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| The
Abominable Snowmen |
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 Name: Yog-Sothoth, AKA the Great Intelligence;
was briefly merged with Saraquazel into an unnamed third entity;
came to Earth in a form based on the intelligence of Walter Simeon.
Format:
Television show and Book.
Time of Origin: Originally a Time Lord
- or the equivalent - from the universe prior to this one; now billions
of years old, apparently existing somewhere near Earth; attacked
Earth in the 1930s, the 1960s, the 1980s (No specific dates were
provided), 1999/2000 and 2013.
Appearances: "The
Abominable Snowmen", "The
Web of Fear", "The
Five Doctors", "Millennial
Rites", "Downtime", "The Snowmen",
"The Bells of Saint John" and "The Name of The Doctor".
Doctors: Second
Doctor, Sixth
Doctor and Eleventh Doctor; attacked the other eighth Doctors ‘behind the scenes’, but its influence was negated and The Doctor’s timeline was thus unaffected by its infleunce.
Companions: Jamie
McCrimmon, Victoria
Waterfield, The
Brigadier, Melanie
Bush and Clara Oswald (Sarah
Jane Smith also encountered the Great Intelligence with Victoria
and The Brigadier without The Doctor)
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|
The Abominable Snowmen |
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History: As one of the Great Old
Ones - beings who existed in the universe prior to this one before
its destruction and the creation of the current universe, escaping
its destruction by temporarily ‘hiding’ in another universe
that ended a few seconds later before returning to this one, other
examples of this ‘species’ including the Animus and Fenric
-, the Great Intelligence possessed significant powers. As the military
strategist of the Great Old Ones, the Great Intelligence was capable
of possessing living creatures and creating elaborate control spheres
that could help it to extend and exert its influence over others,
experimenting with various stratagems that he had developed considered
to see if they would work as he mounted millions of campaigns against
inhabited planets. However, he appeared to be vulnerable to outside
influence; when he initially arrived on Earth, he was stripped of
much of his previous power and knowledge after he initially made
contact with the mind of a child, requiring regular exposure to
other sentient minds to regain full awareness of what he once was.
During
his time in this universe, the Great Intelligence often used robot
versions of various animals to secretly mount his campaigns until
he was ready to launch his attacks on a large scale. When attacking
the planet Hiskith, he used the Hisk version of Koala Bears, while
on Danos he used domestic animals equivalent to dogs. Eventually
arriving on Earth, the Great Intelligence was initially powerless
and mindless, latching on to the mind of bitter orphan Simeon, shaping
itself according to Simeon’s twisted Victorian desires. To
this end, it created a unique ‘memory snow’ that Simeon
could control, allowing him to assemble an army of semi-sentient
snowmen that could be shaped by a telepathic net to attack others
and assemble at will. However, recognising that snow would be useless
as a weapon later on, Simeon sought to create a new breed of soldier
by using the body of the former governess of the Latimer family;
the governess having drowned in a lake in Christmas 1891, Simeon
waited for a year while the frozen lake studied her DNA and learned
how to mimic her body.
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| The Snowmen |
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Although
Simeon’s patience met with results in 1892, when the pond had
finished its analysis and he had created an army of snowmen ready
for his bidding, he was opposed by both Clara, the Latimers’ new
governess, and the Eleventh Doctor, currently ‘retired’ on
Earth after the loss of his old companions ("The Angels Take Manhattan"). Having been inspired back into action after Clara
was killed while trying to help him, The Doctor was able to contain
and damage the ice-governess created by the Intelligence before returning
to Simeon’s base to confront the Intelligence directly. Although
he initially assumed that the Intelligence was merely a telepathic
mirror of Simeon’s childish resentment, when The Doctor infected
Simeon with a parasitic worm that drained his memory, the Intelligence
revealed its true self, attempting to attack The Doctor by animating
Simeon’s body with ice. Just as it was about to attack, the
telepathic network controlling the snowmen attacking the Latimer
house was overwhelmed by the Latimer family’s grief over Clara’s
death, dispelling the snowmen and depriving the Intelligence of the
power it needed to manifest. Although The Doctor was unaware of the
precise nature of his foe due to the length of time that had passed
since he had encountered it in his past and its future, certain clues
- such as Simeon’s business being known as the ‘Great
Intelligence Institute’, the creature’s use of snowmen
to conquer the world, and The Doctor informing it as a joke that
the 1967 London Underground would be a key strategic point - make
it clear that this entity was the Great Intelligence ("The Snowmen").
