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"They call me The Doctor"
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| The Doctor's Return to Gallifrey |
 While The Doctor was at
The Academy, the Time Lord Morbius was in the midst of his rise to
power (The Doctor is later able to recognize his telepathic trace:
The Brain of Morbius). While The Doctor was off-planet,
Morbius expanded his ambitions and tried to convince the High
Council of Time Lords to use their powers for conquest. The
resulting conflict ended with Morbius' apparent execution. Following
this, the Council issued a recall of all Time Lords (the ability to
recall a TARDIS has been used officially four times; we've seen
three of these: The War Games, Arc of Infinity, and
The Trial of a Time Lord, and The Doctor remembers the first
use: The Deadly Assassin). Following the Morbius incident,
the Council reiterated the decree that the Time Lords would be less
involved in external affairs. Although The Doctor was upset by the
decision, they felt unable to disobey. Having received their Doctorate,
they began to put their knowledge to practical use. They invented the Time
Path Indicator, a device which enables a TARDIS to track other time
vehicles (The Chase), and became better acquainted with the
operating systems of current time capsules (in addition to having
used one during their doctoral studies, they are familiar enough with
them to sabotage them: The Time Meddler, The Daleks'
Master Plan, Terror of the Autons, and The Mark of The
Rani). They worked on Gallifrey's defensive systems and can bypass
them (The Invasion of Time). At some point during this period
The Doctor became politically active and went on several diplomatic
missions for the High Council. They acted as the Council's
representative at the opening of Research Station J7, where they met
and befriended scientist Joinson Dastari (The Two Doctors).
On their way to the Third Inter-Galactic Peace Conference The Doctor
was kidnapped by Medusoids, who attempted to use a mind probe on them
(Frontier in Space). During another mission The Doctor saw
miniscopes, which are used to keep miniaturized specimens. They were so
appalled by them that after they returned to Gallifrey they persuaded
the High Council, despite its policy of non-interference, to have
them banned (Carnival of Monsters). This action brought them
to the attention of the Celestial Intervention Agency, a covert
organization whose members disagreed with the non-interference
policy, and this would prove to be a turning point in their life.
During this period The Doctor also made friends and enemies who
would figure in later events, including Hedin, Damon, and Thalia
(Arc of Infinity). Most importantly, they became a parent.
We know nothing of the other parent of their child, or even whether the
child was male or female. We know only that the child was the parent
of a daughter named Susan.
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| The Doctor's Departure from Gallifrey |
The most serious gap in
our knowledge of The Doctor's life concerns the reasons for their
departure from Gallifrey. On various occasions they have claimed to be
an exile (An Unearthly Child) who can't go back to their own
planet (The Massacre), but they've also suggested that they left
their home because of boredom, and because the Time Lords refused to
use their powers to help others (The War Games). They've claimed
to have had a link with the Time Lord intelligentsia, but lost it
"when they kicked me out" (The Invisible Enemy). Their wistful
memories of their family (The Tomb of the Cybermen, Time and
The Rani, Doctor Who TVM) and their statement that they
don't know if they're alive (The Curse of Fenric) would
seem to suggest that something may have happened to them, something
so terrible that it, too, was a factor in The Doctor's departure. Following
an adventure in which The Fifth Doctor and his first three
incarnations defeat a menace to Gallifrey, Chancellor Flavia says
that they've evaded their responsibilities for too long, and that "once again" she is offering them the Presidency of the High Council of
Time Lords (The Five Doctors). This, coupled with their
reluctance to take the office, suggests that they might have left for
this reason. Although they are impeached for abandoning their duty some
time before the trial of their sixth persona (The Trial of a Time
Lord), The Seventh Doctor later claims the title
"President-Elect of the High Council" (Remembrance of the
Daleks). Since they're completing their first incarnation's
"unfinished business" with the Hand of Omega, they may be using a
title which that Doctor had the right to use. When companion Tegan
Jovanka leaves them because of the carnage wrought by the Daleks and
because her adventures with The Doctor have ceased to be fun, they
tell Turlough that they left Gallifrey for similar reasons
(Resurrection of the Daleks). The true reasons behind The
Doctor's departure may be any, all, or none of these. All that we
know for certain is that The Doctor, with their granddaughter Susan in
tow, stole an antiquated Type 40 TARDIS which was in for repairs,
and fled from Gallifrey.
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| Travels with Susan: The Early Journeys |
Susan was a small child
when she and The Doctor left Gallifrey. She once said that she'd had
"many homes in many places" (Marco Polo). These are some of
the adventures which The Doctor and Susan shared. While it's likely
that the travelers visited other times together, the available
records of this period are so fragmentary that we cannot be sure.
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The Doctor and Susan
visited the planet Esto, where they encountered a "screaming jungle"
with telepathic plants (The Keys of Marinus, The
Sensorites)
The travelers met Beau Brummel, who told
The Doctor that they looked better wearing a cloak (The
Sensorites)
The Doctor and Susan arrived on Venus, a
planet with metal seas (Marco Polo), and metal flowers
(The Wheel in Space); The Doctor sang Susan to sleep with
Venusian lullabies (The Curse of Peladon, The Monster of
Peladon); they learned the old joke that you should never trust
a Venusian shanghorn with your perigosto stick (The Green
Death)
In Greece around 250 BC, The Doctor and
Susan met Archimedes (The Two Doctors) and saw ships which
dated back to the time of Pericles (Enlightenment); during
this visit the TARDIS disguised itself as an Ionic column (An
Unearthly Child)
In London in the late 19th century, The
Doctor became friends with songwriters Gilbert and Sullivan, who
gave them a coat (The Edge of Destruction)
During World War I, Susan and The Doctor
witnessed a Zeppelin raid (Planet of Giants)
The Doctor and Susan nearly lost the
TARDIS during a visit to the planet Quinnus (The Edge of
Destruction)
Susan and The Doctor had an adventure
during the French Revolution, which she later described as their
favorite period in Earth's history (An Unearthly Child,
The Reign of Terror); they met Marie Antoinette, who gave The
Doctor a picklock (Pyramids of Mars); on this occasion, the
TARDIS disguised itself as a sedan chair (An Unearthly
Child), an early indication the ship's
chameleon circuit was developing a fault, since by this time sedan
chairs were no longer in common use
The TARDIS landed in the Tower of London,
and in order to return to it The Doctor quarreled with Henry VIII,
who threw a parson's nose at them and then sent them to the Tower
(The Sensorites)
The TARDIS made an emergency landing on Gallifrey
during the Old Time (Silver Nemesis), and The Doctor met
Rassilon and Omega during their first experiments with time travel.
The ship was without power, and to escape The Doctor was forced to
help create the technology which enables him to travel in
time. They had "trouble with the prototype" of the Hand of
Omega, a stellar manipulator (Remembrance of the Daleks), but
when the device was perfected, Omega used it to trigger a stellar
explosion and was apparently killed in the process (The Three
Doctors). Rassilon used the power released by Omega's sacrifice
to create the Eye of Harmony, a perfectly-balanced black hole at the
heart of Gallifrey which transmits temporal energy (The Deadly
Assassin). Susan
seems to have created a minor temporal paradox when she used the
term TARDIS, an acronym of Time And Relative Dimension In Space, to
describe the new time capsules (An Unearthly Child).
Rassilon, who knew of the Hand's potential as a weapon, and who
realized that The Doctor was from Gallifrey's future, entrusted them
with the responsibility of safeguarding the device (Remembrance
of the Daleks) and gave them a ring with mysterious powers. The
energy from the Hand affected the TARDIS, causing system failures
which forced it to land in London in the spring of 1963 (An
Unearthly Child). 
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