The Borad, formerly Megelen, took over the planet Karfel and created the Timelash before his eventual defeat by the Sixth Doctor.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Scientific career[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Karfelons used "Borad" as a title, like President, rather than a name. Yet when Megelen took power he referred to himself only by his title. A scientist living in a vault, he had been exposed by the Third Doctor, whom he had befriended when he'd arrived on the planet, to the ruling Council for unethical experiments on Morloxes, large reptiles indigenous to Karfel, and the chemical Mustakozene-80, which fused the two different tissue as one creature.
After the Doctor left Karfel, Megelen was apparently able to continue his experiments but was accidentally fused with one of the Morloxes via Mustakozene-80, becoming half Morlox and half Karfelon. He believed that his intelligence and longevity had increased, and deemed it a "glorious transformation."
But despite revelling in his apparent newfound longevity and increased intelligence, Megelen was conscious about how he appeared; indeed later he screamed when he saw his deformed features. (TV: Timelash)
As the Borad[[edit] | [edit source]]
Megelen also experimented with cloning and created at least one duplicate of himself after the accident. He was able to install himself as the sadistic and despotic ruler of Karfel under the title of the Borad. He never revealed himself in person, only via security monitors which gave him the appearance of a dignified old man. Mirrors throughout Karfel were banned as a result. Fear was enforced rigidly through the policing of androids, and all rebels were dealt with either by summary execution or despatch and death via the Timelash to the Scottish Highlands in 1179, near Loch Ness and Inverness. The Borad also ordered that all references to The Doctor were erased from the Karfelon history books.
Under the Borad's rule, the Karfelon people became disillusioned and rebellious. Relations broke down with their former allies, the Bandrils, who threatened war after the Borad rescinded the grain supply treaty which had underpinned the relationship between the two civilisations.
A war with the Bandrils would have resulted in their use of bendalypse warheads. This would have wiped out all the Karfelons but left the Morloxes and the Borad alive.
The Borad had started to re-create the Mustakozene-80 experiment using the Doctor's companion Peri Brown and a Morlox to create a second hybrid to mate with, with the intention to re-populate Karfel with their offspring.
The Sixth Doctor was able to trick a clone of the Borad into killing himself by manipulating the Borad through the use of Kontron crystals, leading to the Borad firing an energy weapon that was reflected back at himself, ageing him to death. The Borad then confronted the Doctor following the death of his clone and the prevention of war with the Bandrils but became unbalanced after viewing a reflection of himself in a boarded-up mirror, revealing the reason he hid away. In this state, he was thrown into the Timelash by the Doctor, emerging in 12th century Scotland. (TV: Timelash [+]Loading...["Timelash (TV story)"])
Fate[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Doctor speculated that the Borad would become the Loch Ness Monster, quipping that he would have somewhere to swim for the next thousand years. (TV: Timelash) According to one account, the Borad died shortly after his arrival at Loch Ness, after he was disintegrated by Time Lord temporal investigators in order to prevent him from disrupting the events surrounding the Zygons and their Skarasen, (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) which became the Loch Ness Monster. (TV: Terror of the Zygons [+]Loading...["Terror of the Zygons (TV story)"]) Another account presumed that the Borad was killed by the Zygons and their Skarasen when they took over the Loch in 1676. (PROSE: The Universal Databank [+]Loading...["The Universal Databank (reference book)"]) Yet another account showed the Borad fleeing Loch Ness when the Zygons arrived. (PROSE: The Ballad of the Borad)
Legacy[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the video game Happy Deathday, played by Izzy Sinclair on the Time-Space Visualiser, the Borad was among a host of "every single enemy" that the Doctor had ever defeated, who were assembled by the Beige Guardian and pitted against the Doctor's first eight incarnations. (COMIC: Happy Deathday)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- "Megelen" is an anagram of Mengele, the last name of the notorious Josef Mengele.