Tannis
In one version of reality, First General Tannis, "conqueror of the Centauri system of Alterre, of the Kaili and the Sallth", was a power-hungry Time Lord who made a bid to take over the universe. With access to a disguised TARDIS, he created a false identity for himself as a Canisian and became the de facto dictator of Alpha Canis One, all while arranging for the deaths of all other surviving members of his race.
His bid to become the last of the Time Lords, at which point he could use his powers unchecked and rule all of reality, culminated in a failed Canisian invasion of Earth. There, the Seventh Doctor, who had seen through his schemes, confronted him on Salisbury Plain, using his own powers as a Time Lord to destroy Tannis at the apparent cost of his own life.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Origins[[edit] | [edit source]]
A Gallifreyan prophecy known around the time of the Doctor's birth foretold that Tannis would pose a threat to Gallifrey in its future. Larna mentioned him to Ulysses, Saldaamir, Penelope Gate and Marnal among other threatening entities; she said that Gallifrey must survive Tannis's attack to ensure that the world would be destroyed at its proper time. One Time Lord would be central to defeating Tannis's attack and all of the other threats. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles [+]Loading...["The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel)"])
Castellan Casmus and Tannis acted as though they were familiar with one another when they confronted each other on Gallifrey, suggesting that, (WC: "Death Comes to Time" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Death Comes to Time","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) unlike Rathen, (PROSE: The Minister of Chance [+]Loading...["The Minister of Chance (novelisation)"]) Tannis had been alive prior to the fall of greater Time Lord society, and educated in the normal fashion. Though personally familiar with Casmus, (WC: "Death Comes to Time" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Death Comes to Time","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) Tannis knew of the Doctor only by reputation, (WC: "No Child of Earth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"No Child of Earth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) and had never heard of the Minister of Chance until they crossed paths as renegades in the new age. (WC: "The Prisoner" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"The Prisoner","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
Infiltrating Alpha Canis One[[edit] | [edit source]]
Following the events on Micen Island, all but a few Time Lords had been wiped out. The survivors included Castellan Casmus, the retired Valentine and Antenor, and long-time renegades the Doctor (then in his seventh incarnation) and the Minister of Chance, (WC: Death Comes to Time [+]Loading...["Death Comes to Time (webcast)"]) as well as the Sage of the Waves, the Horseman, the Pilot, and the Summer King. (PROSE: The Minister of Chance [+]Loading...["The Minister of Chance (novelisation)"]) At the Temple of the Fourth, these surviving Gods of the Fourth, remorseful of how they had misused their powers, swore to certain provisions to keep themselves in check, such as that travellers must always keep a non-Time Lord companion, then scattered across the universe. (WC: "At the Temple of the Fourth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"At the Temple of the Fourth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
[What do I want?] Oh, it's so unimaginative I'm almost embarrassed to say. To run the universe. And I want all of you out of the way. Oh, we don't all make grand entrances in flashy TARDISes and ridiculous clothes. Just because you're a Time Lord doesn't mean you can't behave like a petty dictator!
Unbeknownst to the members of the pact, however, another Time Lord survived. (WC: "No Child of Earth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"No Child of Earth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) He "never used his powers", instead "manipulat[ing] others" to do his bidding, so as not to produce time distortions which would have allowed the other Time Lords to find him and stop him. The Kingmaker on Gallifrey knew of his existence, but had no authority to intervene or warn the others. (WC: "Death Comes to Time" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Death Comes to Time","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) Calling himself "Tannis", he became a war hero among the Canisians of Alpha Canis One, conquering the Centauri system of Alterre, the Kaili and the Sallth. He rose to the rank of First General, with his fame and popularity soon eclipsing Canis's official head of state, Premier Bedloe. (WC: "The Prisoner" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"The Prisoner","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
Manipulating the Minister[[edit] | [edit source]]
When his forces invaded a "small, obstinate plant-infested world in Alnilam", the locals, numbering a "few hundred millions", tried to resist the Canisians' attempt to mine out the planet's core. In response, General Tannis ordered a deadly plague dropped on the population, only for them to be miraculously cured two days later. Intrigued that Canisian scientists could find no explanation, Tannis travelled to the planet himself and "discovered a small cult on the outskirts of the capital city" who worshipped "Manasté", the "blessed god of the Trees" who had descended among them and cured the plague. Realising that this was the work of a fellow Time Lord, the Minister of Chance, (WC: "No Child of Earth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"No Child of Earth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) Tannis devised a plan to manipulate the Minister into breaking his oaths, using him as a scapegoat and distraction for the other Time Lords to chase. (WC: "Death Comes to Time" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Death Comes to Time","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
