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Irving Braxiatel, or sometimes simply Braxiatel, was a Time Lord and the older brother of the Doctor. He maintained the Braxiatel Collection. At one time he held the office of Lord Cardinal in the High Council on Gallifrey. He also briefly served as Lord Chancellor and Lord President of Gallifrey. He was an associate of Bernice Summerfield.
Braxiatel's life was one of many paradoxes and anomalies, including separate lives on Dellah, Legion, and the Braxiatel Collection. (AUDIO: Enemy Lines)
Biography
Early life on Gallifrey
When he was a youngster on Gallifrey, Braxiatel lived with his brother, the Doctor, and possibly a sister, in the House of Lungbarrow. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass) At school, Braxiatel was taught that "time plays silly buggers with us all". (PROSE: Winging It)
At the Academy, Braxiatel's mentor was Dana Dementara. She taught him how to be a diplomat and a soldier. She taught him how to shoot down a whole flock of Baziti bats with one shot. (AUDIO: Soldier Obscura)
Braxiatel never wanted to conform. He was attracted by the wealth of knowledge in the outer universe. Keen to leave Gallifrey, he excelled at the Academy and passed with a handful of firsts. In time, Braxiatel became an unofficial ambassador for the Time Lords. This allowed him to be a permanent presence out in the universe. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle)
At one point, Braxiatel held the position of Lord Burner, the personal assassin of President Pandad VII, who "burned" people from history. During this time, he allowed "an old man" and "his granddaughter" to flee Gallifrey, even though Braxiatel had been given the order to erase them from history. The very same day, President Pandad died when a power relay in his office overloaded; an inquiry headed by Braxiatel found that this was an accident. (AUDIO: Disassembled)
In his position as the Time Lords' unofficial ambassador, Braxiatel organised the Armageddon Convention, which he tried to get the Third Doctor to chair, but after the Omega crisis, his agents accidentally brought the wrong incarnation. The Convention was not particularly successful, although it did outlaw the use of Cyberbombs. Due to the relative failure of the Convention, Braxiatel decided to begin focusing on building up his Collection rather than involving himself in galactic politics. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass)
Gallifreyan politics
Braxiatel became involved in political affairs on Gallifrey. He tried to halt the disaster he anticipated from the Timonic Fusion Device, known as Project Alpha, being built by Glower and his technician, Narvin. (AUDIO: The Inquiry)
Braxiatel was a tutor in the Time Lord Academy when Romana I attended. When she was contacted by Pandora, she told him. He hypnotised her to forget not only Pandora, but also him. As a result, she recalled only having heard of him through his art collection before her eventual return to Gallifrey from E-Space. He guided her subsequent rise to the Presidency in order to watch her closely for any evidence of Pandora's influence. (AUDIO: Lies)
Braxiatel later became a Cardinal, a member of the High Council of Time Lords, and a confidante of President Romana. (AUDIO: Zagreus)
Secretly, throughout his rise to power, he was in communication with his past and future selves, sending items to his collection. (AUDIO: Lies) President Romana knew this and held the information over him; he would be disgraced if it were known that he had broken the laws of time.
Eventually Braxiatel became High Chancellor, a post empty for many years, since Romana's predecessor had overthrown his predecessor. Mere hours later Braxiatel had to use his mind to contain the past and present forms of Pandora. Pandora would be able to escape if he ever connected to the Matrix or telepathically communicated with another Time Lord mind, so Braxiatel exiled himself from Gallifrey. (AUDIO: Pandora)
When Romana destroyed the future form of Pandora (as well as its intelligence), it also destroyed the Matrix. (AUDIO: Warfare) After Romana was removed from office, Braxiatel returned briefly and unexpectedly to Gallifrey and assumed the post of Lord President, since there was now nowhere for the Pandora entity to escape to. Having conspired with Matthias, he claimed that as Inquisitor Darkel had cancelled much of Romana's presidential edicts, he was restored to the position of Chancellor and Vice-President. His first act was to free Romana.
