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The melancholic and aristocratic ninth incarnation of the Doctor was one of the few surviving Time Lords after the destruction of Gallifrey by an alien race. After the Time Lords retreated into the Matrix, they sent the Ninth Doctor and the Master, now in an android form, on dangerous missions, (PROSE: Doctor Who - The Ninth Doctor [+]Loading...["Doctor Who - The Ninth Doctor (short story)"]) first sending them to Lannet, a small Lancashire town where the Doctor met barmaid Alison Cheney. Together, they fought to save the world, and defeated the silicon-based Shalka. Afterwards, Alison left with the Doctor in his TARDIS. (WC: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (webcast)"]) The Doctor, The Master, and Alison shared at least one more adventure together, involving vampires. (PROSE: The Feast of the Stone [+]Loading...["The Feast of the Stone (short story)"])
Biography
A day to come
A possible ninth incarnation of the Doctor that sucked on an asthma inhaler and resembled an aristocrat with a high forehead and shallow-sunken eyes was seen by the Eighth Doctor in the Tomorrow Window. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows [+]Loading...["The Tomorrow Windows (novel)"])
Early days
After the Doctor retired to Gallifrey, he fell in love with the Lord President's daughter. However, an alien race came to Gallifrey and killed nearly every Time Lord, including the Doctor's love, who alone was "truly dead". The Doctor and the Master were able to overcome and defeat the alien race, though the Master lost his physical body in the process. In return for his aid, the Doctor built the Master a new robot body for the Master while the Time Lords retreated into the Matrix. (PROSE: Doctor Who - The Ninth Doctor [+]Loading...["Doctor Who - The Ninth Doctor (short story)"]) The Doctor, being punished for the death of his lost companion, was sent to work by his unseen superiors. With his old foe now bound within the TARDIS, the Doctor and the Master were sent to solve the dangerous problems that plagued the universe. (PROSE: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (novelisation)"])
Against the Shalka
Guided by the Time Lords, (PROSE: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (novelisation)"]) an aloof and embittered Doctor arrived in the deserted town centre of Lannet in 2003. Upon clambering into a local pub, he met Alison Cheney, who told him that the town had been cut off from the outside world for three weeks by the Shalka. While the Doctor at first refused to involve himself in the matter, he changed his mind upon seeing the death of a homeless woman he had met in the town. After calling for the aid of Alison and her boyfriend, Joe, he provoked the monsters that occupied the town by creating a cacophony of noise. The Doctor, having lost his TARDIS to a crack in the ground, called upon the aid of UNIT to find the TARDIS.
After coming face-to-face with the Shalka Prime, the Doctor admitted the Shalka into his TARDIS. After the Shalka believed they had learned all they could know of the principles of the TARDIS, the Doctor was tossed into the reconfigured wormhole gateway. Though at first resigned to death, the Doctor remembered that his mobile phone was part of the TARDIS and utilised it as a doorway into the console room. After expelling the Shalka occupying his TARDIS into the black hole, he returned to UNIT's base and learned that the Shalka were vulnerable to pure oxygen.
Having made his way to the Shalka's headquarters, the Doctor learned that the Shalka inhabited most of the worlds in the universe, particularly those that had committed ecological suicide. The Shalka, utilising conduits, controlled human's across the world. These conduits manipulated the vocal chords of the human's they inhabited, allowing them to emit sonic signals. These signals generate gases that would convert Earth's atmosphere to one that resembled the Shalka's subsurface conditions.
The Doctor, having swallowed the Shalka conduit, was able to connect himself into the interconnected exchange of information that was the Shalka's scream. After destroying the Prime's acolytes and sucking the Prime into the wormhole gateway, the Doctor vaporises the remainder of the Shalka left on Earth. Though he offered to return Alison to her mother in the recent past, she instead chose to join the travels of the Doctor and the Master. (WC: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (webcast)"])
Travels with Alison
The Doctor, the Master, and Alison materialised in a dark cavern. Upon emerging from the TARDIS, the Doctor and Alison were immediately bombarded by a psychic force that caused them to relive traumatic and emotional memories. The Doctor, with the aid of the Master, broke free of the illusions and returned to the TARDIS, where he discovered that an intangible force is feeding off of Alison's emotions.
