Shayde

Shayde
Main aliases:	Aspect Black
Species:	Time Sentinel, Cast
Affiliated with:	Matrix Lords
Place of origin:	The Matrix
First appearance:	The Tides of Time
Appearances:	see list
Main voice actor:	Mark Donovan

Shayde was an instrument of the Matrix Lords that was placed on the TARDIS without the Doctor's knowledge to represent Gallifreyan interests. In time, the Doctor's fifth and eighth incarnations found a way to work with Shayde.

As a construct rather than a fully organic being, Shayde was able to both emulate and merge with other beings. During his adventures with the Doctor, Shayde joined with Fey Truscott-Sade to become "Feyde".

Biography

Origins

By most accounts, Shayde was a mental construct made of shadow, created by the minds of the Matrix Lords and connected to the willpower of the Matrix Rassilon. (COMIC: The Tides of Time ^[+]Loading...["The Tides of Time (comic story)"]) Shayde was created as the successor to the Pariah. (COMIC: Wormwood) The Book of the War described casts as operating in a similar manner, with advanced casts known as babels (PROSE: The Book of the War) sometimes having black humanoid forms with globes for heads. (PROSE: Newtons Sleep ^[+]Loading...["Newtons Sleep (novel)"])

By another account, Shayde was originally known as "Aspect Black" of the Time Sentinels, being a lone agent who eventually rebelled against the Sentinels. (COMIC: The Good Companion)

Shayde may have been connected to the Time Shades of Time Lord mythology, with the Shade of Portent having an identical appearance to Shayde's baseline form. (AUDIO: Damned If You Do ^[+]Loading...["Damned If You Do (audio story)"])

As an agent of Rassilon

The Fifth Doctor with Shayde. (COMIC: The Tides of Time)

Shayde first met the Doctor when he helped the Fifth Doctor defeat Melanicus. At first he only acted covertly, secretly killing the assassin who breached the Doctor's TARDIS and helping control the vibratory illusions of the Maelstrom. After Melanicus confronted the Doctor, the Matrix Lords increased his power levels and he physically manifested himself, shooting Melanicus. He then hid as the Doctor's shadow until the Doctor safely reached Althrace's dimension. There, Shayde journeyed into open deep space and communed with the Lords of Althrace, bringing the Doctor to Althrace. There, Shayde removed his head and connected it to the mind of Althrace, allowing for the Higher Evolutionaries to form a mental network across reality. After Melanicus was defeated, Shayde observed the Doctor from a shadow in Stockbridge, confirming with his masters that all was normal. (COMIC: The Tides of Time)

He aided the the Fifth Doctor against another force, a mutated Gallifreyan creature called a rovie that had infiltrated the Doctor's TARDIS and was trying to kill the Doctor and his companions Peri and Erimem. (AUDIO: No Place Like Home)

Shayde may have joined the Doctor's team during the ultimate war in an incident where the Fifth Doctor fought Time Squids in space. (GAME: Legacy ^[+]Loading...["Legacy (video game)"])

Shayde, posing as a future incarnation of the Eighth Doctor. (COMIC: Wormwood)

Shayde then saved the Eighth Doctor from an assassination attempt in the Matrix by the Elysians. This was part of a plot by Overseer Luther. Before the Doctor sacrificed himself to defeat Luther, (COMIC: The Final Chapter) Shayde took his place and faked a regeneration as bait for the Threshold, who would eagerly take the opportunity to attack a weaker, newly regenerated Doctor. (COMIC: Wormwood)

In the appearance of a new incarnation of the Doctor, he took the Doctor's companions Izzy and Fey to the Threshold stronghold of Wormwood. Shayde and the Doctor, who was disguised with a personal chameleon circuit, eventually revealed themselves to the Threshold, and Shayde tried to defeat the Pariah. However, he failed, and she crushed the globe that formed his head. However, Fey merged with the dying Shayde.

