B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  The Council of Eight perished except for the benevolent Soul and Octan, who journeyed to 1588 in a last-ditch effort to save their plans. The Doctor donated some of his life energy to stabilize Soul’s body into his former guise as the old man Singleton. Soul took Octan’s starkiller.

  The Doctor and his allies left in the TARDIS, while Soul and Miranda’s daughter Zezanne evacuated in the Jonah, which arrived in a junkyard in 1963. Beings who sought to acquire the starkiller monitored the Jonah’s departure.

  Other beings that survived until the last moments of the universe included the Solarii and Korsann’s reptilian race.

  Legends said the Sycorax would be one of the last three races left when the universe finally died. Humans were one of the other two. [1778]

  Our universe was destroyed in the Big Crunch. All matter imploded to a central point, returning to the state from which it was created: “a bright blazing pinprick of sheer energy”. [1779] The Time Lords referred to the end of the universe as Event Two. [1780]

  Insect-like “forces of chaos” fed on the debris of the collapse of the universe, as they had fed on the Big Bang. [1781]

  The City of the Saved

  w - The City of the Saved created by Compassion and the UniMac occupied - or rather comprised - an artificially sustained bubble that existed after the end of the universe, and before the beginning of the next one. Within the City’s environs - believed to be the size of a spiral galaxy - literally every member of the entire human race, “from its sentient prehuman ancestors to its posthuman offshoots”, had been resurrected in invulnerable bodies. The City’s population easily numbered in the septillions. Multiple versions of the same person could be present (as was the case with Compassion’s four previous iterations, who had been born in the Remote’s remembrance tanks).

  The City had a single access point: the Uptime Gate, a powerful time corridor connected to the far future of the universe, at a point beyond which most of the temporal powers travelled. The Rump Parliament unofficially represented Faction Paradox’s interests within the City. [1782]

  Marcus Americanus Scriptor visited the City of the Saved in search of the reincarnated Adolf Hitler. Upon learning that Hitler had been sentenced to imprisonment for six million lifetimes, Scriptor vowed to be waiting when he was released. [1783]

  w - FP: Of the City of the Saved... [1784]

  The first of Compassion’s timeship offspring, the unstable Antipathy, escaped from the Homeworld of the Great Houses and smuggled himself into the City. Antipathy’s presence disrupted the codes governing the City and caused political unrest; to rectify the problem, Godfather Avatar of Faction Paradox - a loa who took human hosts - destroyed himself and Antipathy’s mind with an annihilation bomb.

  Compassion’s original iteration, Laura Tobin, worked as a private investigator in the City. Her investigation into the advent of “potent” weapons, i.e. weapons that could kill residents of the City, brought her into contact with the timeship Compassion (a.k.a. Compassion V) - who wanted Tobin to become her living avatar, and help restore order within the City. Tobin refused to become a spokesperson for a would-be goddess, and departed onto the City streets.

  Antipathy’s actions had pushed various factions within the City toward civil war. As a safeguard against the City’s destruction, UniMac helped to secretly establish an enclave of humans within Antipathy’s interior dimensions.

  Just as a universe existed before ours, so will another universe be formed from the ashes of ours, and the physical laws there will be very different. This will be the domain of Saraquazel. [1785] The monstrous Zytragupten will exist in the universe to come. A Zytragupten child, the Lokhus, will be born malformed and culled. It will be cast into the infernal abyss, but survive, fall into our universe and arrive in the village of Stockbridge. [1786]

  Future History Section Sidebars

  Fixed Points in Time

  The new Doctor Who has introduced the concept of “fixed points in time” as a shorthand, of sorts, to address a problem with time travel that classic Doctor Who always had, but was hesitant to discuss. Namely, why does the Doctor treat the past of modern-day Earth as if it’s sacrosanct, but happily intervene in events set in Earth’s future? To a time traveller, most if not all of history should be the past from some vantage point, meaning that the nexus points of both Earth’s “past” and “future” history should be treated with equal weight.