Tannis attended negotiations at the UP, during which he surprised the Canisians by signing the treaty of Carselai, through which he officially relinquished control of a number of planets (WC: "No Child of Earth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"No Child of Earth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) and promised non-aggression to other space powers such as the Santine Republic. The Minister attended the peace talks, where he "swallowed insult after insult" and was "made to make sacrifices that [he] couldn't stand to do", tortured by the knowledge that he could upend the negotiations by directly manipulating time and the laws of physics, if not for the promises he had made. (WC: "At the Temple of the Fourth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"At the Temple of the Fourth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) Brought to a boiling point, the Minister began to use his powers directly on the margins of the Canisians' warfare, causing severe temporal distortions throughout the universe as a side-effect. To mislead the other Time Lords about the nature of the threat they were facing, (WC: "Death Comes to Time" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Death Comes to Time","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) Tannis then sent the vampire assassin Nessican to kill the Time Lords Valentine and Antenor, who were working undercover at a London university as astronomers and noticed black holes which had appeared as a byproduct of the distortions. (WC: "At the Temple of the Fourth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"At the Temple of the Fourth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
The Santiny campaign[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the final act of his plan to drive the Minister to ruin, (WC: "Death Comes to Time" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Death Comes to Time","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) Tannis broke the treaty of Carselai and attacked the peaceful Santine Republic in a maximally destructive way, wiping out the major city of Annet from orbit with a tectonic bomb before demanding an unconditional surrender from Admiral Mettna, whom he then ordered killed anyway. He personally came down to Sanity, and fatally stabbed the President of Santiny, who had used his last broadcast to urge his people to keep resisting the Canisians. A gleeful Tannis declared the planet to be his.
Before long, the Seventh Doctor intervened with his companions Ace and Antimony. While Ace wandered off, the Doctor and Antimony helped the sequestered Santine Senators escape their Canisian guards by taking them to a nearby forest in the Doctor's TARDIS. Ace, meanwhile, was briefly captured by the Canisians and brought onto one of their ships, but Castellan Casmus, who had foreseen his and the other Time Lords' imminent deaths, intervened to free her and took her to a beautiful garden on his own planet. After the Doctor departed, the Minister summoned him to the Temple of the Fourth on Micen Island to apprise him of Antenor and Valentine's murders, and suggested that he take over helping the Santines while the Doctor handled the investigation on Earth, being more familiar with that planet. (WC: "At the Temple of the Fourth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"At the Temple of the Fourth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
One the way back from Santiny to Alpha Canis One, Tannis received a report from Nessican. As well as confirming his targets' terminations, the vampire praised early-21st century Earth to Tannis as a peaceful, bountiful world wholly unprepared to defend itself against an attack from outer space. Tannis found the thought of conquering Earth intriguing, noting it down as "another iron in the fire". (WC: "Planet of Blood" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Planet of Blood","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
Final visit to Alpha Canis One[[edit] | [edit source]]
Returning to Alpha Cannis One, Tannis positioned his troops around the city — skirting the letter of the law, which forbade a general to take his army into the capital — then gave a brief speech during which he preemptively thanked Premier Bedloe for his "promotion". Bedloe confronted him thereafter, only for Tannis to reveal to him that he'd had one of Bedloe's children killed by the military and was holding the other one as a hostage. When Bedloe accused him of trying to stage a coup, Tannis corrected him, noting that he didn't want Bedloe dead or deposed, being content to keep him right where he was as a puppet ruler.
After ending the interview, Tannis learned from Lieutenant Suneel that one of the Canisian Senators who had not fled with the Doctor, Sala, had escaped the interrogation chambers with the help of a man calling himself the Minister. Delighted at his planet's progress, Tannis ordered the pair "found, but not approached". He then became aware that the Seventh Doctor and Antimony had arrived on Canis Alpha One, finding and rescuing Bedloe's surviving child. The Doctor intended to return the child to Bedloe, so that Bedloe would be in a position to gain the upper hand over Tannis.
However, Tannis found Bedloe and got him to admit to the plan while the Doctor and Antimony were effecting the rescue, then confronted them as they brought Bedloe the child. (WC: "The Prisoner" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"The Prisoner","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) Excited to meet the Doctor, whom he described as "quite a legend in our circles", he revealed his own identity as a Time Lord to him while holding the group at gunpoint. In a fit of petty cruelty, he then informed Antimony of his true nature as an android, which the Doctor had kept from him, then murdered him in front of the helpless Doctor, taunting the Doctor with the knowledge that he could stop him if only he'd call on his powers as a God of the Fourth. Tannis then left in his own, disguised TARDS and returned to his command ship in orbit around Santiny. (WC: "No Child of Earth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"No Child of Earth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
Endgame[[edit] | [edit source]]
Back in orbit around Sanity, Tannis once again took control of the occupation forces. He deduced that the Minister would attempt to resist the Canisians through small-scale guerilla warfare, meaning his first move would probably be to try and liberate the prisoners of the camp in Luria. Satellite images soon confirmed the presence of the Minister, and he was elated to realise that the other Time Lord had taken on a companion in the form of Sala, for whom the Minister had begun to harbour romantic feelings. To push him over the edge, he had his ground troops begin to kill the prisoners indiscriminately. When Sala ran out of cover to help them, he had her shot in front of the Minister.
