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| The Carrionites |
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 Name: The Carrionites; specific Carrionites faced
by The Doctor were known as Lillith, Doomfinger and Bloodtide
Format:
Television show, audio and book
Time of Origin: Technically the Howling
Void outside of reality, but they attempted to attack Earth in 1597 and the 1980s.
Appearances: "The Return of Robin Hood", "The Carrionite Curse" and "The
Shakespeare Code"
Doctors: Fourth Doctor, Sixth Doctor and Tenth
Doctor
Companions: Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan and Martha Jones
History: A particularly interesting detail to
note about the Carrionites - who naturally resemble ravens, although
they can assume a humanoid form through effort - is the fact that
they are essentially a race of witches and magic-users, relying on
a magic control of words and commands in order to influence the world
around them (Possibly a lexical version of the mathematical block
transfer computations used by the Logopolitans ("Logopolis")).
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| The Carrionites |
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Aside
from flight and mental manipulation, they can also use items acquired
from individuals, such as hair or nails, to manipulate the bodies
of others by attaching the acquired items to poppets, The Doctor
comparing such a feat to DNA replication modules. However, their
magic can be weakened by temporal anomalies - to the extent that
a spell that would have killed humans in the present only rendered
Martha Jones unconscious due to her being out of sync with the world
around her, although certain temporal paradoxes could give them power in the right circumstances. The Carrionates were also bound by certain laws, such as being required to submit to high authority, and powerful words could weaken their influence even without a specific spell being used. The Doctor's mental barriers were so powerful that, in a confrontation with his tenth incarnation, they could not determine his true name to use their magic against him, and even shortly after the traumatic events of his trial ("The Trial of a Time Lord"), the Sixth Doctor only 'slipped' to the extent that he 'gave away' his recent fears of the Valeyard rather than anything more intimate.
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Warmonger
(Paul Magrs) |
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Having been banished to the Deep Darkness
by the Eternals ("Enlightenment") when their manipulation
of reality threatened the fabric of the universe, the Carrionites’s first attack on Earth occurred when a single Carrionite manifested in Sherwood Forest in the twelfth century, adopting the identity of the witch Mother Maudlin and influencing Guy of Gisborne to act as her agent while helping him hunt the forces of Robin Hood ("The Return of Robin Hood"). Maudlin claimed that she and other Carrionites were hidden across history, doing their best to drag humanity down, but obviously it is unclear how reliable she could be as evidence of anything. In any case, Maudlin became aware of a new threat to her power when she sensed the coming of the TARDIS, prompting her to take Sarah Jane Smith as a host to try and take control of the ship. However, The Doctor was able to expel Maudlin from Sarah by accepting the threat to take her to the TARDIS, anticipating that Maudlin wasn’t strong enough to leave Earth in her current state. With this in mind, The Doctor forced Maudlin to leave Sarah's body by taking the TARDIS into the upper atmosphere, forcing Maudlin to retreat back to Sherwood Forest while The Doctor and Sarah tracked down Richard the Lionheart to undermine Guy and John’s supporters in Britain. Once back in Britain, Maudlin was apparently defeated when she tried to possess Guy’s body and Richard stabbed Maudlin-in-Guy with his iron sword. Maudlin was later revealed to have survived this attack, but the damage Richard had inflicted was so serious that she was forced to leave Earth, essentially stealing the energies of The Doctor, Sarah and Harry Sullivan’s memories of this experience to give herself the power to return to her dimension.
The Carrionites were drawn back to Earth due to William Shakespeare’s grief over the death
of his son, the pain of a genius such as Shakespeare creating a minor
rift that three of their number - identified as Lillith, Doomfinger and
Bloodtide, with Lillith as their leader and human representative - were
able to use to escape their prison.
Making
contact with architect Peter Streete, the Carrionites were able to
dictate the design of the Globe Theatre to him, Streete giving it
its distinctive fourteen sides so that it could serve as a ‘collector’ of
Carrionite energy when the proper words were spoken, the fourteen
sides representing the fourteen planets in their system. To this
end, the Carrionites influenced Shakespeare’s attempt to write
his latest play, Love’s Labours Won, so that the play’s
concluding words would serve as part of a ‘spell’ that
would open the door to the Howling Void and allow the rest of their
race to escape.