The ambitious Darkel goaded Braxiatel into losing control of Pandora, believing that it would destroy Braxiatel's mind. Braxiatel revealed that only a remnant of the entity had ever been in his mind; the bulk of it had sought refuge in Darkel's mind and Braxiatel had merely been the key that kept it restrained. Freed, Pandora consumed both Darkel and itself. Immediately resigning, Braxiatel named Matthias his successor, much to Romana's surprise, and returned to his exile, retaining the last fragments of Pandora within him. (AUDIO: Mindbomb)
Braxiatel was not done: hearing rumours of a threat against Gallifrey and deciding that in its weakened state the world was doomed, he hatched a scheme to preserve the Time Lord biodata archive, holding the genetic patterns of all Time Lords, past and present, hoping to reconstruct Gallifrey after its inevitable fall. As the Free Time Dogma Virus ravaged Gallifrey, Matthias ordered Romana to find the cure, then go into exile. Romana followed the trail, only to find Braxiatel. He had nominated Matthias knowing that whoever was President was doomed to fall to the Dogma virus. The only cure was to end the Time Lords' regeneration capabilities. With K9's help, Braxiatel used a Time Scoop to collect the biodata archive. He asked Romana to decide whether to administer the cure, or to let Gallifrey die and rebuild it using the biodata. (AUDIO: Panacea)
Braxiatel took Romana, Leela, K9 and Narvin to the Axis. They explored numerous alternate Gallifreys to find one on which they could live. (AUDIO: Reborn) On one of these Gallifreys, they encountered an alternate version of the Doctor, who returned to the Axis. It turned out the Doctor meant to assassinate Braxiatel, and during a fight they fell into one of the Axis's portals. Romana said it likely that they would be falling through time for eternity, but it was possible that one or both of them would end up in one of the timelines. (AUDIO: Disassembled)
Legion
As it turned out, he arrived in what appeared to be his original universe, despite the presence of "another" Braxiatel. There, he met Bernice Summerfield for the first time from his perspective, though she already knew his future self. (AUDIO: Disassembled) Braxiatel travelled to Dexter Prime, where he encountered Avril Fenman, who removed the Pandora fragments within his head and sent them back into the head of the other Braxiatel. (AUDIO: The Curse of Fenman) He quickly learnt that the other Braxiatel had become an infamous figure, with many enemies. As a result, he set about protecting himself by hiding in the most distant and remote part of the universe, Legion. (AUDIO: Paradise Frost)
At some point, Braxiatel rescued Peter Summerfield from the planet Bastion, where he had been stranded as a slave after he was separated from his mother, and brought him to Legion. (AUDIO: The Curse of Fenman, Paradise Frost) He located Bernice in a stasis capsule on a planet called Atlantis, where he left her a message, claiming he was not the same man who she once knew and that he was on Legion with Peter. (AUDIO: Brand Management) Bernice travelled to Legion, and though she tried to attack him, Braxiatel claimed he had never met Benny before. By this point, Braxiatel owned a club in Legion city called the White Rabbit. (AUDIO: Paradise Frost, PROSE: The Slender-Fingered Cats of Bubastis)
He tried his best to make Benny comfortable. (AUDIO: Vesuvius Falling) He decided to buy a house for Benny outside Legion City for her to store her archaeological finds. He bought it from Galot, one of his other self's acquaintances. Benny then inquired into how he wasn't the Braxiatel she knew. He explained that there were other versions of him and they knew the bigger picture, and the more he knew about the other Braxiatel he didn't like him. He got Benny to check over the base. It was also at this point he bought the Irverfield to use on missions to other planets. (AUDIO: Everybody Loves Irving)
He celebrated Advent with Benny. On his way to Benny's place, he became very agitated when he saw Antonio Tulloch whom he knew was dead. He wanted to know what Avril Fenman's plan was. He told Benny that the only reason he employed Jack was that he had one of Fenman's crystals in him. He tricked Fenman when she manifested and blew up Hera, as he knew he had to protect Peter and Benny (AUDIO: The Curse of Fenman)
Braxiatel was tending to the bar at the White Rabbit when Miss Hannigan appeared. He was surprised to have a customer so late in the night. Shortly afterwards, the Brimstone Kid arrived telling him, Benny and Toothless Bob that Cazador was after him. He went with the Kid to find the money in a diamond mine with Benny. In the mine, the Kid revealed that he was a bounty hunter who was sent to capture Braxiatel for the other Braxiatel's crimes. He escaped with the real Brimstone Kid and Benny in an escape pod. Benny then lost contact with him. She thought he had crashed into an asteroid. (AUDIO: The Brimstone Kid)
He was actually kidnapped by the Epoch. The Epoch took Braxiatel to a point beyond time, where his memory was altered to make him think that he was an actor, called Miles Richardson, portraying Braxiatel. Bernice awoke the dormant personalities in her companions and defeated the Epoch by burying it under paradoxes of its own creation. Using the Epoch's technology, Braxiatel then sought out a way to find Gallifrey. (AUDIO: In Living Memory)
Dellah and the Braxiatel Collection
