Padrac

Padrac
Species:	Time Lord
Job:	High Chancellor, Lord Cardinal, Lord President
Affiliated with:	Doom Coalition, High Council
Place of origin:	Gallifrey
First appearance:	The Eleven
Appearances:	see list
Main voice actor:	Robert Bathurst

Padraculomar III (or Padrac for short) was a Time Lord who served as High Chancellor, Lord Cardinal and Lord President of Gallifrey as well as leader of the Doom Coalition.

Biography

Early life

Padrac attended the Time Lord Academy and was a classmate and friend of the First Doctor, who called him Paddy and with whom he played on the same zero-grav hyperball team. Whilst the Doctor would sneak out to perform forbidden science experiments, Padrac would fly skimmers over the Outland Dunes. (AUDIO: The Eleven)

At the Academy, Padrac was a brilliant student but was boring, self-satisfied and superior. (AUDIO: The Crucible of Souls, Ship in a Bottle) He was selected to join the Doom Coalition and work with the intellectual elite of Gallifrey to manipulate the timelines to ensure the planet's safety based on Matrix projections. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock)

Plans and early stages

Upon joining the High Council, Padrac was permitted access to the Matrix and used his newfound access to run numerous projections, discovering that Gallifrey would be destroyed in any future in which it was not the only planet in existence. To ensure his people's survival, he planned to destroy all of the universe and convert the remaining life force across time into regeneration energy, making the Time Lords immortal. (AUDIO: The Crucible of Souls)

As High Chancellor, Padrac became aware of Caleera's powers and had her Educators at the Academy wear her down, a psychosurgeon suppress her powers and had her consigned to a job as a junior archivist, all with the intention of manipulating her. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock) When the Seventh Doctor captured the Eleven, Padrac informed the Doctor that President Romana needed him. (AUDIO: The Eleven)

Padrac during his growing plot to avert the Time War (AUDIO: Doom Coalition 4)

Padrac summoned Caleera to his office and charmed her, leading her to fall in love with him and became vulnerable to his manipulations. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock) As a cardinal, (AUDIO: The Eleven) he was instrumental in the Eleven's escape from the Capitol prison facility, (AUDIO: The Crucible of Souls) during which he had Caleera go into the Time Vortex in an antique TARDIS to broaden her powers with a neural amplifier. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life, The Crucible of Souls) He summoned the Eighth Doctor to Gallifrey, ostensibly to track down the Eleven but really to get him out of the way by having the Eleven kill him. (AUDIO: The Eleven, The Crucible of Souls)

Secretary Vorlin kept Padrac up to date on the Eleven's failed plan to kill the Doctor on Phaiton (AUDIO: The Satanic Mill) and Caleera trapped the President in the transduction barrier so that he could assume more powers. (AUDIO: Songs of Love) He learnt from Liv Chenka that the Nine had become aware of the Crucible, heading there with Liv when he realised that she knew his true aims. Upon realising that "the Clocksmith" was the Doctor using a psychic cloak, he ejected him, Liv and Helen Sinclair into the Vortex in an escape shuttle. (AUDIO: The Crucible of Souls)

Takeover and defeat

Returning to Gallifrey with an apparent ally in River Song, Padrac brought his proposals before the High Council and had Caleera search the Matrix for the plans for the Resonance Engine. His speech at the vote disturbed Chancellor Jerasta, whom he had Caleera kill along with the President, and he learnt from Caleera and the Eleven that River and Chancellor Volstrom respectively were traitors. (AUDIO: Songs of Love)

After becoming Lord President, Padrac had the Resonance Engine built and Caleera placed inside, knowing that she would die when she destroyed the universe, and also ensured that the Eleven could not enter the Capitol, having no further use of him. The Doctor ultimately turned Caleera against Padrac, who attempted to utilise her powers regardless until Helen Sinclair destroyed the machine and Padrac was forced to flee with the Doctor.

Whilst Councillor Alekall reformed the High Council, Padrac was arrested and condemned to stasis, accusing the Doctor of sealing Gallifrey's fate when he visited him. Padrac saw the red lady and, as he was being frozen, heard Caleera tell him that the two of them would be together forever. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock)

Legacy

On his campaign trail, Admiral Valerian mentioned Padrac as an example of a dictator. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures)

Personality

The Doctor believed Padrac too boring to be evil, (AUDIO: The Crucible of Souls) and later claimed that Padrac was never exciting during the time of the Academy, and could be superior and self-satisfied, but not evil. (AUDIO: Ship in a Bottle)

Padrac was a callous Machiavellian manipulator, coercing Caleera's feelings for him and twisting them to his own ends. This did, however, make him increasingly short-sighted. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock)

When the Doctor, Liv and Helen were trapped in an escape capsule that Padrac had sent to the end of the universe, they were able to escape this trap by realising that Padrac's greatest weakness was that he would never risk himself and that he was always concerned with saving his own neck, prompting them to destroy the ship so that the resulting explosion would throw them back into Time as it was a scenario that Padrac would never have considered as a solution. The Doctor found it hard to believe Padrac was behind the Doom Coalition, but later in the escape capsule he realised he had done everything Padrac had wanted, and it went back to when he'd been in his previous incarnation, the incarnation who was the "master of chess" and he was amazed that Padrac had known he couldn't stop the Doctor's interference, so he simply adjusted his plans, and made the Doctor's meddling part of the plan. (AUDIO: Ship in a Bottle)