Christopher Morley ponders what the War Doctor might have been doing between 'Night' and 'Day Of The Doctor'.
While there may currently be an air of mystery regarding the Twelfth Doctor's familiar appearance, an arguably bigger puzzle could be about to be solved. Remember Night & Day Of The Doctor? So far we've seen only the regeneration from Eighth into the War Doctor, & the redemption & subsequent rebirth of Gallifrey's greatest Time War soldier into his Ninth body. Leaving another question hanging in the air...
While there may currently be an air of mystery regarding the Twelfth Doctor's familiar appearance, an arguably bigger puzzle could be about to be solved. Remember Night & Day Of The Doctor? So far we've seen only the regeneration from Eighth into the War Doctor, & the redemption & subsequent rebirth of Gallifrey's greatest Time War soldier into his Ninth body. Leaving another question hanging in the air...
Namely, what was
he doing before/between the two most defining days of his career as a
warrior? The forthcoming novel Engines Of War,by George Mann (out
July 31) promises to answer at least part of that, filling in some of
the quite considerable gaps in his personal timeline. Of course we
all know how he came to be - the Eighth Doctor, having tried to avoid
the War if at all possible, crash-lands on Karn (remember The
Brain Of Morbius?) &
eventually gives in to the persuasion of the Sisterhood to try one of
their newest home brews. It'll let him choose the exact nature of his
next incarnation.....
Mindful of the fact
that what the universe needs now is a fighter, he becomes one - going
so far as to reject the title of 'Doctor' before going from 'no
more' to 'once more' with the help of his future selves. But before
he even thought about sending both his own people & the Daleks to
Kingdom Come with the Moment, where could he have been or gone &
what could he be doing? There are several possible eventualities for
perhaps the most conflicted & indeed conflict-scarred of the Time
Lord race.
Let's start with
the idea that after strapping on Cass's bandolier, he
fires up the TARDIS, has a fiddle with the desktop theme (you might
notice his own Type 40's interior is radically different from any
seen before) & heads back home. Volunteering as a commander as
part of a recruitment drive by the Lord President, he leads his
people into battle against the Daleks & is rightly celebrated as
possibly the greatest military leader his planet's ever seen.
But add in
another possibility. He does indeed sign up to join the army, but
soon grows tired of the internal politics & goes rogue to try to
get the job done on his own terms as a saboteur of sorts. We're off
to Skaro - you might want to find something to hang on to!
In Genesis
Of The Daleks, you might recall
the Fourth Doctor being given an important mission- the aversion of
the creation of the titular robotic Nazi analogies. The be-scarfed one
manages to do so, but only for a short while in Time Lord terms.
You might see
where this going now..what if the War Doctor were able to travel back
to that point & actually succeed in their complete destruction?
After all, no Daleks should by extension mean 'no war' & quite
possibly 'no more'. But what then?
Of course he
could have gone completely the other way before seeing the light in
his later years. His younger self could have had quite a young,
headstrong thirst for throwing himself into battle & gone off as
a sort of 'hired gun', willing to fight alongside either those whose
cause he believed in most or the highest bidder, depending on the
extent of his mercenary nature - creating a universe in which the
sound of the TARDIS materialising could mean death for all who stand
in his path (his use of his trusty time/space steed as a battering
ram in Day perhaps the
earliest seen example of such) with the Doctor feared as an
instrument of chaos rather than implicitly trusted as bringer of
peace.
Such a shift away
from the ideals of his previous selves could be radical but taking
the risk could be rewarding, as well as a challenge for any writer
willing to attempt it. In the ultimate paradox it could well be that
in his attempts to intervene in smaller-scale skirmishes across the
galaxy he inadvertently helps to bring about the larger-scale Time
War he was 'created' to end - after all not a lot of the wider history
of the battle itself has yet been shown, though certain 'classic'
era stories could retroactively be said to be among the birth pangs
of it (Genesis most
likely to be prominent in this line of thinking, as, chronologically
speaking, it functions as the first strike against the Daleks
by the Time Lords). So there
could be scope for further delves into Gallifrey's apparent pre-Day
demise.
Which leads
nicely into yet another alternative. What if it was the War Doctor
who formed the founding triumvirate of Time Lord society as we know
it alongside Rassilon & Omega? After all 'The Other', as the
mysterious third man has come to be known, could have simply been an
alias used by the Doctor to preserve his own mystique as he sought to
have a say in the rebuilding of his/their corner of the constellation
of Kasterborous.
He might even
have served on the front-lines of their fight against the Cult of
Pythia, during which magic & superstition were overthrown by
cold, hard science in what came to be recorded as the Dark Times in
later histories of Gallifrey - and his warrior nature might have
helped ensure a fruitful bond with the Hand of Omega, the 'stellar
manipulator' so expertly used by his Seventh incarnation in
Remembrance Of The Daleks (which might also be said to be yet another tactical manoeuvre in the
wider Time War, with Skaro seemingly destroyed & Davros left for
dead until The Stolen Earth
proves he's very much living & still dangerously insane).
Perhaps its the
memory of a confrontation with the former Kaled chief
scientist/aspiring Dalek Emperor in his War-era which drives him to
be so merciless in Dalek -
the assumed (false) memory that they drove him quite literally to
the edge of destruction with no choice but to push that big red
button was most likely foremost in his thinking down in Henry Van
Statten's vaults, & might also explain Ten's disbelief when
confronted with the face that mutated the Kaleds during one of the
final acts of Journey's End,
having assumed he was dead & indeed seen his ship seemingly
obliterated.
Does he also
somehow remember Caan, the mad prophet who foresees the doom of his
own race? It's entirely possible that the War Doctor could have run
into him at some point during the universe-wide battle, &
undoubtedly it could have made for a fascinating encounter. How much
of it the giggly partially-exposed Dalek remembers is also as yet a
moot point. But there's yet another plausible layer to explore, also.
By now the Doctor
is settling into his Eleventh incarnation (the one who alongside Ten
remembers the most of his war-stained past) & discovers his
oldest nemesis posing as a man-made invention helping Winston
Churchill see off the threat of Nazism (Victory Of The
Daleks). He's understandably
horrified, as he thought they'd all been wiped out.
But it would
appear that at least one ship escaped what could have been an attempt
at sabotage by the War Doctor - the possible after-effects of his
tactical strikes impacting his future self not something Eleven's
keen to contemplate before going full circle & accepting his War
service as a necessary part of his life, & indeed one of the best
going by the reconciliation afforded by the saving of Gallifrey in
Day. But wherever he
chose or was forced to take his TARDIS, we can only hope Engines
Of War delivers on what it has
to be said is abundant promise.
Will the veil of
mystery be entirely lifted? Doubtful. But surely even the tiniest
glimpse of the War Doctor's past will make us appreciate what drove
him to do as he did 'without choice, in the name of peace &
sanity' just that little bit more, as he deserves given his standing
in the pantheon.