  Even David Whitaker (Doctor Who’s first script editor, and the show’s biggest proponent of the “You cannot change history, not one line” approach to time travel) is somewhat hypocritical about this. On Whitaker’s watch, it’s literally impossible for Barbara to alter Aztec history (The Aztecs), and efforts to change Napoleon’s timeline are doomed to failure (the final scene of The Reign of Terror). However, given the chance to overthrow the Daleks who have conquered Earth (conventionally, without benefit of time travel) circa 2167, the Doctor and his friends without hesitation do so (The Dalek Invasion of Earth). Whitaker’s successors favoured the view that altering history was possible, but the dichotomy of leaving Earth’s past alone while mucking about with its future remained. The slaughter of the Huguenots in Paris, 1572, must be allowed to play itself out (The Massacre), but stopping Mavic Chen and the Daleks from building a Time Destructor in the year 4000 is fair game (The Daleks’ Master Plan).

  In the early Silurian stories (Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Sea Devils), the third Doctor further complicates matters by advocating an accord between humanity and the Silurians that he must know - as a matter of established history - didn’t happen. It’s fairly evident that Malcolm Hulke, Terrance Dicks, et al, were more concerned with the stories’ morality play than the temporal implications of the Doctor’s viewpoint, but the lack of any explanation has been conspicuous by its absence.

  In the new series, moments/events that must, at all cost, happen to preserve the integrity of history are called “fixed points in time”. The phrase has become fairly common currency, despite the tenth Doctor stressing to Adelaide Brooke in The Waters of Mars that it’s all conjecture, not established fact. (“I mean, it’s only a theory... but I think certain moments in time are fixed. Tiny, precious moments. Everything else is in flux, anything can happen, but those certain moments, they have to stand. This base, on Mars, with you, Adelaide Brooke, this is one vital moment. What happens here must always happen.”) Whatever his uncertainty about the topic, though, the Doctor so strongly believes that the devastation of Pompeii (The Fires of Pompeii) is a “fixed point in history” that he and Donna kill twenty thousand people to make it happen.

  In Cold Blood, and in an echo of past Silurian stories, the eleventh Doctor says that human and Silurian representatives in 2020 can craft an accord between their races because “There are fixed points through time, where things must always stay the way they are. This is not one of them. This is an opportunity, a temporal tipping point. Whatever happens today, will change future events, create its own timeline, its own reality.” That isn’t a very satisfactory explanation, though... wouldn’t the successful brokering of such a deal in 2020 overwrite all of the fixed points in time after that? Would the timetable of Adelaide Brooke’s mission to Mars still hold true if humanity had gained access to Silurian technology about three decades beforehand? It’s fair to say that Cold Blood doesn’t actually answer the problems inherent in the Pertwee Silurian stories, it just more directly acknowledges that they exist.

  The consequence of averting a fixed point in time isn’t consistently rendered... when River Song subverts a fixed point in time by not shooting the eleventh Doctor (The Wedding of River Song), it instantly causes all of time and space to occur at the same moment. But when the tenth Doctor prevents Adelaide Brooke from dying in The Waters of Mars, nothing appears to happen in the interim before she fulfills upon the fixed point by committing suicide. The Reapers appear when Rose saves her father in Father’s Day, but that might owe to her intervening in her personal history, not a fixed
point. The comic story “Ripper’s Curse” seems confused about this - the eleventh Doctor (seemingly forgetting everything he learned in The Waters of Mars) says that every victim of Jack the Ripper is “a static point in space and time, they can’t be altered”, then he, Amy and Rory do intervene anyway, and incur no penalty when one victim is swapped for another. Perhaps a “static point” is different from a “fixed point”, but it isn’t explained how. Further complicating this, The Wedding of River Song claims that Lake Silencio, 2011, is a “still point in time” that can be used to create a “fixed point”, but doesn’t actually define what a “still point” is or how one comes about.

  The final way that the new series addresses “fixed points in time” is that Captain Jack is named as one following Rose’s resurrecting him in The Parting of the Ways. (The Doctor in Utopia on Jack’s immortality: “You’re a fixed point in time and space. You’re a fact. That’s never meant to happen.”) This deviates from the established use of “fixed point in time”, but it at least has a certain internal logic: if Jack is, effectively, a mobile set of space-time coordinates that are impervious to being nullified, it might follow that his body could restore itself after being pulped (TW: Children of Earth). What effect becoming a “fixed point” had on Jack’s blood is more open to interpretation - in TW: Miracle Day, the Blessing recalibrates itself after scanning Jack’s blood, and Rex Matheson becomes similarly immortal owing to an infusion of Jack’s blood and highly unusual circumstances. It remains to be seen if Rex himself is now a “fixed point”, or just someone who can heal mortal injury.