As Feyde

United into one, Fey and Shayde successfully killed the Pariah and defeated the Threshold. Though they were a single being, which the Doctor dubbed "Feyde", they each retained their own consciousnesses, and they decided to leave the Doctor to deal with what had just happened to them. (COMIC: Wormwood)

Shayde and Fey argue. (COMIC: Me and My Shadow)

They returned to Fey's original time period, the 1940s, where as an agent of the British government they spent two years fighting the Nazis. Shayde refused to allow Fey to use their powers to kill Adolf Hitler and change history, causing the two to develop a complex relationship. In 1941, they received a sub-ether summons from the Eighth Doctor, saying that Izzy had been kidnapped and the Doctor needed Shayde's abilities to track her whereabouts. (COMIC: Me and My Shadow) Feyde succeeded in recovering Izzy, and they returned to World War II. (COMIC: Oblivion)

Fey and the young War Doctor during the Last Great Time War. (COMIC: The Clockwise War)

Feyde would later become an important ally of the young War Doctor during the Last Great Time War. Fey was seriously injured during a battle against the Morlontoa, but they teleported to the college dormitory of her future nephew Alexander Truscott. As Fey healed, she subconsciously separated Shayde's mind from hers, hiding his essence in the form of all CCTV cameras in London. However, she believed she was working under Truscott, who manipulated her into turning against the Time Lords and then used Shayde's powers to create the Clockwise Men. Shayde finally reconstituted himself in the form of a giant black sphere around Fey as Truscott's plan started. This sphere allowed the Twelfth Doctor and his allies to travel to the Dreamspace where they were finally able to teach Fey the truth of her being the cause behind the battling.

With Fey's illusion broken, the black sphere shattered as well, and in the real world, Shayde reappeared in his normal form, dying. However, he transferred the last of his essence to Fey to keep her alive, while also wiping her memories of her time bonded with him. Relieved that he had finally put Fey's mind at rest, Shayde disintegrated, much to the Doctor's sadness. (COMIC: The Clockwise War)

Other realities

In the early days of the Time Lords, when they would use time travel to see the futures of their enemies, one prophet journeyed too far into an uncertain future timeline and saw a final conflict at the time of the Blue Shift involving many forces of evil. Both Rassilon and "his shade" were involved in this conflict, with the prophet seeing one of them being devoured by the Timewyrm. However, this future did not come to pass. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation ^[+]Loading...["Timewyrm: Revelation (novel)"])

Legacy

John Smith's A Journal of Impossible Things (TV: Human Nature/The Family of Blood) featured a drawing of Shayde. Within the text, he wrote "I see a woman with a goldfish bowl for a head". (PROSE: "Extract from 'A Journal of Impossible Things'")

The collection of the Citadel of the Crimson Hand included one of Shayde's black sphere heads. (COMIC: The Crimson Hand ^[+]Loading...["The Crimson Hand (comic story)"])

Powers

Shayde had many powers, (COMIC: The Tides of Time ^[+]Loading...["The Tides of Time (comic story)"], et. al.) including the abilities available to all casts: (PROSE: The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]) He was able to exist as pure shadow, once hiding in the Fifth Doctor's shadow. His head was removeable, being able to link living computers such as the Althrace brain back to the Matrix, where the Matrix Lords possessed another black sphere connecting them to Shayde. (COMIC: The Tides of Time ^[+]Loading...["The Tides of Time (comic story)"])

Notably, Shayde was able to track individuals through space and time, (COMIC: Oblivion ^[+]Loading...["Oblivion (comic story)"]) and could also travel through space and time unaided, phase through solid objects, and shoot "psychic bullets". (COMIC: Me and My Shadow ^[+]Loading...["Me and My Shadow (comic story)"], Oblivion ^[+]Loading...["Oblivion (comic story)"]) He also had extensive shapeshifting abilities (COMIC: Wormwood ^[+]Loading...["Wormwood (comic story)"] et al.) and could even merge with other beings. (COMIC: Me and My Shadow ^[+]Loading...["Me and My Shadow (comic story)"])

In his original form, he could also remove his spherical "head" and store things in his "body" via the resulting dimensionally-transcendental gap. (AUDIO: No Place Like Home ^[+]Loading...["No Place Like Home (audio story)"])

Behind the scenes

Two Time Sentinels, villains during the Titan comic series Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor.

• Shayde's origin was given contradictory descriptions in the stories The Good Companion and The Book of the War: in the former, he is a Time Sentinel; in the latter, he is a cast.
• Shayde was to appear in a deleted scene in Paul Cornell's novel No Future ^[+]Loading...["No Future (novel)"], in which it would be described as an "interventionist assassin-construct".

External links

• Cast at the Faction Paradox wiki
• Shayde at the Doctor Who Legacy wiki