Goth
- You may wish to consult
Goth (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Gothaparduskerialldrapolatkh (or Goth for short) was a Time Lord politician and occasional agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency. As Lord Chancellor, he became a pawn of the Decayed Master.
Biography
Early life
Like all Time Lords, Goth was taken from his family at the age of eight for the selection process in the Drylands. Staring into the Untempered Schism as part of a Time Lord initiation rite, Goth was driven mad by what he saw in the Schism.
Goth was a member of the Prydonian Chapter (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) and had a brother named Rath who went on to sit on the High Council. (PROSE: Blood Harvest)
A double life and a double career
Goth was a member of the Celestial Intervention Agency, (PROSE: Legacy) but also of President Pandad IV's High Council — later becoming not just one of his Councillors, but his Chancellor. (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey)
On behalf of the CIA, Goth masqueraded as the fictional character Lemuel Gulliver in the Land of Fiction to monitor the Second Doctor. On Gallifrey, Goth, alongside two other Time Lords, presided over the trial of the Second Doctor, (PROSE: Future Imperfect) which resulted in his exile on Earth and a forced regeneration into his third incarnation, (TV: The War Games) though another account held that it was a different Time Lord, no less than the Lord President of Gallifrey, who had presided over the Second Doctor's trial. (PROSE: The Three Doctors)
Goth was one of the three High Council members sent to an alien planet, alongside his fellow Councillor Adelphi and the Chancellor Socra, to form a tribunal to try the War Lords, as well as the War Chief and the Second Doctor, themselves two former members of the High Council, (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey) following the events of the War Games. (TV: The War Games) He argued that certain experimental human subjects of the War Lords be killed, rather than returned to their own time - an opinion which the other two judges disagreed with. (PROSE: War Crimes)
During the Doctor's exile on Earth, Goth was involved in the decision that led to the CIA sending the Third Doctor to Peladon. (PROSE: Legacy)
Chancellorship
Goth was named Chancellor some time after the Third Doctor defeated Omega as a consequence of the Rani's giant mice having eaten preceding Chancellor (and fellow CIA member) Socra, on top of inducing the President's regeneration and also eating his cat. (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey)
In any event, Goth, alerted by the temporal trace of the Master's TARDIS, which Susan Foreman (now in command of the ship) had briefly allowed to become detectable to Gallifrey again so that the previous owner would be found, (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks) travelled to the planet Tersurus and found the dying Master, who was now at the end of his regeneration cycle and physically little more than a decaying corpse. (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks, AUDIO: The Two Masters) Having been told by the Lord President that he did not intend to name Goth as his successor, the Chancellor entered into an uneasy alliance with the Master, who promised him the presidency in exchange for helping to kill the Fourth Doctor.
More than happy to help if it helped him gained the Presidency, Goth subsequently assassinated the President before he could announce his successor, setting up the Doctor as an unwitting decoy assassin. The result should have been an unopposed election for the office. However, the Doctor announced his own candidacy to buy himself time to investigate.
Inside the Matrix, Goth fought the Doctor, initially using his knowledge of the Matrix's workings to his advantage. The Doctor soon gained the upper hand, however, and the infuriated Master tried to overload the Matrix by sending a massive energy spike through Goth's brain.
The Doctor escaped from the Matrix in time, but the spike had fatally damaged Goth's brain. The Doctor found Goth and the seemingly dead (but actually self-sedated) Master not long after. The dying Chancellor told the Doctor how he and the Master had come to be allies, and why he wanted to kill the previous President.
Goth died shortly afterwards, and it was decided by Borusa to cover up the actual truth of his death. He decided on telling the population that "Chancellor Goth tracked [the Master] down and killed him, unfortunately perishing himself in the exchange of fire". (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
Appearance
Goth was tall and handsome and looked especially impressive when in his ceremonial Prydonian robes. He had an impassive face that did not betray his thoughts or feelings. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin)
Behind the scenes
- Actor Bernard Horsfall had played both Lemuel Gulliver in The Mind Robber and an unnamed Time Lord who presided over the Second Doctor's trial in The War Games. Future Imperfect stated both these individuals to have been Goth himself, in the former case wearing a disguise as part of his CIA work. The Legacy of Gallifrey concurred on the Time Lord in The War Games having been Goth, though it made no mention of his having been a CIA agent; it is instead Socra, another member of the tribunal of three, who is the CIA connection as far as 1985 Gary Russell was concerned. The novelisation of The Three Doctors instead suggested that Horsfall's character in The War Games had been a previous regeneration of the President from that TV story.
- Goth's full name of Gothaparduskerialldrapolatkh was given in the short story War Crimes.
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