Another version of Braxiatel became the head of the Department of Theatrology at St. Oscar's University on the planet Dellah, where he met Bernice Summerfield after her meeting with his other self. (PROSE: Dragons' Wrath, AUDIO: Disassembled) They became friends, and he supported her in several adventures. (PROSE: Happy Endings, The Medusa Effect, Deadfall) After Bernice obtained a post at the archaeology department in 2593, the pair of them became entangled in many adventures. Braxiatel was on Dellah during the rise of the All-High Gods and helped to evacuate a group of survivors. (PROSE: Where Angels Fear)
During this time, he won KS-159, the future home of his Collection. Braxiatel supported Benny when she was dying and through her memory-loss that came with the recovery, conspiring with Jason, Chris, and Clarence to stop Benny from abandoning them all for the dangerous Eastern Rim. Braxiatel supported the Time Lords when their problems with the People had to be resolved. He supported the team in sending Dellah back to the Gods' universe, destroying that threat and ending the prospect of a war between the People and the Time Lords. In the aftermath, after leaving Vremnya, Braxiatel invited Benny to join him on the newly established Collection. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle, Return to the Fractured Planet, The Joy Device, Twilight of the Gods, The Doomsday Manuscript)
The Braxiatel Collection (one of the greatest art galleries in the galaxy) was founded by Braxiatel on KS-159. It had extensive archaeological libraries which could be used with Braxiatel's permission. Braxiatel's collection of books contained every book banned by the Catholic Church. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle, PROSE: Theatre of War)
The reason for the creation of the Braxiatel Collection was the disastrous test of the Timonic Fusion Device, which destroyed the planet Minyos, prompting Braxiatel to begin collecting and preserving historical artefacts in case such widespread destruction ever happened again. He also admitted that he had transgressed the Laws of Time by being in contact with his future regenerations. (AUDIO: The Inquiry)
He often used Benny as an expert as part of his art dealings. Wishing to obtain a Halstad Harp he took her to an auction on Palastrid. Discovering the truth behind the death of the planet Halstad he wanted to employ Hulver to his collection. (AUDIO: The Extinction Event)
While Benny was working at the Braxiatel Collection, a conspiracy started to form around Braxiatel. While all the characters were shown dark, twisted mirror images of themselves, Braxiatel was unaffected, and when Jason Kane wondered if the real Braxiatel was the mirror version, he was brainwashed into inability to be suspicious of Braxiatel. (AUDIO: The Mirror Effect) Further incidents showed the Time Lord to be far more dangerous and manipulative than he let on — he used a brainwashed Jason for his own ends, had murder done in his name, and caused a civil war in the Domus system. (PROSE: A Life in Pieces)
The Eighth Doctor once visited the Braxiatel Collection at Christmas and dropped off a pair of socks for Braxiatel, signed "Thete". (PROSE: ...Be Forgot)
Patrick Quilby was an old friend of his and asked Braxiatel for the services of an archaeologist in his protection of Bellotron. (AUDIO: The Bellotron Incident) He then asked her to go to Draconia. (AUDIO: The Draconian Rage) The Earth Reptile Council asked Brax to look after a counter terrorism mission and sent Benny to Chosan to help find the culprit among the Sea Devils. (AUDIO: The Poison Seas) Braxiatel was finally caught when the Collection's was occupied by the Fifth Axis. (PROSE: Life During Wartime) He was kept under house arrest until he would tell Mushtaq Anson where his TARDIS was, often torturing him. After Bev Tarrant was rescued he authorised her to start the liberation of the Collection. After Joseph told him that the Daleks were behind the Fifth Axis, and decided to act. He escaped his prison and then assumed control of the liberation army. He used the Dalek time machine that was left on the collection to destroy Fifth Axis fleets using Isaac Summerfield's connection as the Dalek Battle Computer. (AUDIO: Death and the Daleks) To ensure the Collection would survive, he recruited an army. He turned to the colony of Cantus, which had been taken over long ago by the Cybermen, and had a member of the Collection, Ronan McGinley, turned into a Cyber-Controller subject to Braxiatel's will. Using a mysterious Gallifreyan crystal, Ronan made all the Cybermen follow Braxiatel's orders. It was later revealed that the crystal was slowly killing Ronan, so Braxiatel arranged for Jason to arrive on Cantus to become the new Controller. Thanks to Benny, this plan backfired and Jason remembered everything that Braxiatel had done to him. Braxiatel was forced to leave the Collection. (AUDIO: The Crystal of Cantus)
Braxiatel's absence (and activities after leaving) led to the Draconian Empire claiming a territorial right to the Collection, as well as getting into a war with the Mim. Bernice Summerfield eventually tracked down Braxiatel to return him to the Collection to handle the situation. He had travelled back in time and found an ascetic to transform him into an amber-coloured crystal, known as the Stone of Barter, in which form he remained for around 3000 years. (AUDIO: The Empire State) Taking the Gravity Rainbow back to the collection as part of the cargo. He did this in order to avoid Benny, as he didn't want to live up to the stuff he had done to her and Jason. He also hid in the box in order to avoid the monsters in the light. (AUDIO: The Tub Full of Cats) When he arrived he was determined to fix his TARDIS then leave, but he was roped into finding some way to remove the gauntlet that Bev had on her hand. This meant he had no time to sort out the defences to the collection allowing the Draconians to invade. (AUDIO: The Judas Gift) He proved successful in stopping the world, though he stopped the war in secret by convincing Collection gardener Hass to kill the entire Mimsphere, framing the Draconians for it. (AUDIO: Freedom of Information)