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| The Carrionites |
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However, the Carrionites’ plans were derailed when
the Tenth Doctor and his new companion Martha Jones arrived in London
just as they were about to put their plan into action, the TARDIS travellers making contact with Shakespeare after they witnessed him
announcing that he would show Love’s Labours Won the following
night despite The Doctor’s knowledge that it was Shakespeare’s
lost play. Having witnessed Lynley, the Master of the Revels, being
killed when Lillith ‘drowned’ him using a Carrionite
poppet, The Doctor realised that there was more going on here than
the obvious, making mental contact with Streete to learn what had
happened to him before a confrontation with a Carrionite filled in
the remaining blanks.
Although The Doctor and Martha asked Shakespeare to stop
the play, he was unable to halt the production before the final act,
the last words of the play being a ‘spell’ that could
open a rift to the realm of the Carrionites and allow the rest of
their race to reach Earth;
The light of Shadmoch’s
Hollow moon doth shine
Onto a point in space betwixt
Dravidian Shores Linear 5930167.02
And strikes the fulsome grove
Of rexel 4 co-radiating crystal activate |
Despite the rift being opened, The Doctor
and Martha were able to get back to the Globe before it could be
completed - the Carrionites’ attempt to kill The Doctor using
a poppet having failed as their attempt to ‘stab’ him
merely temporarily stopped one heart -, The Doctor subsequently convincing
Shakespeare to use his genius to write a second sonnet to seal the
Carrionites away;
Close up this din of hateful decay,
Decomposition of your witches' plot!
You thieve my brains, consider me your toy,
My doting doctor tells me I am not!
Foul Carrionite specters, cease your show,
Between the points 761290
Banished like a tinker's cuss,
I say to thee, Expelliarmus! |
(The last being the contribution of Martha Jones, inspired
by Harry Potter, when Shakespeare couldn’t think of another
suitable word). With this spell, the Carrionites were trapped in
a crystal ball that Lillith had been using to generate the portal,
The Doctor subsequently keeping the ball in the TARDIS while recommending
that Shakespeare dispose of other copies of Love’s Labours
Won to prevent the Carrionites coming back through any residual magic
that might be in the text.
Although this marked The Doctor's last confrontation with the Carrionites, he had actually encountered them at an earlier point in his life. While visiting a local village fair in the 1980s, attempting to take his mind of his recent trial ("The Trial of a Time Lord") and confrontation with his dark future self, the Valeyard, the Sixth Doctor witnessed what appeared to be a contemporary witch burning ("The Carrionite Curse"). The Doctor's attempt to interfere with the burning resulted in the three escaping their current captivity, with this action disrupting the authority that had previously kept the 'witches' contained. Determined to find out what was going on in the village, The Doctor joined forces with local reverend Douglas Bell, his daughter Katie, and Eileen Nelthorpe, the head of the village council, and was soon able to determine their enemy's vulnerability to certain spoken words, even if The Doctor had trouble identifying his enemy at first. With the Carrionites weakened after they were thrown into a fire, The Doctor and his allies carried out further research into how the 'witches' came to the village in the first place, after an attempt to 'trap' them by confirming their names in the village's register of deaths failed.
Learning that the local village hall had been built using the remains of the Globe Theatre after it was burned down - this construction disrupting the 'spell' that the Tenth Doctor and Shakespeare had used to banish them originally - The Doctor finally put together enough clues to identify their enemy as the Carrionites. Unfortunately, by this point they had already essentially taken control of Katie, drawing on the energy created by a distinctive necklace she was wearing and the paradox of her carrying a book she had 'borrowed' from the TARDIS library while helping The Doctor earlier (based on The Doctor's earlier search of the books in the library, it is implied that the book was a copy of Harry Potter), as well as the obvious potential paradox of their opportunity to kill The Doctor before he would defeat the Carrionites in their past and his future. With Eileen dead and The Doctor lost for words that could overpower the Carrionites after his reference to 'hyperlink' accidentally created a greater paradox, Katie used the fact that the Carrionites' power was currently consolidated on her and the book to defeat them by setting the book on fire, although her own connection to it meant that she sacrificed herself in the process. |
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Season 29 (New Series 3)
Box Set |
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The Carrionite Curse
(Simon Guerrier) |
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