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Colditz
(Steve Lyons) |
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 Name: Elizabeth Klein
Format:
Audio and Book
Time of Origin: Originated from an
alternate version of 1965; encountered The Doctor in Germany in 1944;
began travelling with him after a meeting in Africa in 1951, ‘died’ in
2044.
Appearances: "Colditz", "A
Thousand Tiny Wings" to "Survival
of the Fittest/Klein’s Story", "The
Architects of History", "Persuasion", "Starlight Robbery", "Daleks Among Us", brief appearance in "That Time
I Nearly Destroyed the World While Looking for a Dress".
Doctors: Travelled for a time with
the Seventh
Doctor, she was acquainted with an alternate version
of the Eighth
Doctor.
Companions: Attempted to use Ace as a hostage
in her first meeting with The Doctor, had a brief encounter with
a time-jumping Polly Wright (Although this encounter may have been
erased).
History: Klein is virtually unique in The Doctor’s
history in that she has been both his companion and his enemy; while
she was primarily motivated by her central goal to understand the
secrets of the TARDIS and use them to restore her timeline where
the Nazis won the Second World War, her initial actions upon meeting
The Doctor were entirely beneficial to him, Klein aiding The Doctor
more than once before she returned to her original mission and plans
(Although there is evidence that she was merely waiting for her moment
to put her plans into action rather than ever considering him a friend).
In essence, her problem was that she possessed a mind that was simultaneously
very open and exceptionally closed, willing to accept the existence
of incredible alien technology but constantly hampered by her own
perception and fixation in her belief that her timeline was the ‘correct’ one.
According
to all evidence, Klein was born to German parents but grew up in
Britain, subsequently dealing with various examples of anti-German
feeling during the war. As a result, she welcomed the Nazi victory
in an alternate timeline created by The Doctor’s unintentional
interference - although she, naturally, regarded this as the ‘true’ course
of events - unconcerned about the fact that the only reason she had
such an easy time of it was because she had blonde hair and blue
eyes. In this version of history, the Nazis had won the war after
learning how to use lasers to refine uranium based on their study
of the CD Walkman belonging to the Seventh
Doctor’s companion
Ace, who had been killed during an escape attempt after the two accidentally
materialised at Colditz Castle in 1944. Originally a research scientist
at Cambridge, Klein was recruited by Captain Jonas Faber in 1962,
who revealed the truth about previous contact with alien incursions,
Klein’s role being to study alien technology and use it for
the Reich’s benefit (Hitler had kept it locked away out of
fear of the implications of superior intelligence, but his recent
death had ended that restriction, although no definitive new leader
had been established). Growing increasingly fascinated with the alien
technology she discovered - particularly with her deep interest in
temporal theory - as she and Faber became lovers, she learned of
The Doctor’s role in the Reich’s victory by unintentionally
providing them with laser technology, although Faber felt that the
risks of time travel outweighed the benefits.
Learning that The Doctor’s time machine
had later been claimed by the Nazis when The Doctor returned in 1954
- The Doctor himself being shot and killed, although his body had vanished
- Klein requested access to it, but was only able to enter the ship when
the mysterious ‘Johann Schmidt’ contacted her with the news
that he had the key to The Doctor’s machine, offering her his services
in getting the machine working, although he was kept under armed guard
due to his lack of a background. Eventually managing to access the ship’s
flight log, Klein was inspired by a casual comment of Schmidt’s
to travel back to Colditz in 1944 to question The Doctor directly about
the ship’s operating systems before his death. Although Faber discovered
Schmidt’s role in assisting political prisoners to escape, Klein
nevertheless travelled back to Colditz, vowing that she would help Faber
become the new Fuhrer.