Tannis intended to "twist the knife" even further by having his orbital fleet begin to randomly bomb the planet, but was prevented from doing so as the Minister snapped sooner than expected, and used his powers to destroy one of the Canisian gunships altogether. Amused but suitably cowed by this display, Tannis ordered the fleet to pull out from orbit around Santiny, abandoning his ground troops to the Minister's wrath — and the Minister himself to the justice of the Time Lords — while he flew towards the Earth, his "second iron in the fire". Again using his TARDIS, he travelled to the slopes of Mount Plutarch on the Time Lords' homeworld (WC: "No Child of Earth" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"No Child of Earth","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"}) and confronted Castellan Casmus while he was waiting for Ace to retain from her training mission on Anima Persis. When Tannis tried to get him to explain why the Doctor and himself were so interested in Ace, a serene Casmus flatly told him that he had been training her become a new kind of Time Lord, and that he believed their race of Time Lords had come to its end. He belittled Tannis as a creature who "fit badly" in the universe, and mocked Tannis's retort that he would force the universe to "fit around him". Tannis then killed Casmus before Ace's return. (WC: "Death Comes to Time" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Death Comes to Time","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
We're Time Lords. The many sparkling universes, the myriad dimensions you could explore…! But your ambitions are limited to the physical. You are the smallest and most miserable of our kind, and she… she will be the greatest of hers.
Final stand on Earth[[edit] | [edit source]]
Tannis rejoined his fleet as it approached Earth, and initiated its invasion, contacting the President of the United States, a gray-haired man who was fairly befuddled in the face of the alien general's immediate and cheerful request of an immediate and complete surrender. Repeating his gambit from Santiny, he prepared to drop a tectonic bomb on London as a show of strength. However, the maneuver was derailed by England's group for "counter-measures", who had been warned by the Seventh Doctor about Tannis's arrival: unbeknownst to Tannis, the Doctor had simply revoked the Minister's TARDIS rather than engage in a mutually destructive, all-out battle with him as Tannis had hoped. The Doctor had then returned to Earth, to which he'd already sent Ace and Golcrum to warn Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart about the Canisians and show his forces how to use Nessican's Canisian transmitter to send falsified signals to the Canisians' own ships, causing their own missiles to explode onboard before they could be launched.
Realising that the Doctor was on Earth, Tannis accepted that this would be where their battle would end. He ordered his troops to land on Salisbury Plain, fully aware that the Doctor would have foreseen this and that they were walking into a UNIT ambush. Abandoning his soldiers to their fate, he traced the signal of Ace's radio as she communicated with the Brigadier in orbit, with the Doctor's TARDIS having landed near Stonehenge itself. Tannis sprang up on Ace and, delighting in no longer having to hide his powers, used them to disarm Ace, then punched her. He was confronted by the Doctor, but, confident that the Doctor wouldn't break the laws and the code, used his powers to order Ace to "die… slowly", gloating at the Doctor about his supposed impotence as Tannis killed the second of his companions.
"Can't I?" (WC: "Death Comes to Time" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Death Comes to Time","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
However, to Tannis's surprise, the Doctor unleashed his power to free Ace and block Tannis's further attempts to use his power on her. Strangely calm, just as Casmus had been, the Doctor explained that this moment was "what Casmus used to call 'T-Time'", the moment in expectation of which the Time Lords had "held this power for millennia (…) so that even if all of [them] were killed, one of [them] might stand here and stop an abomination like [Tannis] from taking over the universe". Tannis's pleas fell on deaf ears as the Doctor called upon all of his power to destroy Tannis, unbothered by Tannis's desperate protest that the Doctor would "disrupt the course of time" and that he "would die too". (WC: "Death Comes to Time" [+]Part of Death Comes to Time, Loading...{"namedep":"Death Comes to Time","1":"Death Comes to Time (webcast)"})
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
Due to the technical limitations of the Flash-based visuals used in Death Comes to Time [+]Loading...["Death Comes to Time (webcast)"], the angle of Tannis's distinctive facial scar across his face sometimes reverses. Additionally, in the DWM illustrated preview for the story, it was depicted as a much smaller scar running vertically over his left eye, rather than bisecting his whole face diagonally.
