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Nardole
(2015 - 2017) |
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 Nardole is particularly unique among The Doctor's many companions for two reasons; firstly, it is unclear what species he was at any point in his time with The Doctor, with available material supporting the idea that he became a cyborg after meeting the Time Lord, and secondly, he had little to no real interest in actual travel even if he liked The Doctor as a person.
When he initially met The Doctor, Nardole was working as the assistant for The Doctor's 'wife', River Song, making contact with the Twelfth Doctor while assuming that he was only a surgeon that River had contacted to help her in a complex brain operation to extract a valuable diamond, the Halassi Androvar, from the head of the ruthless King Hydroflax, as it became lodged in Hydroflax's head during a raid. Exact details of Nardole's life prior to this are unknown, but he was apparently a con artist who had no idea where he came from and now regretted his past life of crime, and has been strongly implied not to be human, based on such evidence as Bill being the only one to set off the Cybermen's detection systems when the TARDIS landed on a colony ship ("Worlds Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls"). In the course of River's efforts to acquire the Halassi Androvar, Nardole's head was removed and attached to the robotic body of King Hydroflax, who had become so old and injured that his head was the only thing left of him on top of a massive robot body, Hydroflax keeping Nardole in his chest to occasionally force him to emerge to reveal relevant information. However, once the immediate threat of Hydroflax had been defeated, The Doctor was able to purge Hydroflax's intelligence from the robot body, allowing Nardole to share 'custody' of it for at least the next few years, as the robot body became the concierge at a restaurant established with the sale of the Halassi Androvar.
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| The Husbands of River Song |
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While spending his final night with River Song - exploiting the fact that nights could last for up to twenty-six years on Darillium - The Doctor at some point removed Nardole's head from Hydroflax and attached it to a new body. It was never specified, but it is generally agreed that Nardole's second body is a duplicate that The Doctor had put together at some point. However, it is still unclear if this body was robotic or organic, as Nardole at one point expressed a desire to go to 'the little boy's room' ("The Return of Doctor Mysterio"), and noted that his body was affected by toxic fumes when he was forced to walk through a volcanic vent tracking an alien spaceship ("Plague City"), but was shown 'leaking' screws ("The Pilot"), and The Doctor is recorded as saying that Nardole's lungs were purchased at a cheap rate. When River departed Darillium to continue on the path that would lead her to the Library and her final meeting with the Tenth Doctor ("Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead"), she asked Nardole to remain with The Doctor, requesting that he be there to make sure The Doctor remembered what he was amid the grief he would face after their final parting.
With this in mind, when The Doctor was called upon to act as the executioner after Missy - the now-female Master - was captured by a mysterious brotherhood, Nardole followed The Doctor to remind him that his 'wife wouldn't approve' of him taking on the role of executioner. Faced with this reminder of what he needed to be, The Doctor adjusted the execution chamber to simply stun Missy, but arranged to contain her in the vault that would have been used to hold her corpse after the execution, in the hopes that he would be able to help Missy reform. Faced with the burden of trying to redeem Missy, The Doctor relocated to a university, where he set himself up as a lecturer while keeping Missy's vault in the basement, protected by a complex series of locks. Nardole remained with The Doctor during this time, officially acting as his assistant/secretary at the university, but noting at one point that he was actually there as 'the only person licensed to kick The Doctor's arse', reflecting his current responsibility for The Doctor's moral standing.
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| The Return of Doctor Mysterio |
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While the exact dates are unclear, it is certain that The Doctor and Nardole remained at the university, with some sources suggesting that they were 'stationed' there for over seventy years, Nardole taking full responsibility for keeping the Vault sealed while The Doctor was known to occasionally enter the Vault to talk with Missy or go off on short adventures. One particular event during this time was when the two travelled to New York to investigate the threat of the mysterious Harmony Shoal, who intended to take over the bodies of several key world leaders, Nardole considering this outing as The Doctor 'coming back' to his usual methods after his time on Darillium ("The Return of Doctor Mysterio"). Although Nardole objected to the idea of The Doctor travelling to other planets and/or times in the TARDIS, he was still comfortable with assisting The Doctor in dealing with more local threats that didn't compromise his vow to guard the vault, and even quickly accepted The Doctor's plan to take on the role of personal tutor to canteen assistant Bill Potts ("The Pilot"). Once Bill learned the truth about The Doctor after an incident where a girl she had a crush on was absorbed by a mysterious water-based entity, Nardole was willing to deal with the fact that The Doctor had a new companion, although he still insisted that the vault should be the priority despite The Doctor's argument that he could depart in the TARDIS and come back the moment after he left. Regardless of their personal debates about The Doctor's decision to resume his travels, Nardole eventually joined The Doctor and Bill when they went travelling, and was also the only person The Doctor trusted with the truth after his eyes were damaged when he was forced to expose himself to vacuum in order to help Bill during a trip to a space station, leaving The Doctor apparently permanently blind ("Oxygen").