Unfortunately
for Klein, she swiftly realised that things were not progressing
as she had hoped. Although her forged identity papers proved sufficient
to allow her to gain access to Colditz prison, subsequently taking
charge of The Doctor and taking him back to ‘her’ TARDIS,
she arrived in the forest where she had left the ship only to find
that it had vanished, leaving no sign of its presence but an indentation
in the ground that The Doctor easily recognised. Swiftly deducing
that she came from an alternate future where the Nazis won the war,
The Doctor nevertheless failed to convince Klein that her history
was wrong, Klein arrogantly proclaiming her world as the better one,
rejecting The Doctor’s attempts to convince her that her timeline
was wrong while condemning his refusal to go back and fight for those
who were enslaved by the British Empire while threatening to destroy
her world. Although The Doctor managed to escape Klein, he failed
to get back to Colditz before Ace was nearly executed in an escape
attempt, only to learn that Ace had escaped execution by telling
the guard that Klein - who had previously given orders to leave Ace
unharmed as a bargaining-tool to be used against The Doctor – would
be angry with him if she was killed, thus changing Klein’s
history. Although Klein tried to regain her authority by informing
The Doctor that she would have Ace shot at the first opportunity,
her overconfidence caused her to slip up as she revealed that it
was technology acquired from Ace’s confiscated backpack rather
than technology from the TARDIS that gave the Nazis the edge in the
war. While Klein’s deception was exposed, forcing her to flee,
The Doctor rescued Ace and recovered her backpack before returning
to the TARDIS.
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Short Trips 6:
Past Tense |
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For a time after Klein’s escape from Colditz, The
Doctor knew nothing about what had happened to her; she had a brief
encounter with the First and Second Doctor’s
old companion Polly Wright in the short story "That Time I Nearly
Destroyed The World Whilst Looking For a Dress", but this was
only a result of Polly having been sent ‘hopping’ around
time by a mysterious entity that used her to cause rifts at crucial
points
in reality, the intervention of the Second Doctor apparently erasing
this meeting from history as he helped Polly fight off the entity’s
influence. It was later revealed that, after escaping Colditz and
witnessing Germany’s defeat in the war, Klein had travelled
to South America, joining the National Socialist group there for
a time, even encountering Hans De Flores (Whom The Doctor would confront
in "Silver
Nemesis") and forming a high opinion of his
abilities. Although she re-qualified as a physician during her time
there out of a lack of anything else to do, Klein eventually relocated
to Africa in the 1950s out of her old fascination with the continent.
She eventually met The Doctor again during the Mau Mau uprising while
staying in a house in Kenya, The Doctor had dropped in looking for
a cup of sugar, although both admitted that neither of them had any
doubts that they should meet again -, The Doctor and Klein investigating
the strange death of one of the house residents and the discovery
of a strange body with disjointed limbs, the two victims having been
seemingly killed by something that left the bodies with thousands
of tiny cuts.
Although Klein still regarded her history as the ‘true’ course
of events and defended the Third Reich’s actions in achieving
conquest, she acknowledged that some of the scientists of her time
had committed questionable actions even if she still defended their
policies - claiming that Africa would descend into chaos with the
British interest in negotiation as opposed to Germany’s decision
to carpet-bomb the natives after they rebelled, The Doctor’s
belief in the rights of the individual and the ability to find a
less direct route conflicting with Klein’s view on the superiority
of the state and the necessity of the more brutal course of action
-, demonstrating a genuine affection and friendship for the people
she was currently staying with. Based on Klein’s memories of
a mysterious plague she had encountered in her original timeline
- after assuring The Doctor that she had no interest in trying to
use the plague for her own goals due to her inability to ‘aim’ it
at specific enemies -, The Doctor and Klein were able to thwart an
attempt by an alien scientist to develop biological weapons on Earth
to sell to other races. With Klein’s only other option being
to return to De Flores, The Doctor invited her to join him in the
TARDIS, hoping that the sights he could show her in the wider universe
would give her a wider perspective that would help her grow beyond
her old boundaries and preconceived notions.
