B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (355 page)

[
480
]
The Eight Doctors

[
481
] The Valeyard

It is unclear exactly what the Valeyard is. The Master, who knows a great deal about him, says, “there is some evil in all of us, Doctor, even you. The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation, and I must say you do not improve with age”.

This is rather vague, and it seems that the Valeyard might be a potential future for the Doctor (like those presented to him in
The War Games
or arguably those of Romana in
Destiny of the Daleks
), a projection (like Cho-je in
Planet of the Spiders
or the Watcher in
Logopolis
) or an actual fully-fledged future incarnation (as he was in the original script). The Master seems to have met the Valeyard before, and sees him as a rival (he also says “as I’ve always know him, the Doctor” - suggesting that the Valeyard would normally refer to himself as “the Doctor” not “the Valeyard”).

That the Doctor has a “dark side” that can manifest, either physically or within his mind, was established in
The Three Doctors
; both the Valeyard and the Dream Lord (
Amy’s Choice
), arguably, are a further culmination of this. Some commentators have leaned toward viewing the Dream Lord (the result of psychic pollen manifesting a dark part of the Doctor’s psyche) as a sort of precursor (in the Doctor’s lifetime) to the Valeyard, but no overt link has ever been drawn between the two.

Whatever the Valeyard is, he doesn’t have any qualms about killing his past self - perhaps if the sixth Doctor died, the Valeyard would apparently gain his remaining regenerations by default. His survival at the end of the trial, when we had seen him disseminated (and the Doctor has promised to mend his ways) perhaps suggests that he is something more than just a mere Time Lord.

Note also that the Master says “twelfth and final”, not “twelfth and thirteenth” - which, if you squint, leaves open the possibility that the Doctor will survive the end of his regenerative cycle. Alternatively, if the Master really is working to the “Time Lords get thirteen lives” paradigm first established in
The Deadly Assassin
, the Valeyard might be a “12.2 Doctor” of sorts.

The novels and audios have tended to steer clear of the Valeyard - indeed, the Writers’ Guide for the New Adventures stated, “anything featuring the Valeyard is out - he’s a continuity nightmare, and a rather dull villain”. Despite this, a number of the novels (particularly
Time of Your Life
,
Head Games
and
Millennial Rites
) have developed the idea first aired in
Love and War
that the Doctor sacrificed his sixth incarnation (“the colourful jester”) to create a stronger, more ruthless seventh persona (“Time’s Champion”) who was better equipped to change his destiny. Ironically, books such as
Love and War
and
Head Games
suggest that this internal conflict might well have been the catalyst that brought the Valeyard into being. The PDAs
Matrix
and
Mission: Impractical
feature the Valeyard, as does the non-canonical audio
He Jests at Scars
.

[
482
]
Peri and the Piscon Paradox

[
483
] It’s difficult to say how much the CIA is operating independently in this story, or to what degree it’s sanctioned by the High Council. Presuming the CIA isn’t acting totally solo, the High Council that initiated the project is possibly the administration that was overthrown in
The Trial of a Time Lord
.

[
484
]
Lungbarrow

[
485
]
Thin Ice.
This was proposed as a means of Ace leaving the TARDIS in the unmade Season 27, but in the Big Finish adaptation of it, she stays with the Doctor after all.

[
486
] Dating “The Forgotten” (IDW
DW
mini-series #2) - No date is given. It’s interesting that the Time Lords designate this a “non-intervention site”, as the working assumption is that all intervention is banned. Presumably, this is a particularly sensitive area.

[
487
]
The Chaos Pool

[
488
] Romana’s desire to open up the Academy to non-Gallifreyans doesn’t happen until a long time on (in the
Gallifrey
mini-series) and must fizzle at this juncture.

[
489
]
A Death in the Family

[
490
] The novel version of
Human Nature
, in which a Gallifreyan agent arranges for an alien Aubertide to transform into a cow and get eaten as such.

[
491
]
The Gallifrey Chronicles

[
492
]
Christmas on a Rational Planet.
No date is given in the
Doctor Who
books, but the Faction Paradox timeline in the back of
FP: The Book of the War
pegs the Grandfather’s escape as occurring “one hundred fifty-one years” before the War in Heaven... and also places it simultaneous to the transition of House Paradox to Faction Paradox, which seems to happen in the era of the fourth Doctor, not (as here) the seventh.

[
493
]
Christmas on a Rational Planet, Alien Bodies, Interference
- the first of these identifies the Time Lord criminal brand as a “dragon tattoo”, probably in accordance with Jon Pertwee’s real-life tattoo, as seen on the exiled third Doctor’s right arm in
Doctor Who and the Silurians
.