Upon tapping into the psionic resonance of the cavern, the Doctor realised that Alison was somehow experiencing the Master's memories. Without hesitation, Doctor switched off the Master's body in an attempt to save Alison, but this only redoubled the vampire's effort to drain her body. Eventually, the Doctor used the TARDIS' telepathic circuits to drown the entity with a surge of the Master's hatred and evil memories, and the entity exploded into nothingness. (PROSE: The Feast of the Stone [+]Loading...["The Feast of the Stone (short story)"])
Legacy
Despite the Fifteenth Doctor (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"]) originating from a regenerative history proceeding from the Ninth Doctor with big ears who travelled with Rose Tyler, (TV: Rose [+]Loading...["Rose (TV story)"], etc.) the face of this Doctor was pulled up when the bounty hunter Rogue scanned the Fifteenth Doctor using the technology in his ship and extrapolated a sample of his other forms. The other, big-eared Ninth Doctor was also represented, as was the War Doctor. (TV: Rogue [+]Loading...["Rogue (TV story)"])
Undated events
- Daughter of Mine was visited several times by an incarnation of the Doctor she described as a "tall white aristocrat" while imprisoned in a mirror. (AUDIO: Shadow of a Doubt [+]Loading...["Shadow of a Doubt (audio story)"])
Psychological profile
Personality
The Ninth Doctor was serious, and often angry, but wasn't averse to the odd bit of fun while having the bearing of an aristocrat. He was reluctant to listen to the mysterious force that ordered him around time and space. Unlike previous incarnations, the Ninth Doctor was reluctant to take Alison Cheney on as a companion due to the untimely passing of his previous companion.
He tried to remain detached from others due to a past tragedy, but he was unable to stop himself coming to care for Alison, stopping the Shalka from torturing her and giving them access to his TARDIS. He felt despair towards death due to the nature of his past tragedy, even believing he himself should die to atone for his inability to save someone linked to his misfortune.
The Doctor was quick to befriend Mathilda Pierce, even kissing her hand as a greeting, and was morally outraged when the Shalka killed her, even more so when he thought no one cared that "a lovely old lady [had] just died".
The Ninth Doctor marvelled at the discoveries he made in his exploits. While he made vocal his reluctance to kill, he was also aware that he was responsible for "exterminat[ing] thousands". He identified himself as a "homeless person". (WC: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (webcast)"]) While he had a great respect for human beings, he often grew impatient with their primitive and aggressive tendencies, and thus saw himself as a traveller above all else. (PROSE: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (novelisation)"])
He had a dislike towards the military, denouncing them as either "arresting [him], making strong sweet tea, or killing [his] friends." He got particularly angry with Major Thomas Kennet for involving himself in the retrieval of his TARDIS, especially when he offered the Doctor a gun, but apologised for his behaviour towards Kennet when he reclaimed his TARDIS. He later admitted his hypocrisy in denouncing the military despite having "so many friends" in it.
He was friends with Andy Warhol, who wanted to paint a picture of him and his eight previous incarnations, (WC: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (webcast)"]) and kept a signed manuscript copy of Hamlet in his TARDIS. (PROSE: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (novelisation)"])
He kept an android version of the Master in his TARDIS, who was unable to leave the TARDIS. He was willing to turn the Master off and back on again without hesitation, (WC: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (webcast)"]) and was unable to grasp how that might horrify Alison, as it not only showed what he will do to achieve his goals if he believes it necessary, but also raised the possibility that he might do something similar to her if he believed it necessary. (PROSE: The Feast of the Stone [+]Loading...["The Feast of the Stone (short story)"])
While he would protect them from alien incursions, the Ninth Doctor was adamant in not allowing humanity to fix their mistakes with alien devices. (WC: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (webcast)"])
Habits and quirks
When things did no go his way or he realised a mistake he had made, the Ninth Doctor would utter, "blast". He displayed a fondness for singing and had a repertoire of showtunes.