Unfortunately, The Doctor’s efforts were cut off before
they could even begin when he was forced to reveal what had truly
happened to him in Klein’s history when, while recounting her
tale of how she had travelled back to Colditz in the first place,
she remembered that Schmidt had referred to the TARDIS by name. In
the original course of events, The Doctor had departed Colditz after
Ace’s death before realising the implications of leaving her
backpack behind, but, unable to interfere directly to correct his
mistake, The Doctor instead landed the TARDIS in 1954, allowing himself
to get shot by the Germans and the TARDIS claimed by their scientists
before he regenerated in the morgue and escaped. With this new face,
The Doctor infiltrated the Reich, spending the next decade helping
political prisoners escape while waiting for the moment when someone
would be given access to the TARDIS, subsequently contacting Klein
and subtly guiding her to the right mindset to take the action he
wanted and travel back to Colditz while programming the TARDIS to
dematerialise after her arrival, confident that Klein would give
his past self all the information he required to restore history
to its proper course. Although Klein feigned acceptance of The Doctor’s
perspective on events, it was nothing more than a ploy to buy her
time to learn more about how to operate the ship herself, continuing
to regard The Doctor as a hypocrite for destroying her history due
to nothing but his own prejudices and leaving her to think that it
had been her own fault. After visiting such diverse locations as
the mercury swamps of Vulcan and the crystal plains of Mandroxia
while in The Doctor’s company, The Doctor and Klein eventually
arrived on a planet inhabited by an insectoid race known as the Vrill
whose ‘Authority’ - the equivalent of a queen - had been
killed during a recent attack. Although Klein was willing to help
The Doctor protect the Vrill from a group of pirates attempt to harvest
the Vrill nutrients for their own purposes - The Doctor even managing
to devise a means of helping the Vrill create a new Authority -,
The Doctor lost the TARDIS key while helping a warrior Vrill to hatch,
Klein subsequently discovering the key and stealing the TARDIS to
restore her history.
As a result of Klein’s manipulations she
created a reality where the Reich continued to exist as far into
the future as 2044, the Reich now having expanded to include a Moonbase
with an eco-bubble-generated atmosphere, as well as having developed
spaceships based on salvaged Dalek technology with the intention
of expanding the Reich’s influence to other planets. Although
having assumed a role in this new timeline superficially similar
to The Doctor’s in the true reality, Klein constantly interfered
with this history to mould it the way she believed it should be rather
than The Doctor simply interfering to help events play out as they
should, even assuming the role of head of Temporal Affairs to the
Reich, constantly erasing any attempts to subvert the Reich before
they started by travelling back in time to prevent those events with
knowledge from the future. Although seeing herself as the architect
of a golden age where famine had been erased, a unified government
had been created, and multiple invasions had been thwarted, Klein
was nevertheless constantly aware that her new reality was still
not her original one - the TARDIS having prevented her from going
back and erasing her original mistake of listening to Schmidt in
the first place -; even as she claimed that the new reality was ‘better’,
she had never even gone to contact Jonas Faber despite her feelings
for him, passing it off on the grounds that she would go back for
him once her work was finished while secretly aware that it would
never be the same if she did meet him again. Even those she claimed
to serve were afraid of her, constantly worried that her contact
with outsiders would eventually inspire her to turn on them, resulting
in them insisting on her taking on ‘companions’ such
as Major Richter to ensure she didn’t start rewriting their
own histories to suit her goals, as well as teaching others to operate
the TARDIS after her death.
Her schemes eventually came to her head when The Doctor confronted
her once more - his true memories still intact due to his status
as a Time Lord -, his alternate self having providing Selachians
from a century in the future with time-travel technology to allow
them to attack the Moonbase while Rachel Cooper - the companion of
the alternate Doctor - planted a device on Klein’s TARDIS that
severed its connection to its interior, forcing Klein to turn to
The Doctor. Although Klein mocked The Doctor for his alternate self’s
willingness to resort to such ruthless measures as allying with the
Selachians to achieve his goals - The Doctor forced to abandon the
Moonbase to be destroyed when the Selachians revealed that they had
reverse-engineered the technology he had provided for them to perfect
time travel for themselves -, she admitted that she was almost relieved
at the prospect of facing her ‘execution’, knowing that,
no matter what changes she had made, the new timeline would never
feel right.With Klein having been judged - most likely by the Time Lords - in her absence, she was sentenced to dematerialisation, being
erased from existence completely, Klein accepting that sentence in
the belief that it might restore her original timeline - despite
The Doctor advising her that time was a self-correcting system that
could simply replace her role during his experiences at Colditz with
someone less dangerous -, although she apparently forced The Doctor
to push the button that would dematerialise her himself to show that
she was ‘correct’ about him. In the new timeline, Klein
was employed by UNIT, using her talents to protect mankind, recalling
various encounters with the Seventh Doctor from historical records
(Including his visits to Colditz and Kenya), The Doctor paying the
new Klein a brief visit after her other self’s erasure to confirm
that history had been restored (Although the precise details of what
he remembered about the timeline where he had travelled with Klein
were unclear). Whether The Doctor shall have further contact with
this ‘new’ Klein is currently unknown. |
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