[
494
] Dating
Death Comes to Time
(BBC1 drama, unnumbered) - While there are discrepancies,
Death Comes to Time
shares a number of features with the timeline of the later New Adventures - the Time Lords are more openly interventionist, and Ace is training up as a Time Lord. While
Lungbarrow
is clearly meant to lead straight into
Doctor Who - The Movie
, there are other stories set in the “gap”, such as
Excelis Decays
and
Master
. Ace is a lot older than she was in the New Adventures (her last appearance is in
Lungbarrow
). As with events in
Death Comes to Time
that occur in the Present Day section, the canonicity of these details is highly debatable. Fans are free to incorporate this story or ignore it.

[
495
]
Neverland

[
496
] The story takes place during the interim Presidency, in the seventh Doctor’s “current” Gallifrey.

[
497
] Dating “The Final Chapter” (
DWM
#262-265) - The date is given on the TARDIS screen at the beginning of the story, and is significantly later than the one given in
Neverland
. This is tricky to fit in with the books and audios, where Romana is President throughout the eighth Doctor range - although we never actually see the President in this story. It clearly happens before Gallifrey’s destruction and fits in with the idea of Gallifreyan society fraying and succumbing to cultism depicted around the time of
The Ancestor Cell
.

[
498
] The adventures of this newborn “ninth Doctor” (patterned after Big Finish producer Nicholas Briggs) continue in “Wormwood”, set around 5220.

[
499
]
The Shadows of Avalon

[
500
]
Interference

[
501
]
FP: The Book of the War
specifies that Compassion becomes a Type 102 TARDIS.

[
502
] The War in Heaven

Alien Bodies
introduced the future War and the Enemy (neither of which were capitalised at that point). Further details were added in subsequent eighth Doctor books, principally
Interference
,
The Taking of Planet 5
,
The Shadows of Avalon
and
The Ancestor Cell
. The term “the War in Heaven”, while not used very much in the Faction Paradox-related stories themselves, has become a common currency in fandom to differentiate this time-active conflict from the Last Great Time War of the new
Doctor Who
, following the lead of
FP: The Book of the War
as to how historical figures and others tend to perceive the conflict. Technically, this should be the
second
“War in Heaven”, the first being the conflict between the Time Lords, the Great Vampires (
State of Decay
) and the Yssgaroth (
The Pit
) as elaborated upon in
FP: The Book of the War
.

The Doctor destroyed Gallifrey in
The Ancestor Cell
, in large part to avert the War. At that point, all the events of the War ceased to be the “real” future of the
Doctor Who
universe. However, there’s the caveat that, by definition, it’s difficult to establish facts or the sequence of events of a time war. When asked about the canonicity of its
Faction Paradox
novels, Mad Norwegian Press - tongue planted firmly in cheek - would sometimes respond that
The Ancestor Cell
was propaganda written by the Faction’s enemies (as evidenced by a framing sequence therein), and that the War events had not been erased from history.

[
503
] Faction Paradox Terminology

These equivalents were used throughout the
Faction Paradox
novels, audios and comics for legal reasons. Similarly, “babels” are the
Faction Paradox
equivalent of the Shaydes from the
DWM
comic; the “Imperator Presidency” refers to Morbius’ tenure as head of the High Council. The War King is generally presumed to be the
Faction Paradox
version of the Master, but little confirms this beyond a few background details (the War King’s statement that he was one of the few to leave the Homeworld, that he has no House of his own, that the Council forgave him, etc.) given in
FP: Words from Nine Divinities
.

[
504
]
FP: The Book of the War
, which chronicles the first fifty years of the War in Heaven in great detail.

[
505
]
The Taking of Planet 5
.
FP: The Book of the War
says the alternate Homeworlds/Gallifreys were made “in the last decades before the War”, and
FP: Sabbath Dei
specifies that this happens thirty years before the War starts.

[
506
] This happens twenty years before the War, according to
FP: The Book of the War
. The Celestis first appeared in
Alien Bodies
.

When Did the War in Heaven Start?

There’s no indication in the
Doctor Who
books exactly when the War was due to start relative to the Doctor. The War began one hundred and fifty-one years after Grandfather Paradox escaped his prison, according to
The Book of the War
. That escape occurred in
Christmas on a Rational Planet
, shortly after Romana became President. Romana celebrates her one hundred and fiftieth year as President in
The Ancestor Cell
, meaning the War is now imminent.