Marnal
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The Time Lord Marnal was the Master's father and the previous owner of the Doctor's TARDIS.
Biography
Life on Gallifrey
As children, the Doctor and Master would play in the fields near the Master's father's estates, with pastures of red grass near Mount Perdition. (TV: The End of Time) In his childhood, the Doctor considered Marnal his hero.
Marnal was the Castellan on Gallifrey before the Doctor left the planet. Marnal was sent by the Time Lords to the Shoal to investigate the threat of the Vore to Gallifrey. He destroyed the Shoal after a meeting with Larna, a Time Lady from Gallifrey's future (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) and companion of the Infinity Doctor.
In the Infinity Doctor's reality, Marnal was remembered as a man who went on impossible crusades and fought battles without knowing his enemy. The latter became known as "Marnal's error". (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors)
On Earth
Marnal threatened to expose Ulysses' secret of having a hybrid son, (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) the Doctor. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors, et al.) Ulysses wiped Marnal's memory with his TARDIS' telepathic circuits and dumped him on Earth in England, 1883. He was placed in the care of Mrs Gate.
Under the name Marnal Gate, Marnal became a science fiction author. Although he did not remember that Gallifrey and the Time Lords were real, he wrote stories containing the entire history of Gallifrey. He wrote at least eleven works between 1983 and 2005, including The Giants, published alongside a Holmes story (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) in 1893; (PROSE: The Bodysnatchers) one published in 1938 with illustrations by Mervyn Peake; and The Monkey to Time saga, written November 2001. He also once wrote an episode of Star Trek, but it was subsequently altered so much that he removed his name from it.
In the 1970s, while "on the run" (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) from UNIT, the Master, (TV: Colony in Space) Marnal's son, visited him and told him about how the Doctor had become a renegade and stolen Marnal's TARDIS. Marnal also had four step-daughters on Earth from his wives' previous marriages, whom he described as parasites.
In 2005, he regenerated from his twelfth to his thirteenth and final incarnation. The surge of artron energy restored his synapses and returned his memory. He recruited his hospice nurse, Rachel Rowley, and used a bottle universe to learn about the destruction of Gallifrey and the history of the Eighth Doctor.
Enraged at the Doctor's actions, as well as the "theft" of his old TARDIS, he intended to make the Doctor pay for his crimes. However, the pair created an uneasy alliance when the Vore began to invade Earth. Marnal became convinced that he and the Doctor should restore Gallifrey, but he was killed by the Vore before any plan could be finalised. Before he died, the Doctor told him that he was his childhood hero, which seemed to surprise Marnal before passing. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
Legacy
The Master was often discontented and angry. He used to blame his mother and father for it. (AUDIO: I Am The Master)
One of Marnal's step-grandsons believed that he had been a friend of H. G. Wells. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
Appearance
In his twelfth incarnation, Marnal was an old man; after he regenerated, he was a young man with brown eyes. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
Behind the scenes
- Many of Marnal's works are references to the working titles of previous televised Doctor Who stories. They include The Witch Lords (TV: State of Decay), The Giants (TV: The Giants), The Hand of Time (TV: The Hand of Fear), The Kraglon Inheritance (TV: The Two Doctors), Day of Wrath (TV: Four to Doomsday), The Time of Neman (TV: Arc of Infinity) and The Monkey to Time Saga (possibly The Key to Time season ).
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