The Ninth Doctor drank alcohol, and carried an inhaler, which he called his "huffer". (WC: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (webcast)"]) He was aware that he had been drinking alcoholic beverages more frequently since he "changed". (PROSE: The Feast of the Stone [+]Loading...["The Feast of the Stone (short story)"])
He also carried a mobile phone, taken from a charging cradle hidden behind the telephone panel in the TARDIS' police box shell. Shaped like the TARDIS, the phone was in fact part of the TARDIS itself. (WC: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (webcast)"])
Skills
The Ninth Doctor held a commanding tone, able to gain the authority over a military platoon with a simple command.
He could judge character quickly, able to see the bravery in Alison. He was also a talented lock-picker.
The Doctor could determine his location by the "smell of the air", even knowing the year he was in, (WC: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (webcast)"]) and a brief history of his new surrounds. (PROSE: The Feast of the Stone [+]Loading...["The Feast of the Stone (short story)"])
Appearance
Standing taller than his companions, the Ninth Doctor resembled a thin, Edwardian gentleman in his mid-forties, with an elegant, yet curious face, pale skin, striking blue eyes that darted about their surroundings, a high forehead, dark, greying hair, with mild streaks of white sprouting from the temples, and devilish, shadow-sunken eyes. (PROSE: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (novelisation)"]) He resembled an older version of an alternative Tenth Doctor from another universe. (TV: The Curse of Fatal Death [+]Loading...["The Curse of Fatal Death (TV story)"])
Clothing
The Ninth Doctor wore the sombre black tailcoat of an Edwardian gentleman under a heavy cape, with a Keble College scarf thrown over one shoulder. (PROSE: Scream of the Shalka [+]Loading...["Scream of the Shalka (novelisation)"])
Behind the scenes
- The Shalka Doctor's backstory was released officially in an article in DWM 464. The backstory had been only released as part of a document titled Doctor Who - The Ninth Doctor for any potential writers of stories featuring the Shalka Doctor, but with the added caveat that the backstory not be referenced or expanded upon.
- A webcast sequel to Scream of the Shalka titled by Blood of the Robots was written by Simon Clark, but it was ultimately cancelled.
- There is a similarity between the Shalka Doctor and the incarnation of the Doctor seen in PROSE: The Cabinet of Light. However such a similarity is entirely coincidental, as author Daniel O'Mahony worked on The Cabinet of Light with no information that a new incarnation of the Doctor would be introduced just months after the publication of his novella.[1]
- In PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles, there is a passing reference to the Doctor having "three ninth incarnations", which was intended to refer to the Ninth Doctor played by Christopher Eccleston in the BBC Wales Doctor Who series, the Ninth Doctor played by Rowan Atkinson in The Curse of Fatal Death and the Ninth Doctor played by Richard E Grant in the Scream of the Shalka webcast.
- Although the specific mention of "ears" as the new Doctor is feeling his face suggests Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor, Doctor Who and the Time War does not positively identify the Doctor into whom the Eighth Doctor turns. Echoing The Tomorrow Windows's comment that the Doctor would somehow have "three ninth incarnations", Russell T Davies answered affirmatively to a comment by a fan on the Instagram release of Doctor Who and the Time War suggesting that "the Ninth Doctor here could also be interpreted as the Shalka Doctor or the Rowan Atkinson Doctor for the hat trick of alternative Ninth Doctors."[2] This followed Davies' earlier comments that clarified Doctor Who and the Time War's position in relation to The Night of the Doctor as a "glimpse of parallel events" and his broader statement upon its release that "all Doctors exist [and] all stories are true".
- Richard E Grant had previously played the Quite Handsome Tenth Doctor in TV: The Curse of Fatal Death.
- The charity publication Nine Lives released in 2017 primarily focused on this incarnation and his travels with Alison Cheney.