The Corsair The Corsair was a Time Lord adventurer , described by the Eleventh Doctor as " one of the good ones " . The Corsair changed gender throughout their many incarnations . The Doctor noted that when the Corsair was female , " she was a bad girl . " ( TV : " The Doctor ' s Wife " ) Biography . Like all Time Lord s , the Corsair was taken from his family at the age of eight for the selection process in the Drylands . Staring into the Untempered Schism as part of a Time Lord initiation rite , the Corsair reacted by running away from what he saw in the Schism . ( PROSE : " A Brief History of Time Lords " ) One of the Corsair ' s incarnations was female . ( PROSE : " Keeping up with the Joneses " ) The Fourth Doctor once said to Romana II that he should meet up with the Corsair sometime , referring to the Corsair as both male and female when he did so . ( PROSE : " Shada " ) The Corsair had the symbol of the Ouroboros tattoo ed on each of their incarnations . According to the Eleventh Doctor , the Corsair was female a couple of times , saying she was " a bad girl " each time . ( TV : " The Doctor ' s Wife " ) According to the Ninth Doctor , the Corsair kept a sub - dimensional void in a hatbox in 23rd century Swindon . ( COMIC : " Weapons of Past Destruction " ) Final incarnation and death . The final incarnation of the Corsair was described by Auntie , a composite humanoid servant of House , as " a strapping big bloke " . She was a good authority on the matter ; after all , she had the Corsair ' s left arm stitched onto her torso in place of her own , while the other composite humanoid slave , " Uncle " , received " the spine and the kidney s " . The loss of these organs was presumably lethal , and the Corsair went the way of House ' s numerous other Time Lord victims . The Eleventh Doctor discovered the Corsair ' s fate after being contacted by a hypercube with their peculiar Ouroboros symbol and following its psychic ally encoded distress message to House . ( TV : " The Doctor ' s Wife " ) Later references . During one adventure , while pushing a heavy crate , the Eleventh Doctor said that if he kept up this habit , he would develop big arms like the Corsair . ( GAME : " The Eternity Clock " ) Behind the scenes . The Brilliant Book 2012 . According to " The Brilliant Book 2012 " , a book that contains information , the Ouroboros tattoo trademark of the Corsair — a snake eating its own tail , symbolising eternity — moved around the Corsair ' s body with each regeneration . Amongst his secret missions for the Time Lords , the Corsair stole the Callisto Pulse from the Callistan Kleptocracy . He visited Earth several times and was worshipped as a god by the Assyria ns . The Doctor and Corsair had many adventures together , getting drunk in the Corsair ' s fourth , fifth , and eighth incarnations . The Corsair was formally censured by the Time Lords after they may have been linked to the theft of the Portrait of Rassilon . This was overturned by Lady President Flavia , perhaps due to the Corsair ' s smile . The Corsair ' s final adventure was when he was working on the Time Lords ' Fourth Universal Survey . He was in his ninth incarnation when House killed him .