affecting a critical mass of snow could affect all the snow, leading to the loss of this body when the snow turned to rain.
In its many attempts to achieve form, the Intelligence tried to manifest as ice people based on the human form (TV: The Snowmen) and a slime that glowed brightly with a piercing light. (TV: The Abominable Snowmen) It manifested as a dense fog that consumed anything entering it, and a poisonous web/fungus which spread through the London Underground and trapped the Doctor's TARDIS. The web could not be destroyed by chemicals, explosives, or flamethrowers. (TV: The Web of Fear) A fourth invasion of Earth had it trying to perpetuate itself in every machine and being, with the whole planet cocooned in web: one mass of thoughts in one global body. (PROSE: Downtime)
The Intelligence could consume the mental energy (the "soul") of a human uploaded into a data cloud that it controlled. This allowed it to grow in power. Sometimes it was possible to reduce, or set free, minds under his influence that still had a body available. (TV: The Bells of Saint John)
What is it?
The Great Intelligence's exact nature is a mystery. Described as a mind parasite by Lethbridge-Stewart, it was described as a mass of thoughts with a single thought. It once reflected on whether or not it remembered what its original body was:
Was it huge with massive claws to crush and maim? A bloated spider-mind filling every cavernous gap with billowing web? Was it a mountain? A bank of mountains looming and rumbling like clouds in another sky or on another continuum?
Powers
The Great Intelligence had no physical existence and thus relied on possession of living creatures and other shapes in order to manipulate its environment. It existed on the astral plane and could enter the people it encountered. It allowed Padmasambhava to live over 300 years while he created Robot Yeti (TV: The Abominable Snowmen) and it also reanimated the dead (or near-dead) bodies of Staff Sergeant Arnold and Professor Travers (TV: The Web of Fear), feeding itself into every cell and having control of every movement. At full strength it could even save a human from fatal illness, or death by extreme age, if only to possess their bodies. (PROSE: Downtime) It could also exert a mental control similar to hypnosis without completely possessing a human. In the cases of Walter Simeon and Miss Kizlet, it had done this since childhood. (TV: The Bells of Saint John, The Snowmen)
In addition, it could possess animals like rats and ants by extending its will as well as inhabiting machinery like computer terminals. It resided in the New World University network while reaching out into the Internet. However, the majority of its consciousness was still trapped in the campus mainframe. (HOMEVID: Downtime) It also inhabited a computer system with a video monitor linked to the firm ran by Miss Kizlet on the 65th floor of the Shard. The peripheral units linked to this system (computers, including at least one tablet, the walking base stations nicknamed Spoonheads, and a wall of video monitors representing the data cloud) could edit or absorb the mental traits of users. It used this connection to consume humans that had been removed from their bodies by Miss Kizlet's team. (TV: The Bells of Saint John)
It had considerable mental powers, namely telekinesis. It was able to make a Eurotrain rear up like a snake and launched missiles, playing with them and engineering near-misses before letting them fall. (PROSE: Downtime) It also tracked the Doctor and followed him through time and space, having built a machine that could drain his mind of knowledge and experience for the Intelligence. (TV: The Web of Fear)
The Great Intelligence could manifest itself in simple forms such as a slime that glowed brightly with a piercing light, a dense fog that consumed anything that entered it, or a poisonous web/fungus that could not be destroyed by chemicals, explosives, or flamethowers. (TV: The Web of Fear)
While on Trenzalore, the Great Intelligence utilised the Whisper Men, who appeared as faceless humanoids dressed just as his servant Walter Simeon was when he died. Their bodies were free for the Intelligence to manifest in. Once taking the body of a Whisper Man, their blank face would change into that of Simeon's. He could easily take another Whisper Man should his current physical form be destroyed. It is unknown what exactly they were made of, since Strax sliced one of them, and then it was rebuilt. They also had the function to reach into people's hearts and stop them, killing them. They could easily transport from world to world, being able to teleport to Earth and Trenzalore. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
Personality
The Great Intelligence was arrogant and thought very highly of itself, informing the Doctor that his brain was too small to grasp its purpose. This arrogance was often reflected by its human servants. It sometimes referred to itself as "we" although this habit had worn off by the time it encountered the Second Doctor. Without a body, it became obsessed with having physical form, craving symmetry of light, colour, and shape. The Intelligence thought that revenge was a petty emotion which it had no need for. (TV: The Abominable Snowmen, The Snowmen)
