The Doctor

The Doctor's first incarnation, known as the First Doctor.

The **Doctor**, or **Doctor Who**, was the chosen nom de plume of a half-gallifreyan, half-human Time Lord from the baseline Whoniverse. The most emblematic of the Renegade Time Lords, the Doctor traveled throughout time and space aboard a TARDIS in pursuit of knowledge and adventure.

## Overview

### Personality and Character

Considered a genius even among Time Lords, the Doctor is a never-ending well of kindness and benevolence, to whom his great age and many travels have granted much wisdom. On a darker note, though it takes much to arouse the Doctor's hatred, the results of his ire are devastating and unforgiving. The Doctor hates to admit defeat, and has often been observed to clam up or outright lie wherever his personal feelings are concerned.

### Abridged Biography

#### Youth

The son of a high-born Gallifreyan Time Lord called Ulysses and the Human Time Lady, Penelope Gate, the Doctor ran away when first faced with the Untempered Schism, but was nonetheless enrolled at the Time Lord Academy and achieved the rank of a Time Lord. During his schooling says, the Doctor, who was known as Theta-Sigma, became friends with several other Time Tots, including two who would later become his enemies: the Master and the Rani. At some point in his youth, the young Doctor became stranded within the Cloisters, and, from the Cloister Wraiths, heard the story of the Hybrid; forever after, he would fear that *he* was the creature of prophecy.

#### Life on Gallifrey

After graduating from the Academy, the Doctor  took a wife, a Time Lady called Patience, with whom he had several children. Rising high among the ranks of Time Lords, he became a respected authority, and brought an end to the use of Miniscopes in what may have been his first display of heroism. However, as time went on, he grew more and more dissatisfied with the Time Lord society's policy of non-interference into the affairs of other times and planets. Finally, a short time after he was offered the presidency of Gallifrey, the Doctor was moved to flee the planet together with his granddaughter Susan, taking the Hand of Omega with them to keep it safe from those who would misuse it. To make their escape, the Doctor and Susan stole a "rickety old TARDIS" from a repair workshop, which, despite its disfunctionalities, he found "the most beautiful thing in the world". The Doctor would go on to develop a deep bond with the TARDIS in question.

#### An Adventure through Time and Space

For hundreds of years and over several incarnations, the Doctor traveled through time and space, learning what he could and helping the locals whenever he encountered danger and evil. Having developed a special kinship with the planet Earth, he limited many of his travel to its past and future, took to having human traveling companions (starting with Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright), and progressively became Earth's go-to protector against non-terrestrial incursors less benevolent than he. He found himself most often antagonized by the Daleks, the warmongering residents of the planet Skaro, and their creator Davros, though he also roused the enmity of the Cybermen, of his old friend the Master, and of many more.

#### The Last Great Time War

Though he had had a rather trying relationship with the Time Lords of Gallifrey throughout his centuries of travels, the Doctor (then his eighth incarnation) was enrolled in the Time War which eventually broke out between the Time Lords and the Daleks. Pushed nearly over the edge by the trials of this war, the Doctor was forevermore ashamed of the terrible actions he had been forced to take in the War, choosing to cast an incarnation of himself who had lived through (and only through) the war out from his memory and from the numbering of his incarnations. Towards the end of the War, this incarnation, who was nearing death himself from old age and weariness, took the drastic decision of awakening the Moment to destroy Gallifrey, obliterating the Time Lords and Daleks both and putting a final end to the War.

#### Return to Adventure

Though later incarnations of the Doctor were eventually able to alter the course of history in this instance, making it so that Gallifrey had only ever *seemed* to be destroyed, the Doctor lived for hundreds of years with the guilt of having wiped out his own people in cold blood, which did considerable damage to his psyche. Nonetheless, from his ninth "official" self onwards, the Doctor returned to his old ways of traveling through time and space, fighting evil and righting wrongs, alongside a variety of companions (a few of the most influential being Rose Tyler and Clara Oswald). In this part of his life, the Doctor fell in love and married fellow time traveler River Song and was forced to witness her tragic death. In thanks for saving Gallifrey, his eleventh incarnation, which would have been his last in a traditional Regeneration Cycle, was granted a fresh set of apparently-limitless regenerations, with the first being his twelfth self.

#### Distant Future

A future incarnation of the Doctor, over five million years old (in a count that glosses over the billions of years he spent inside his Confession Dial), was still adventuring inside the TARDIS, and, in an unusually silly turn of events, antagonized a villainess known as Crayola in the company of a rather inept companion called Fiona. Later still, the Doctor, having finally figured out how to control his regenerations, decided to revisit a few of his favorite past faces. In a form identical to his fourth, the Doctor retired, becoming the curator of the Under-Gallery in London and being known, accordingly, as “the Curator”. The Curator was prone to reminiscing about his previous adventures and incarnations, and, if he felt it safe to do so, did not shy away from disclosing them to whoever asked.

## Incarnations

### Regenerations

As he was a Time Lord by birth and training, the Doctor possessed the ability to regenerate, changing his looks and temper while keeping his memories and core personality intact. He did not do so a mere 12 times as most Time Lords must, but was instead granted an extended regenerative cycle by Rassilon while on the brink of true death in Trenzalore, allowing him to have an apparently infinite number of regenerations.

As typical of Time Lord philosophy, the Doctor, at different points of his life, was uncertain whether each of his incarnations was an independant individual with a finite lifespan who merely shared the previous Doctors' memories, or merely an aspect of his true self who had but an illusion of individuality. While initially keen on the latter, incarnations of the Doctor past his eighth tended to favor the former. He even took to mentally simulating conversations with some of his past selves, valuing "their" insight; for instance, the Twelfth Doctor once had an extensive "conversation" with his fourth self.

Perhaps to stress each new incarnation's individuality, the Doctor tended to pick an "iconic" outfit early on in each incarnation and wear it evermore. It was usually a rather momentous occasion, marking a significant psychological change, if a given incarnation of the Doctor significantly overhauled his dress.