Omega was a great intergalactic engineer and co-founder of Time Lord society, but circumstances bent his mind so that he threatened the entire universe. He was the only person ever to live within the anti-matter universe, which he subsequently ruled over. However, his existence in this realm robbed him of his body and left only his conscious will intact, a realisation that twisted him into murderous insanity.
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Omega (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Biography
Early life
Omega was one of the most significant figures in Gallifreyan history. He appeared in the ROO texts, as later scholars on Gallifrey would call them, alongside Rassilon and the Other. (PROSE: Goth Opera, PROSE: The Infinity Doctors) He later said he was named Peylix. He had taken the name Omega in response to his teacher, Luvis, who had awarded him a grade of Omega for an essay he had written. In it he had explored the possibilities of increasing the Gallifreyan power by exploding a Star. The resulting energy could be harnessed for time travel. This was seen by his teacher as madness and pure idiocy. The Omega was the lowest mark possible, and Peylix was left with a humiliating nickname that endured even when he and a friend of his, "Razz", effected this plan, forcibly creating the Time Lords. (AUDIO: Omega) By the time of his "death", Omega had married a Gallifreyan known as Patience. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors)
Achievements
During the Dark Times, Omega and Rassilon (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) enabled the people of Gallifrey to achieve time travel. (TV: The Three Doctors) The Other assisted them in this. (PROSE: Lungbarrow) Omega may have also have played a part in the creation of the living metal Validium. (TV: Silver Nemesis)
According to a transmission from Anathema (which may have been influenced by Faction Paradox propaganda), when Rassilon first attempted to create and harness the power of a Black hole, before Omega's development of the stellar manipulator, he accidentally punched a hole into another plane of existence, and the Great Vampires swarmed into our universe, beginning the Time Lord-Vampire War. According to this source, an engineer (strongly hinted to be Omega) subsequently plugged up the black hole, making it resemble an ordinary Planet. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)
A stellar manipulator, the Hand of Omega, one of Omega's many creations, could make stars go supernova. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
- An alternate timeline not one, but two, Hands of Omega existed. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors)
With the power unleashed by a supernova the two hoped to generate enough power to travel through time. (TV: The Three Doctors).
Gallifrey's galaxy had only one Population III star at that time. They decided to destroy that one. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors) The star, in an area known as the Sector of Forgotten Souls (AUDIO: Omega) in the constellation of Ao, (PROSE: Lungbarrow) bore the name Qqaba. (COMIC: Star Death, PROSE: The Infinity Doctors)
The "death" of Omega
It is known that the stasis halo of Omega's Starbreaker, the Eurydice, was sabotaged, exposing it, and the Starbreaker's crew, to the fury of the black hole, but there are many conflicting accounts concerning the details and reasons for the sabotage. (COMIC: Star Death, AUDIO: Omega)
Vandekirian, Omega's assistant, was at least partly responsible for the sabotage. When he realised what he had done, his guilt caused him to cut his own hand to atone for his betrayal. Omega did not accept it, and cut his other hand, placing it in his stellar manipulator, which was later to be known as the Hand of Omega. It was not known why Vandekirian betrayed Omega. Various account attribute it to Rassilon's plot against the more popular Omega or simply madness. (AUDIO: Omega)
According to one account, Fenris the Hellbringer, a mercenary working for the Order of the Black Sun (a time-active enemy of the Time Lords from the future) sabotaged Omega's Starbreaker. (COMIC: Star Death)
Rassilon prevented disaster from overtaking the other three Starbreakers (COMIC: Star Death) and wept over Omega's death. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
The survival of Omega
The Doctor, like most Gallifreyans, grew up to revere and admire Omega as a great hero. (TV: The Three Doctors) The Hand of Omega had, meanwhile, survived and returned to Gallifrey. The First Doctor would later obtain it for himself. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Omega had transported through the black hole into another universe made of anti-matter. Omega shaped the universe by force of will and access to the black hole's singularity. He could even create simple life. Radiation destroyed his body. The gauntlets, armour and helmet he had designed to protect him from the corrosive effect of the anti-matter now constituted his physical form. At first he shaped his new world into a paradise. As the centuries rolled by he grew weary and depressed, feeling abandoned by his fellow Time Lords. The landscape slowly transformed into a drab, grey desert. The universe that had become his home was unstable, unable to exist without a powerful will to give it form; he was trapped. (TV: The Three Doctors)
Against the Time Lords
After thousands of years in the void, Omega hit upon a plan of revenge: a captured Time Lord could be forced to take his place, and Omega could leave and wreak vengeance on Gallifrey. This plan was inspired by the Verdigris, who had travelled into the anti-matter universe, in an attempt get the Third Doctor released from his exile on Earth. (PROSE: Verdigris) Using the black hole, he drained power from the Time Lords to stop them from interfering. He sent an amorphous life form and other, more humanoid servitors to find the exiled Third Doctor and take him into the black hole. The High Council, unable to send anyone to assist the Doctor, decided to have the second prior incarnation of the Doctor help rectify matters, subsequently contacting and sending his first self to advise them. Omega removed both incarnations to his domain, entry into which converted all matter into anti-matter.