  The Dalek Emperors

  Over the course of Doctor Who we see four different designs for the Dalek Emperor. We can be confident that this isn’t always the same individual and, even allowing for the ability of the Daleks as a species and individually to survive what looks like certain death, can reasonably conclude that there are at least three bearers of the title.

  • The “Golden Emperor” - The Dalek Chronicles comic strip introduced a gold Emperor with an oversized, spherical head, and he also appeared in the Dalek books of the sixties - he was the central character of the strip and we learn a great deal about him. He’s never referred to as the “Golden Emperor” in the strip, but was in some supporting material, such as the game “The Race to the Golden Emperor” in Terry Nation’s Dalek Annual 1979.

  The character was introduced to new audiences by reprints in the seventies Dalek Annuals and Doctor Who Weekly reprints early in the eighties, and DWM used the same design in two original comic strips: “Nemesis of the Daleks” (set in the twenty-sixth century) and “Emperor of the Daleks” (set after Revelation of the Daleks). It’s unclear if this is meant to be the same individual, and the Emperor is apparently killed at the end of both stories.

  • The “Evil Emperor” - In The Evil of the Daleks, the Dalek Emperor is a vast, immobile Dalek based in a chamber in Dalek City. This design reappears in the stageplay The Ultimate Adventure, the Dalek Empire stories and The Dalek Factor. This Emperor is apparently killed at the end of The Evil of the Daleks, although he’s not quite dead the last time we see him in that story (and this chronology places Dalek Empire significantly after The Evil of the Daleks).

  Some commentators (Lofficier and About Time included) have speculated that this is Davros, although dialogue in The Evil of the Daleks seems to rule that out by stating it’s the first time either the Doctor or the Emperor has met the other.

  A more open question is whether this is the same individual as the Golden Emperor. The story “Secret of the Emperor” in The Dalek Outer Space Book depicts the Golden Emperor being rebuilt as an immobile Emperor based on Skaro. The design is not the same as seen in The Evil of the Daleks, but it’s clearly the same concept.

  In John Peel’s books - the novelisations The Chase, The Daleks’ Master Plan, The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks and his original novels War of the Daleks and Legacy of the Daleks - the Daleks are led by the Dalek Prime. This is the same individual Dalek who makes the speech about the Daleks becoming the supreme beings of the universe at the end of Genesis of the Daleks. In Peel’s version, he becomes the Daleks’ leader, and in War of the Daleks, the description of his casing closely matches that of the Golden Emperor. War of the Daleks and the novelisation of The Evil of the Daleks have the Dalek Prime and Emperor respectively as the last survivor of the original batch of Daleks - the same individual, in other words. This is the Golden Emperor who becomes the Evil Emperor, tweaked to fit the origin of the race seen in Genesis of the Daleks, as opposed to the one in The Dalek Chronicles. The real-life creator of the Daleks, Terry Nation, is said to have preferred the idea that the Daleks were rule by a Council rather than an Emperor, and the Dalek Prime fits that, too.

  In The Evil of the Daleks, the Doctor meets the Emperor for the first time and the implication is that it’s the first time the Emperor has met the Doctor, too. The only story to contradict that is “Nemesis of the Daleks”, which is set in the twenty-sixth century (there’s no date given for the Skaro sequence of The Evil of the Daleks, but no fan chronology has ever put it before this time) and has the Emperor meeting the seventh Doctor and using a mind probe to visualize all six of his previous incarnations.

  On balance, the Golden Emperor and Evil Emperor would seem to be the same individual, the last survivor of the first batch of Daleks (as seen in Genesis of the Daleks or, if you prefer, The Dalek Chronicles), who leads them for most of their recorded history.

  The Emperor we see in the Dalek Empire audio series resembles the Evil Emperor, but is this the same individual? There’s no way of knowing conclusively, but it could well be. That Emperor dies at the end of that series, in a manner that goes out of its way to leave virtually no possibility he survived.