However, despite his seemingly innocent comments and helpful nature, Nardole had a low opinion of himself, once stating that he disliked the idea of being responsible for people because he feared that he would take advantage of them and set up a black market ("World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls"). On one occasion when he was left on his own in the TARDIS, he allegedly took so long to get back to The Doctor that he spent some time as the Emperor of Constantinople, although considering some of Nardole's statements this revelation should be taken with a metaphorical pinch of salt. Regardless of Nardole's concerns about his own nature, The Doctor stated that he himself defined Nardole by his willingness to help others, with The Doctor often trusting Nardole to deal with personal matters while he tackled the core of their latest threat.
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| The Pilot |
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Nardole's time with The Doctor came to an abrupt end when The Doctor's efforts to reform Missy went horribly wrong. Selecting a simple crisis where Missy would have the chance to 'be The Doctor', with Bill and Nardole acting as her 'companions' while The Doctor watched them through earpieces and the TARDIS scanner, The Doctor chose to take Missy to a spaceship that had become trapped in the gravity well of a black hole ("Worlds Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls"). However, shortly after they arrived on the ship, Bill was shot in the heart to stop the entities on the lower levels of the ship coming up, with these entities taking Bill to the lower level of the ship, on Floor 1056, to replace her heart with a cybernetic implant, with the time dilation caused by the black hole leaving Bill trapped there for ten years while The Doctor spent a few minutes working out what was happening. As a result, Bill was tricked into receiving an 'upgrade' into an early Cyberman through the manipulation of Missy's predecessor, The Master who had been Harold Saxon ("Utopia", "The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords" and "The End of Time"). Forced to work with the two Masters when The Doctor programmed the Cybermen to consider Time Lords viable subjects for conversion, the group retreated to Floor 507 along with the now-converted Bill, Bill able to hold on to her human identity even as The Doctor began to die after being shot by a Cyberman.
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| The Eaters of Light |
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Spending the next few weeks preparing their defences with the local colonists on Floor 507, Nardole was able to hack the ship's computers so that they could trigger deliberate explosions via the fuel-pipes in the floor to give the impression that the colonists were more dangerous than they actually were. With the first wave of Cybermen forced back by their makeshift defences, The Doctor told Nardole to accompany the remaining humans to an upper level, telling Nardole that he was the better qualified of the two to do this as he was stronger than The Doctor, as The Doctor doubted that he could commit himself to guarding these humans and staying in one place like Nardole would. Although Nardole expressed concerns that he would revert to his criminal past in such a scenario, he conceded to The Doctor's request, aware that time dilation meant he would essentially never learn if The Doctor's efforts had been successful, unaware that The Doctor detonated the entire floor to destroy the Cybermen while Bill was transformed into a new state of being and returned the dying Doctor to the TARDIS.
Nardole's final fate was not shown, but a variation of him was recreated by Testimony - an organisation in the far future who collect memories from those about to die - to say goodbye to The Doctor as he faced the question of regenerating again or dying for good, with this recreation of Nardole explaining that he lived 'happily ever after' despite some reprisals from the Cybermen, eventually dying at the age of 728 after six marriages (two of which were at the same time). Nardole's recreation told The Doctor that the universe might grow cold if he died for good, but although The Doctor decided that his next decision would have to be made alone, he assured Nardole and Bill's recreations that he was grateful for everything they had meant to him, the two duplicates in turn assuring The Doctor that he was still needed and would always find friends and allies in the future ("Twice Upon a Time").
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