When Omega removed his helmet to prepare his departure, he discovered that the anti-matter universe had completely dissolved his physical body. He could not leave his universe; he existed only because his will insisted that he exist, but his will was all that was left of him. Consumed by rage and despair, Omega swore to destroy all things. The Doctors offered freedom to Omega: in actuality the Second Doctor's recorder which the Doctor's TARDIS had accidentally shielded from conversion into anti-matter. The Doctors attempted to trick Omega into touching the recorder but instead only infuriated him. When he lashed out he knocked the force field generator to the floor, causing the recorder to make contact with the floor and creating a violent matter-antimatter explosion which killed Omega, collapsing the antimatter world (TV: The Three Doctors)
Affiliation with the Arc of Infinity
Though he was once more thought destroyed, Hedin of the High Council contacted Omega to help him. Omega had gained control of the dimensional gateway known as the Arc of Infinity. Through the Arc, he had a gateway between his own universe and the universe of matter, though he still had no physical form. Omega also had a TARDIS and a servant he had created, the Ergon. Omega needed to bond with another Time Lord using his biodata extract. (TV: Arc of Infinity)
On Earth at the time, Omega sent the Ergon to survey the planet, and it ended up in Perivale, where it met Dorothy McShane working in a fast food restaurant. She didn't realise it was an alien, and gave it some fries, which it took back to Omega. Omega didn't like them, claiming they didn't have any salt on them. (PROSE: Anti-Matter with Fries)
Hedin transmitted to Omega the biodata extract for the Doctor, by this time in his fifth incarnation. Omega established a base in the Earth city of Amsterdam, navigated the Doctor's TARDIS into the Arc and began to link the Doctor's biodata with his own. The Doctor faced execution on Gallifrey to stop Omega's return. This was part of Omega and Hedin's plan: they rigged the execution to hide the Doctor and Omega in the Matrix, safe from Time Lord detection.
Omega shifted the Arc to Gallifrey in order to gain control of the Matrix and used its power to create a physical body for himself.
The Doctor tracked him down and sabotaged his equipment in Amsterdam, forcing Omega to step into the physical universe before the transfer was made stable. His new body, a replica of the Doctor's, began to decay and revert to anti-matter. Thwarted and maddened by defeat, Omega willed the acceleration of his conversion to anti-matter to destroy the Earth rather than return to the universe of anti-matter, but was finally destroyed by the Doctor using the Ergon's matter conversion gun. (TV: Arc of Infinity)
After Amsterdam
After Omega was supposedly destroyed by the Doctor, he was recreated by using the Doctor's biodata. However, this had the effect of causing Omega to develop a split personality, being both Omega and the Doctor, but the Doctor persona wasn't aware of his Omega personality. In Amsterdam, Omega secretly boarded the TARDIS of a visiting Time Lord historian and broadcaster, Professor Ertikus, who was in the city to see the site of Omega's destruction. Ertikus travelled to a Jolly Chronolidays trip to the Sector of Forgotten Souls, with Omega stowed away onboard. Before the trip, Omega met an employee of Jolly Chronolidays, Sentia, with whom he fell in love. He told Sentia all about himself, including his split personality disorder. Omega planned to use the Jolly Chronolidays trip to the Sector of Forgotten Souls to return to the anti-matter universe with Sentia, because he found he disliked living in this universe, and wanted to return to his universe where he had godlike power and remained safe.