Jason Kane grew suspicious that Bernice and he were meant to still be married and have children, but that Braxiatel had altered the timeline for his own purposes. He also began to believe Irving had altered the lives and timelines of everyone at the Collection for his own ends and only Jason could notice. He eventually found proof. Braxiatel had deliberately orchestrated the breakdown and death of Clarissa Jones (after she had noticed his manipulations), had manipulated time to create a Draconian/Mim war, and was "grooming" Bernice as part of his agenda to preserve the past via his Collection. The Collection was his TARDIS, making his temporal manipulations easier. To prevent Jason revealing any of this, Braxiatel manipulated Peter Summerfield into killing him. (AUDIO: The End of the World)
While pretending to be just a resident, Braxiatel regained dominance of the Collection via a puppet provisional government and, using his ally Doggles, manipulating a mourning Bernice to bring her closer to him. This failed and Bernice escaped with her son. Braxiatel sent agents to track her down. (AUDIO: The Wake) He once asked Benny to paint him which he used to keep as part of his vault in the Vingus Bank. The bank staff were clones of him for security reasons. (AUDIO: Glory Days)
Braxiatel's reasons for setting up the Collection where he did were later revealed to be due to the location of a great temporal leak depositing enough power to fuel a hundred colonies, or perhaps even bring back his own people. He began to siphon the leak, moving it to the planet Maximediras which he had just purchased following the failure of its economy, thinking it could potentially become a new homeworld for his people. (AUDIO: Resurrecting the Past) Whilst plotting to restore his people he became aware of the Deindum, a species in the future who would learn the secret of time travel and could rival his own people. He attempted to prevent their creation using Frost but was ironically stopped by the involvement of Bernice Summerfield and Robyn, an android created by this race and sent back in time to ensure their creation. (AUDIO: Secret Origins)
His reasons for keeping such a close eye on Bernice Summerfield, and tampering with her personal history, were revealed when it appeared she was destined to fall through a portal in time and become instrumental in the creation of the Deindum. Unable to prevent their creation Braxiatel, with the help of Doggles, planned to turn them into less aggressive creatures by altering the genetic material they would be based on. However, due to the actions of Robyn and Hass, Bernice was prevented from falling through the portal at all, leaving the Deindum a far more aggressive and paranoid species than before. (AUDIO: Resurrecting the Past) The Deindum travelled back and began a full scale invasion of the galaxy in order to protect their own history and ensure their creation. Keen at first to fight off these enemies of his own people, Braxiatel led a galaxy wide resistance against the Deindum, although he eventually lost faith in his abilities and surrendered to his defeat. (PROSE: Present Danger)
Braxiatel was captured and tortured by the Deindum, before being rescued from the Deindum mothership by Bernice Summerfield. She finally confronted him with the death of Jason, and he explained that Jason was about to be used against him by the Deindum. He expressed no guilt for his actions, except that he had failed in his mission and brought about the Deindum's creation. When Bernice offered him an alternative solution he expressed interest, and finally (begrudgingly) apologised for Jason's death. He and Bernice began to engage in a personal time war against the Deindum, engineering a plan to prevent them from ever having existed. The plan worked, although just before its conclusion Braxiatel was shot by a Deindum soldier. (AUDIO: Escaping the Future)
The Collection
Another incarnation of Braxiatel attended Bernice Summerfield's wedding to Jason Kane in Cheldon Bonniface on 24 April 2010 (AUDIO: Many Happy Returns, PROSE: Happy Endings) and was still running his Collection thousands of years in the future, where Bernice Summerfield met him for the first time. The Doctor had sent her to find out more information about Manaxus. Braxiatel helped her in her work. He later provided a ship for her to get to Heletia and get the information to the Doctor. He had a hand written version of The Good Soldiers written by the Doctor. (PROSE: Theatre of War)
Long after Braxiatel employed anyone at the Collection, Bernice found him in the wine cellars of a monastery on Old Earth. Braxiatel told her that he never had a brother, so that everyone would believe that the Doctor was dead. (PROSE: The Shape of the Hole)
Saving Gallifrey
In the aftermath of Omega's escape back into the prime universe, Braxiatel rescued Romana from her dead Type 160. (AUDIO: Intervention Earth)
Braxiatel saved the earlier Romana from regenerating on the Moros, claiming that a war had broken out after Omega's return and her future self sent him back to change Gallifrey's future. Braxiatel took her and Leela back to Gallifrey, shut down the Adherents of Ohm, helped investigate the death of Narvin, and stopped the Warpsmith plot to start a war.