It was the unseen but generous Chancellor of New World University, with Victoria as Vice-Chancellor. It designed invasions based on a "Great Plan" it had, having been the military strategist of the Old Ones, and when it thought resistance was useless for humanity, it asked Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart which part of its brilliant plan he found most effective. When horribly bound to Saraquazel, it did not care about him or crave his assistance, thinking it possessed enough power and intellect to find its own escape. The Intelligence, however, did warn Saraquazel of the duplicity of human beings. (HOMEVID: Downtime, PROSE: Millennial Rites)
Miss Kizlet believed that the Intelligence loved humanity - in the same way Burger King loves cattle. The Intelligence was unconcerned about feasting on people's minds to grow stronger, and showed little concern for its servants, reverting Kizlet back to her childhood state of mind, although it did say goodbye to her first. Kizlet's claim that the Intelligence loved humanity may have been exaggerated but it wasn't a complete lie because the Intelligence did seem to form an attachment to Walter Simeon and continued to use his image long after his death. (TV: The Snowmen, The Bells of Saint John)
History
Early history
Yog-Sothoth was a being who existed before the universe in which the Doctor resided. It was a member of a race of beings called the Great Old Ones, who were the equivalent of the Time Lords. They shunted themselves into a parallel universe/dimension to pass into the next universe. Yog-Sothoth discovered it had gained god-like powers and being the military strategist of its people, the Great Intelligence decided to try the various gambits and games it had only played on computers. Over the billennia, it mounted millions of campaigns against inhabited planets. It used the Hisk version of koalas on Hiskith and domestic animals equivalent to dogs on Danos. Though it had failed in that the Yeti had failed to take over Earth, it was under pressure from the other Great Old Ones, who themselves embarked on similar campaigns and conquered other planets, forcing him to use the Yeti in London, an environment to which they were not well suited. (PROSE: Millennial Rites) The Intelligence had been exiled from another dimension, and was forced to wander the universe to find a body to possess. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Web of Fear)
Pre-20th century
In the 19th century, the Intelligence made an attempt to destroy Earth, manifesting as living snow that used Walter Simeon as a host whose dark thoughts powered it. He established the Great Intelligence Institute as the snow slowly swarmed to Earth over 50 years, and in 1892 was sufficient enough to consume mankind. Having erased Simeon's mind, the Eleventh Doctor was surprised to see the Intelligence survived, thinking it was created by the host Simeon, but it had learned to survive beyond physical form. Controlling the now-mindless Simeon, it attacked the Doctor, but was stopped in the last minutes of Christmas Eve when the snow was drowned by rain that the Doctor presumed was the tears of Captain Latimer's family under Clara Oswald's care at her death. During this encounter, the Eleventh Doctor inadvertently facilitated the Intelligence's later (or earlier, from the Doctor's perspective) attack in the 1960s by showing it a schematic of the London Underground and making a comment that the Underground was a key strategic weakness in the metropolitan area. (TV: The Snowmen)
At some point, the Great Intelligence possessed the Tibetan lama Padmasambhava while it was travelling the astral plane and forced him to build its Robot Yeti over the next centuries. (TV: The Abominable Snowmen)
20th century
In 1935 at the Det-Sen Monastery, the Second Doctor and Edward Travers, a westerner determined to find the Yeti, intervened with the Intelligence's plans and destroyed the pyramids that controlled its Yeti. Padmasambhava's physical body died when the Intelligence melted away. (TV: The Abominable Snowmen)
Thirty-five years or so later, the robot Yeti re-activated and the Intelligence manifested as webbing. It ensnared the Doctor's TARDIS in space and forced it to land in the London Underground. Reunited with Travers, the Doctor assisted British military in their battles with the Yeti. The Intelligence re-animated and possessed the corpse of Staff Sergeant Arnold, using him to track the Doctor's actions. The Intelligence captured the Doctor and tried to use a conversion headset to take over the Doctor's body. The Doctor attempted to reverse the process, allowing him to absorb the Intelligence and destroy it. When the control spheres that formed the focus of the Intelligence were smashed by Jamie McCrimmon, the Intelligence vanished, powerless but still alive. (TV: The Web of Fear) With everything reversed, it was blinded in unending darkness.
