Karvanista
Karvanista was a Lupari officer. As a member of the Division, he worked closely with the Fugitive Doctor. He was by her side, in a team of four, for the Siege of Atropos, (TV: Once, Upon Time [+]Loading...["Once, Upon Time (TV story)"]) and even went on to become her companion. (TV: The Vanquishers [+]Loading...["The Vanquishers (TV story)"])
By the Thirteenth Doctor's time, he was the only known surviving member of the Division following the destruction of Gallifrey at the hands of the Spy Master. The Doctor sought him out in her search of information about her past. He was species-bonded, and thus bound to protect, Dan Lewis when the Flux came to Earth. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse [+]Loading...["The Halloween Apocalypse (TV story)"])
Biography
Working for the Division
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Karvanista worked for the Division and was the companion of the Fugitive Doctor, who also worked for the Division. (TV: The Vanquishers [+]Loading...["The Vanquishers (TV story)"])
At one point he was sent to capture the Ravagers, Swarm and Azure, at the Temple of Atropos alongside the Fugitive Doctor and two others. (TV: Once, Upon Time [+]Loading...["Once, Upon Time (TV story)"])
According to Karvanista, the Doctor eventually abandoned him. The Division installed a device called a synaptic collider in his brain which would kill him in three seconds if he tried to reveal anything about his past with them. (TV: The Vanquishers [+]Loading...["The Vanquishers (TV story)"])
Karvanista claimed to have vanquished the Thousand Civilisations. (TV: The Vanquishers [+]Loading...["The Vanquishers (TV story)"])
Reunited with the Fugitive Doctor
By one account, Karvanista reunited with the Fugitive Doctor at a point when they were both ex-members of the Division. Cashing in a favour from her old friend, the Doctor took him to a Silurian city where they obtained the Taaron Ka from a group of Weeping Angels. Using the Taaron Ka, the two were able to make a bargain with the Division. (GAME: Division of the Angels [+]Loading...["Division of the Angels (game)"])
Facing the Flux
Having learned about the primeval Doctor whose body she had inherited after they were mindwiped, (TV: The Timeless Children [+]Loading...["The Timeless Children (TV story)"]) the Thirteenth Doctor hoped to discover more about her origins, and looked far and wide for surviving agents of the Division. Karvanista was the only one she could find, and she tracked him down with Yasmin Khan, though she only told her that she needed to "see a man about a dog", neglecting to mention that "the man [was] a dog" and the reason she was "so interested in him". After much annoyance, Karvanista trapped the two hanging by a gravity bar over an ocean of acid, though they managed to escape.
As every Lupar was tasked to save a human from the Flux on Halloween 2021, Karvanista left with his fleet to rescue his designated human, Dan Lewis. A wave of temporal energy caused his ship to arrive a few hours before the rest of the fleet. Karvanista broke into Dan's house and kidnapped him without any explanation. He placed him in an electrified holding cell on his ship and departed into space.
After Karvanista left in his ship with Dan, the Doctor and Yaz traced his ship to Dan's house. They escaped his booby traps, but the Doctor was still able to gather enough information using her sonic screwdriver to trace Karvanista's ship in space, as well as uncover seven billion other Lupari ships heading towards Earth.
Thinking this was an invasion, the Doctor materialised the TARDIS on Karvanista's ship to confront him. She deactivated the ship's power while Yaz freed Dan. The Doctor told him she was there to ask about the Division, but first she needed to know why the Lupari were invading Earth. After noticing a signal that still reached his ship, Karvanista, frustrated, explained the Lupari were bonded to humans and they were arriving to rescue them from the Flux. Before the Doctor could inquire further, the power to Karvanista's ship and weapon was restored, and, alongside Yaz and Dan, had to escape while Karvanista chased and fired at them.