  • “Emperor Davros” - At the end of Revelation of the Daleks, Davros is taken to Skaro to face trial by the Supreme Dalek, a role he wants for himself. In the next television story, Remembrance of the Daleks, Davros is Emperor and has a casing based on that of the Golden Emperor - although it is cream and gold, with a hexagonal patch instead of an eyestalk, and has no sucker or gun. How he comes to be Emperor has been depicted three times... the DWM strip “Emperor of the Daleks” shows the Golden Emperor being killed and Davros becoming Emperor. The book War of the Daleks says Davros never really had power, he was tricked by the Daleks into thinking he did. The audio Terror Firma has Davros undergoing a full mutation (physical and mental) to become a Dalek Emperor. (A fourth might exist in the DVD extra The Davros Mission, which has Davros bringing the Daleks on Skaro to heel, although the events to follow aren’t specified.) The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End say that Davros was lost early in the Time War, but not that he was Emperor at the time.

  • “The Last Emperor” - The Parting of the Ways introduces a new Emperor: a vast and apparently immobile structure containing a vast Dalek mutant. This is clearly not Davros, and he’s killed at the end of the story. Is this the Golden Emperor in another new casing? If it is, he’s grown - it’s no exaggeration to say that the mutant we see wouldn’t fit in the Golden Emperor’s casing.

  There are at least two Emperors, then - a Dalek mutant and Davros. If we accept at face value the death of the Emperor in The Evil of the Daleks, we can say that there are at least three individuals. Dalek Empire would seem to make that four.

  The maximum number of Emperors is harder to determine. The first panel we see the Golden Emperor’s new casing in “Genesis of Evil”, a caption informs us this is “the first Dalek Emperor”, implying there would eventually be more than one, although there’s little doubt the Emperor remains the same individual throughout The Dalek Chronicles. Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who Annual essay refers to “puppet Emperors” of the Daleks. The Dalek Factor has an Emperor whose description matches the Evil Emperor, described as “an Emperor”, which may mean there was more than one at that time.

  We might infer that there were many Emperors. The Dalek Chronicles ends with the Empe
ror planning an attack on Earth. The stageplay The Curse of the Daleks is set in what could be the aftermath, and the Black Dalek rules Skaro following a Dalek defeat. So the Golden Emperor may have been killed. The Moroks raid Skaro and take a Dalek as a trophy according to The Space Museum. Could they have killed an Emperor as part of that conquest? An Emperor dies in The Evil of the Daleks, “Nemesis of the Daleks”, “Emperor of the Daleks”, The Parting of the Ways and Dalek Empire. That would be seven Emperors that we know of.

  Dalek Hierarchy

  The ongoing Dalek comic strip in TV Century 21 (called simply “The Daleks”, later regarded as “The Dalek Chronicles”) set up a straightforward hierarchy for the early Daleks. The Emperor led, guided by the Brain Machine (a perfect computer with the authority to dismiss him if he failed). The sixties Dalek annuals concurred with this, occasionally referring to the Emperor as the Supreme Dalek and the Gold Dalek. The Black Dalek was his “deputy” and “warlord” (and had a slightly more powerful casing and weapons than the normal Daleks). The rarely-seen Red Dalek looked after research and development on Skaro.

  In non-television stories from the sixties - “The Dalek Chronicles” strip, the Dalek books, the stageplay The Curse of the Daleks - it seems clear that there’s only one Black Dalek. It leads the Daleks in The Curse of the Daleks. In both the 60s and 70s in the TV Comic/TV Action strips, the Black Dalek is in overall command (he’s black with red details in the TV Action comic “The Planet of the Daleks”) and he’s referred to as “Dalek Leader”; this could well be the same individual.

  Black Daleks do show up frequently as leaders in the TV series, presumably because all the production team had to do to distinguish the head Dalek from the others was repaint an existing prop, and painting it black worked well even when the story was in black and white. We never see more than one at a time. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Dalek Earth Force is led by a Black Dalek, “the Supreme Controller”, who takes his orders from a Supreme Command which is offworld (presumably on Skaro, although this is never stated). A Black Dalek is “the Dalek Supreme” in The Chase (and is based on Skaro). A Black Dalek is “the Supreme” in Mission to the Unknown/The Daleks’ Master Plan, and again reports to Skaro. There’s a Black Dalek, a.k.a. “the Supreme Dalek”, in Resurrection of the Daleks who seems to be the highest authority of the weakened Daleks. The Renegade Faction in Remembrance of the Daleks is led by a Black Dalek. The leader of the Cult of Skaro, Sec, had an all-black casing in Doomsday and Daleks in Manhattan.