At some point in the late 20th century, while Miss Kizlet was still a young girl, the Great Intelligence began to "whisper in her ear," leading her to eventually found her company. (TV: The Bells of Saint John)
The Intelligence later contacted the Doctor's former companion Victoria Waterfield and manipulated her into using computers to return to physical existence in 1995, attempting to cover the Earth in web. When the generators to the New World University were destroyed, the main bulk of the Intelligence faded away. (HOMEVID: Downtime)
The Intelligence was flung back into the void, where it could recover from the damage done to its being. In 1999, Anne Travers, who had been left traumatised by the Intelligence's first attempts to enter the universe, believed millionaire Ashley Chapel would try to use a special program, the Millennium Codex, to summon the Intelligence to Earth. She prepared a counterspell to force it back into its own reality. However, this had destructive effects, including dragging the Intelligence back to Earth and merging it with the benevolent god Saraquazel into a single malevolent being. It altered reality around London to form the Great Kingdom, a realm partly obeying the laws of the Intelligence's universe, this universe, and Saraquazel's universe; here, the Doctor's TARDIS was worshipped as "the Lady TARDIS" and the Intelligence was worshipped as "the key and the guardian of the gate," forming the triad of gods with Saraquazel. Anne sacrificed herself to fix reality, but instead of destroying the Intelligence and being no better than it, she banished it. The Intelligence became stranded on the edges of the universe, riding the blue shift outwards into infinity. (PROSE: Millennial Rites)
21st century
The Great Intelligence survived at least until the 21st century, where it communicated with Miss Kizlet, after it had met her as a child and trained her most of her life as its operative. It spoke to her and manifested on a video monitor using the face and voice of its 19th-century servant Walter Simeon. Kizlet established an organisation based on the 65th floor of the Shard, which used the Wi-Fi and servants nicknamed Spoonheads to capture humans. The Great Intelligence used the internet as its 'web', similar to what it tried to do at the New World University. Its operation fell apart when the Eleventh Doctor used a captured Spoonhead to trick Miss Kizlet into being trapped in the Wi-Fi after she refused to release the uploaded Clara Oswald, who was under the Doctor's protection. The workers downloaded Clara, Kizlet and others captured in the server, returning them to their bodies. When UNIT, itself an organisation created after its attack on the London Underground, arrived at the Shard, the Great Intelligence ordered Kizlet to restore their employees to their 'Factory Settings', effectively erasing everyone's memories to avoid detection. (TV: The Bells of Saint John)
Trenzalore
At an unknown point in the future, the Great Intelligence, in the form of Walter Simeon, arrived on Trenzalore, where the Doctor was buried. This time he was accompanied by faceless humanoids called the Whisper Men, who he used to bring several of the Eleventh Doctor's friends here to draw him out so he could invade his time stream, turning all of his victories into defeats and having his ultimate revenge. He did so by directly entering his time stream, which appeared as an open wound in reality inside the ruins of the Doctor's TARDIS in the future. However, this plan was foiled by Clara Oswin Oswald, who followed the Great Intelligence through the wound. Just as he was, she was ripped into countless versions of herself throughout history and saved the Doctor countless times. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
Other encounters
The Seventh Doctor, Lysandra Aristedes and Sally Morgan encountered the Great Intelligence during their travels in the black TARDIS. (AUDIO: Black and White)
Behind the scenes
- Yog-Sothoth is the name of a fictional deity created by H. P. Lovecraft. The name first appears in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. It was implied to be one of the most powerful beings in the universe (second to only Azathoth) and described as existing outside of the space-time continuum in a place where it exists at every point in time and space.
- Whether the Great Intelligence should be referred to as 'it' or 'he' is perhaps best left to personal preference. As the Intelligence has no physical body, it is doubtful as to whether it can be said to have a gender. Although a male face resembling that of Walter Simeon appeared to Miss Kizlet on a large wall-mounted video screen, and it spoke with a male voice in Victorian England, this could have been a favoured avatar rather than a gender choice.
- Writer Neil Gaiman disclosed in Doctor Who Magazine that earlier drafts of his script for The Doctor's Wife implied that House, the villain of that story, was actually the Great Intelligence. These hints did not make it into the episode as aired. The idea of the Great Intelligence as a villain for the revived series Doctor Who would later lead to TV: The Snowmen.[source needed]
- With a gap of forty-four years, the Great Intelligence holds the longest period of time where it has not appeared in televised Doctor Who. Following the Great Intelligence is the Macra with forty-years. In addition, the Axons appeared in the DWM comic strip thirty-nine years after their last TV appearance.