After Romana succeeded in changing Gallifrey's destiny, Braxiatel was confronted by the Watchmaker, who told him that his life could no longer continue as the paradox that it was. Braxiatel submitted to his fate and gave himself to the Watchmaker, who intended to find him his "true path". (AUDIO: Enemy Lines)
Alternative timelines
In an alternative timeline, Braxiatel was killed by his brother, the Doctor, when he was supposed to erase him from history as the Lord Burner. After he was killed, the Doctor received the title of "Lord Burner." (AUDIO: Disassembled)
In another alternative timeline, Gallifrey's war with the Great Vampires never ended. In order to combat the vampires, the True Lords genetically engineered savage warriors called "hounds" to kill the vampires. Braxiatel became a victim of the process. (AUDIO: Annihilation)
In another alternative timeline, Braxiatel was a minor councillor of the Inner Council, living under a tyrannical President Romana II. Braxiatel was present at her assassination, after which he was interviewed by Commentator Theta Sigma. (AUDIO: Forever) After taking her place, the Romana of the proper timeline considered him "oily" compared to their Braxiatel. However, Narvin wondered how she could get the difference between them. Lord Zakar referred to him as a "worm." (AUDIO: Arbitration) He tried to ally himself with the Daleks who invaded said Gallifrey. They exterminated him after finding records that the Braxiatel from their universe had betrayed them. (AUDIO: Extermination)
Appearance
Shortly after leaving Gallifrey, Braxiatel had long brown hair which flopped over his forehead, and half-moon spectacles. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass)
Bev Tarrant described him as dark-haired, slim, and with immaculate dress sense. (AUDIO: Glory Days) On a trip to Ganesh he wore a big black coat. (PROSE: Kill the Mouse!) Whilst the Fifth Axis occupied the Collection, Braxiatel wore a grey suit. (PROSE: Fear of Corners)
At Benny's wedding, Braxiatel wore a summer suit, with leather boots, and his spectales balanced on the end of his nose. (PROSE: Happy Endings)
Personality
In his youth, Braxiatel was overconfident and more sensible than his younger brother. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass, AUDIO: The 100 Days of the Doctor) He had a great interest in the universe and strove to gather as much knowledge as he could from it. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle) The Doctor referred to Braxiatel as "an occasional collaborator in adventures of the mind, the soul and the body". (PROSE: The Banquo Legacy)
The presence of Pandora in his mind caused Braxiatel to manipulate and kill others to serve his own ends. (AUDIO: The Curse of Fenman, Escaping the Future)
Braxiatel found it difficult to convey sympathy, so he didn't try. (PROSE: The Doomsday Manuscript) Braxiatel had no problems with swearing, referring to Cybermen as "metal bastards". (AUDIO: The Crystal of Cantus)
Behind the scenes
- Along with Leela, he is one of only two characters to play a major role in two audio spin-off series: Bernice Summerfield and Gallifrey. Braxiatel and Leela have both also appeared in the main range of Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories as a result of their guest roles in the audio story Zagreus.
- Braxiatel's voice actor Miles Richardson uses the screen name "irvingbraxiatel" on his personal blog.[1]