While travelling to the Sector of Forgotten Souls, the Doctor persona met Sentia for the first time (although Sentia already knew about this Doctor personality) while the ship was docking into the leisure base. There he met Daland (an actor who played Omega in the recreations of Omega's experiments) and Tarpov (another actor who played Vandekirian, Omega's assistant). Tarpov succumbed to the Vandekirian personality, left behind by the psychic residue from Omega's experiments. He tried to stop Omega's experiments by attacking Daland and crushing his own hand in machinery, to stop his hand print being used to release the Hand of Omega, but Omega entered and stopped Tarpov from crushing his other hand. While Tarpov was recovering, Omega tried to kill Tarpov, believing he would give away a secret that he wished to keep quiet, but the medical robot knocked him unconscious. The Omega persona directly communicated with the Doctor persona inside Omega's mind. "Omega" tried to convince "the Doctor" to help him travel to the anti-matter universe with Sentia, and "the Doctor" accepted. Meeting Ertikus for the first time, and discovering he was a Time Lord, "the Doctor" used Ertikus' TARDIS to travel to the recreated Eurydice so he could fulfil his mission. But Sentia kidnapped Daland, and stole a shuttle, so she could get there, and could use Daland to conduct the marriage ceremony, but Tarpov stowed aboard and escaped onto the Eurydice.
Tarpov revealed to Sentia that by destroying a star, to create the Eye of Harmony, he would cause the death of a native race called the Scintillans, however, Omega continued anyway. Omega then killed Tarpov. Ertikus tried to meet Omega, but discovered that "the Doctor" had been in contact with him all along. Omega revealed himself to Ertikus and then killed him. After they were reunited, "the Doctor" sent a telepathic message from Ertikus' telepathic circuit to the Time Lords explaining everything about the situation to them, so they could send help. Daland and Sentia looked for Ertikus, and Daland found his recorder robot, which had recorded Ertikus' death. Daland realised that "the Doctor" had killed him, and tried to attack the Doctor. Seeing the footage for himself, "the Doctor" realised he was merely a product of Omega's split personality disorder, which was finally confirmed by the arrival of the real Fifth Doctor in his TARDIS, who had been sent by the Time Lords.
Feeling the effects of mental trauma, Omega escaped and began to suffer flashbacks of his earlier life, and the circumstances which lead him to take part in the time experiments. After hearing about the Scintillans from Daland, the Doctor comfronted Omega, and revealed that the Scintillans weren't a part of the time experiments, but a memory Omega had taken from the Doctor. The Scintillans were a species the Doctor accidentally killed when he tried to save some Lurmans. The Doctor believed Omega had subconsciously used this to explain away Vandekirian's betrayal. Sentia (taken over by Vandekirian's personality) attempted to pilot the Eurydice into the anti-matter universe, so Omega would be trapped again. The Doctor and Daland escaped, while Omega was trapped on the ship, as it and Omega were supposedly pulled back into the anti-matter universe again. (AUDIO: Omega)
Personality
Omega was very bitter about his fellow Time Lords, who he believed sacrificed him to attain greatness. He held eternal enmity towards his race, and sought to avenge himself against them. Countless aeons alone left him with little care about anything, deeming the destruction of reality as a "spectacle to behold". He also became paranoid and developed mood swings. He lacked any restraint and had a vicious temper. The Doctor considered him to be a madman. (TV: The Three Doctors, Arc of Infinity)
Despite being insane, Omega was noted for his extremely strong will, which allowed him to reshape the antimatter universe in the singularity to create an environment as well as servants that suited him. This made him linked to the antimatter realm, as his will alone kept it alive and prevented his escape. He was completely unaware of the fact that his body had corroded away as a result of prolonged exposure to the antimatter realm, and that both his physical form and the world he created were made by his will alone. (TV: The Three Doctors)
In Time Lord culture
- Rassilon, the Other and Omega were the three most important figures in Gallifrey's history. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
- The Feast of Omega was a holiday that was celebrated on Gallifrey. (PROSE: Happy Endings)
- The Omega Arsenal was a stockpile of forbidden weapons locked away in the Time Vaults. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Behind the scenes
- In preliminary discussions for The Three Doctors, the name "Ohm" was considered for the character of Omega, because OHM looks like WHO upside-down.
- Omega appears in the Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who book, Search for the Doctor.
- Omega may also be the villain of the children's book K9 and the Time Trap, where he's referred to by the name "Omegon".
- A character resembling Omega, Ohm, appears in The Infinity Doctors, which does not appear to take place in the normal Doctor Who universe. This character is at least a tribute to Omega, and may be intended as an alternate-universe equivalent of the character.
- A character called "Rassilon's Engineer" appears in a transmission Samantha Jones receives on Anathema in Interference - Book One. Although the character is not named, he is strongly implied to be Omega. The transmission originates in a Faction Paradox-influenced culture built on a Time Lord artefact, so the implication may be that Rassilon attempted to minimise Omega's part in Time Lord history, reducing him to the role of "Rassilon's Engineer".