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I'm bored. Bored with wielding great power. Who wants to be a player, when he could be a pawn in the thick of the game?
The Other, with Rassilon and Omega, was one of three founders of Time Lord society. The birth and origin of The Other would remain a mystery for later Time Lords.
Profile
Biography
Life
One account claims that apart from this famous triumvirate, three other persons would have a major influence on Gallifreyan history. (PDA: The Infinity Doctors)
- This may have been in an alternate timeline.
The Other was influential during the Dark Times on Gallifrey after the cult of Pythia had ended. He and the Hand of Omega had something of a bond. (NA: Lungbarrow)
The Other had a detailed knowledge of Gallifreyan history and imparted some of that knowledge to Rassilon. The Other first became known to Rassilon in the weeks before Omega destroyed the star Qqaba to bring Gallifrey its power over time. (REF: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
One account claims that before the Qqaba mission, the Other spoke to Omega's wife and implied that the Fragment was a forgery. The Other was later present at Qqaba when Omega was lost. (PDA: The Infinity Doctors)
- This may have been in an alternate timeline.
As Rassilon's rule moved closer to despotism and Gallifrey's borders were sealed, the Other attempted to escape the planet by hurling himself into the Looms to await his eventual reconstitution. (NA: Lungbarrow)
- One account implies that the Other travelled from the future to give Rassilon the secrets of time travel. The account further hints that the Other was actually the Doctor.
Influence on the Doctor
Accounts differ as to results of this. Some imply that he was re-Loomed some ten million years later to the House of Lungbarrow as the Time Lord who would become known as the Doctor (NA: Lungbarrow). Without realizing it, the Doctor would retain memories of his earlier self. This showed when, in his fifth incarnation, he met Patience. (MA: Cold Fusion). By his seventh incarnation, he seemed once more to have realized his earlier identity or else Lady Peinforte could not have threatened him with revealing it. (DW: Silver Nemesis)
- How Lady Peinforte knew this, exactly, remains undisclosed.
At some point, Patience was married to a Doctor who resembled one the faces seen during the Doctor's mindbending contest with Morbius on Karn. (MA: Cold Fusion, DW: The Brain of Morbius)
The Watch raided their home and demanded that their daughter-in-law's pregnancy be aborted. A man resembling the First Doctor arrived and rescued their granddaughter. He also intended to get Patience to safety. (MA: Cold Fusion)
- Patience's memories may have been confused. See below for further discussion.
Influence on Gallifreyan Society and Culture
Other accounts imply that the presence of his biodata in the Looms gave rise not to one simple reincarnation but to the wider tendency for rebellion and discontent which would characterise the Deca's generation of Time Lords. (This generation included the Doctor's.) (FP: The Book of The War).
Scholars would later call documents concerning these three, the ROO texts. (MA: Goth Opera, PDA: The Infinity Doctors)
A minor Gallifreyan festival known as Otherstide was celebrated yearly in his honour. It coincided with the Doctor's naming day (probably analogous to birthday). (NA: Lungbarrow)
Behind the scenes
The first intentional and direct mention of the Other happened in Ben Aaronovitch's Target Books Rememembrance of the Daleks novelisation, in the form of a brief flashback to the time of Rassilon. Andrew Cartmel, Ben Aaronovitch had already worked out a backstory to the Doctor in a secret document known as the "Cartmel Masterplan" into which the Other figured.
A popular theory in fanon is that the unknown faces seen in The Brain of Morbius while the Fourth Doctor mindwrestled are incarnations of the Other (DW: The Brain of Morbius). However, this theory can be disproven by the fact that the Other couldn't regenerate (NA: Lungbarrow), even though Patience could (MA: Cold Fusion).
Lance Parkin, the author of Cold Fusion has stated, though, that he considers these the Other's previous incarnations.
The flashback scenes in Cold Fusion appear to be an alternate telling of the First Doctor's rescue of Susan as recounted in Lungbarrow. Lance Parkin has implied that this was because he was working from a version of the Cartmel Masterplan which Marc Platt did not use when writing Lungbarrow.
The discrepancy can be explained away in-universe by saying that the Doctor who appears in the Cold Fusion flashback, and presumably by extension all of the Morbius Doctors, were a reincarnation of the Other before the Doctor. This would mean the Other entered the Looms, emerged as the Morbius Doctor, lived through at least eight incarnations, then entered the Loom again and later emerged as the First Doctor.