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| The Gelth |
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 Name: The Gelth
Format:
Television show
Time of Origin: Appeared in Earth in
Cardiff, 1869; apparently came from another world, but where and
when they originated from was never specified.
Appearances: "The
Unquiet Dead"
Doctors: Ninth
Doctor
Companions: Rose Tyler
History: An incorporeal life-form, the Gelth represented
a personal tragedy for The Doctor, as it was implied that they only
became the threat that they were as a result of the damage caused
in the crossfire of the Time War.
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| The Gelth |
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Apparently
a formerly corporeal species, the Gelth were apparently caught in
the crossfire during the Time War between the Time Lords and the
Daleks, resulting in their bodies being destroyed, although they
themselves managed to survive to some degree through unspecified
means. Reduced to a gaseous state, the Gelth eventually made their
way to Earth, where they were able to use a minor rift in reality
to manifest in the form of blue vapour, subsequently using human
corpses acquired from the funeral parlour run by Gabriel Sneed, which
had been built over the rift that the Gelth were using. Fortunately,
his maid, Gwyneth, possessed a degree of psychic ability due to the
amount of time she had spent in the house, allowing her to track
down any Gelth that escaped in their borrowed bodies before anyone
could realise what was happening.
When the Ninth
Doctor and Rose were visiting
Cardiff in the past as Rose’s first trip into history - although
The Doctor had actually been aiming for Naples in 1860 ("The
Unquiet Dead") -, they witnessed one of the Gelth’s hosts being ‘recaptured’,
Sneed subsequently chloroforming Rose when she tried to interfere. When
The Doctor hitched a lift in a carriage to follow Rose, he only realised
after he entered the carriage that it was actually owned by Charles Dickens
himself (Although Dickens decided to let The Doctor remain after The
Doctor complimented his work).
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| The Gelth |
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Tracking
Sneed to the funeral house, The Doctor was able to realise what was
happening, arranging a séance so that the spirits could use
Gwyneth to explain what was happening. Although The Doctor suggested
that the Gelth could use human corpses as a temporary measure until
he could find a more permanent home for them, when Gwyneth opened
herself up to the rift to act as a ‘bridge’ that the
Gelth could use to enter this world, it was revealed that the number
of Gelth was actually far larger than they had claimed, and they
intended to kill humanity to provide them with new bodies.
Although initially shaken at what he was witnessing,
Dickens was able to come up with a new plan while the Gelth attempted
to attack The Doctor and Rose after they locked themselves behind
another door in the basement. Realising that the vaporous Gelths
were affected by gas, Dickens turned off the gaslights in the funeral
parlour while turning the gas up, drawing the Gelth out of their
bodies. With Gwyneth essentially already dead after she became the
bridge, the remaining fragments of her consciousness sacrificed herself
to seal the rift by striking a match, setting the gas on fire and
destroying the parlour, the rift-bridge, and the Gelth that had passed
through it already.
With Gwyneth’s sacrifice, the Gelth’s means
of accessing reality was sealed, although her death did create the
Cardiff Rift, a scar in time and space that could allow various alien
beings access to Cardiff. This rift was subsequently monitored by
the ‘Torchwood’ organisation - the Cardiff branch that
controlled the rift eventually coming under the direct control of
The Doctor’s companion Captain Jack Harkness, and including
among its members Gwen Cooper, a distant relative of Gwyneth -, as
well as being occasionally used by the TARDIS as fuel ("Boom
Town" and "Utopia"), until it was finally sealed when the Eleventh Doctor triggered a new Big Bang to restore the universe after the
TARDIS nearly caused a total event collapse ("The Pandorica Opens/The
Big Bang"). |
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