The Doctor, Yaz and Dan escaped in the TARDIS, but after experiencing a vision of Swarm, the Doctor observed the Flux approaching from her TARDIS and told Karvanista to instruct the Lupari fleet to create a barrier around the Earth, protecting it. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse [+]Loading...["The Halloween Apocalypse (TV story)","The Halloween Apocalypse"])
Despite the Lupari shield, a Sontaran fleet managed to sneak through at the last second, which the rest of the Lupari blamed Karvanista for. Dan snuck onto one of the Sontaran Time Carriers in Liverpool, but was caught by Sontaran troopers. Right as they were about to execute him, Karvanista returned and saved Dan. Karvanista set the ship to ram the other Time Carriers, causing them to disappear in a time implosion. He and Dan escaped through a waste vent. When the Doctor returned from the other Sontaran fleet in the Crimean War, she took Dan to find Yaz and tasked Karvanista and the Lupari with looking out for the Earth while she was gone. (TV: War of the Sontarans [+]Loading...["War of the Sontarans (TV story)","War of the Sontarans"])
After one of the Lupari ships drifted out of orbit, Karvanista warned the rest of the fleet that the shield had become breachable. He attempted to remedy this by hyperjacking a Lupari ship that was stolen by Bel. Karvanista also discovered that Dan was trapped in twentieth century China, which annoyed him as he didn't have time travel.
When Bel's ship arrived, Karvanista was angry to discover that she was not a Lupar. He boarded the ship and tried to capture or kill her, but was interrupted by the arrival of a Sontaran invasion fleet, which attacked the shield with the intention to "destroy all Lupari". (TV: Survivors of the Flux [+]Loading...["Survivors of the Flux (TV story)","Survivors of the Flux"])
Karvanista, Bel and the Doctor and drove the ship at a Sontaran ship based in Chile. However, the ship had a forcefield and captured Karvanista and the Doctor. Whilst in their holding cell, the Doctor remembered Karvanista being her companion. Karvanista told the Doctor that the Division had put an implant in him that would inject poison into his brain if he spoke of their time together. The Grand Serpent then arrived with the Sontarans to take the Doctor away to interrogate her. Karvanista was shocked and angered to discover that the Sontarans had killed the other Lupari, leaving him as the last of his kind. Karvanista was later freed from the cell by Dan. Karvanista later avenged his people's deaths by allowing the Sontaran ships to be consumed by the Flux. Karvanista, Vinder and Bel became a team and bid farewell to the Doctor, Yaz and Dan. (TV: The Vanquishers [+]Loading...["The Vanquishers (TV story)","The Vanquishers"])
Legacy
Some time after the ELF Storage Incident, the Thirteenth Doctor wrote up introductions for herself and her companions. Dan Lewis's mentioned how his intersection with the Doctor's life had begun when he was "kidnapped by a giant dog and taken to an alien spaceship". (PROSE: Meet the Crew [+]Loading...["Meet the Crew (feature)"])
As a side-effect of the Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis passed down from her mother Donna Noble, Rose Noble was subconsciously able to tap into the Doctor's memories throughout her life. Rose channelled some of those memories into the handmade toys she created, including a stuffed toy resembling Karvanista, (TV: The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"]) which she called "Best Puplet". (PROSE: The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (novelisation)"]) After Donna's DoctorDonna self was reawakened alongside Rose's own powers, Donna and the Fourteenth Doctor thought back to the toys and recognised their sources, including Karvanista. (TV: The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])
Personality
Karvanista was gruff and found humans, especially Dan, to be annoying. He found it insulting to his species to be compared to a dog, and became angry when Dan mentioned his mother. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse [+]Loading...["The Halloween Apocalypse (TV story)","The Halloween Apocalypse"])
Behind the scenes
- Karvanista's name may be a reference to the Finnish word "karva", meaning fur. Moreover, it's one letter away from "Karvaniska", meaning someone with a furry neck.
- A deleted bit of conversation in The Vanquishers [+]Loading...["The Vanquishers (TV story)","The Vanquishers"] between the Thirteenth Doctor and Karvanista, while they’re locked in a cage, has Karvanista bring up the Doctor's travels with the robot dog K9 and mistakenly believe that the Doctor named K9 after him.[1]
- The first episode of ITV's The John Bishop Show features John Bishop amusingly reacting to fan art depicting Karvanista and Dan as lovers.
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