Once
again a discorporate entity, the Great Intelligence drifted for a
time until it managed to possess the Tibetan lama Padmasambhava while
he was travelling on astral plane. With a corporeal host once more,
the Intelligence subsequently using his control spheres to create
robotic duplicates of the Yeti - most likely reasoning that their
mythological power would make it harder for people to fight them
while also considering them sturdier than its previous snowmen -
to begin his invasion, controlling them by moving pieces on a chess-like
board. In 1935, the Second
Doctor, a friend of the lama's, as well
as Edward Travers, a westerner determined to find the Yeti, intervened
in the Intelligence’s attempt at world conquest, The Doctor
having come to visit his old friend while Travers searched for the
original Yeti. Despite the Intelligence’s attempt to influence
Padmasambhava’s monastery to drive The Doctor away, a subsequent
attack on the monastery gave The Doctor the chance to examine the
body of a defeated Yeti and deduce its true nature.
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| The
Web of Fear |
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Thanks to Travers spying on
the Yeti assembling large numbers of spheres in a cave, The Doctor
learned that the Great Intelligence was attempting to physically manifest
itself on Earth, as well as learning about his old friend’s
connection with it. While The Doctor distracted the Intelligence in
Padmasambhava’s body, Jamie McCrimmon
and one of the monks destroyed the equipment he was using to control
the Yeti from the monastery. Following this victory, The Doctor destroyed
the pyramid of spheres that had been assembled, ending the threat
of invasion, although Padmasambhava's physical body died when the
Intelligence was deprived of its opportunity to manifest ("The
Abominable Snowmen").
Approximately
thirty-five years later, the robot Yeti re-activated, allowing the
Intelligence the chance to manifest once again, thus time focusing
its attack on London (Although the Yeti remained its main agents despite
their impractical nature due to the Intelligence lacking the time
to assemble a new invasion force if it wanted to ‘keep up’
with the conquests of its fellow Old Ones). Manifesting as a massive
web in space, the Intelligence ensnared The Doctor’s TARDIS
in space and forced it to land in the London Underground. Reunited
with Travers - who had unintentionally reactivated the Yeti when he
turned on a control sphere that he had kept as a souvenir -, The Doctor
assisted the British military in their battles with the Yeti - resulting
in his first meeting with his future ally Colonel
Lethbridge-Stewart -, but the Intelligence reanimated and possessed
the corpse of Staff Sergeant Arnold. Using Arnold to track The Doctor's
actions, despite their success in weakening the fungal web that it
was using the spheres to generate, the Intelligence eventually captured
The Doctor, intending to use a conversion headset to take over and
possess his body. The Doctor attempted to reverse the process, allowing
him to absorb the Intelligence and destroy it, but the control spheres
that formed the focus of the Intelligence were smashed by Jamie McCrimmon
- using a Yeti that The Doctor had reprogrammed earlier - due to
his ignorance of The Doctor’s real plan, resulting in the Intelligence
being expelled back into space, weakened but not destroyed ("The
Web of Fear").
During the Game of Rassilon - when The Doctor's
first five incarnations were taken out of time and planted in the
Death Zone, an area of Gallifrey where the ancient Time Lords had
pitted various races against each other for their amusement -, the
Second Doctor and The
Brigadier encountered a single Yeti that had
been left over from the Games while they were exploring the catacombs
underneath the Dark Tower, the tomb of Rassilon in the heart of the
Death Zone. Without the controlling influence of the Great Intelligence,
however, this Yeti was nothing but a rampaging beast, The Doctor
managing to drive it back with a firecracker in his pocket. Although
this 'attack' merely sent the Yeti into a rampage, it triggered a
rock slide that brought down the roof of the cave in the immediate
area, separating The Doctor and The Brigadier from the Yeti and allowing
them to proceed with their search to reach the heart of the Tower
("The
Five Doctors").
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| The
Web of Fear |
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The Intelligence later contacted The Doctor's former
companion Victoria
Waterfield and manipulated her into locating the ‘Locus’,
a central processing crystal that it could use to restore its physical
form, by posing as the ‘spirit’ of her father. However,
Victoria rebelled against the Intelligence’s manipulation of
her when she realised the truth of what she had done, working with
The
Brigadier and fellow former companion Sarah
Jane Smith - who she had coincidentally hired to help her find
the Locus while under the Intelligence’s influence - to disable
her university’s computers after they realised that the Intelligence
had downloaded itself into them ("Downtime").
At the turn of the Millennium, Anne Travers,
left traumatized by the Intelligence’s first attempts to enter
the current universe, became convinced that millionaire Ashley Chapel
would try to use a special program, the Millennium Codex, written
in quantum mnemonics - the language of the Old Ones -, to summon the
Intelligence to Earth, and prepared a counter spell designed to force
it back into its own reality. However, despite the attempted aid of
the Sixth
Doctor, Anne’s efforts had destructive effects when it turned
out that Chapel had actually been attempting to summon Saraqueazel,
a being from the next universe, to serve him. Due to the
competing laws of physics generated by Chapel’s attempt to summon
Saraquazel, Anne’s attempt to banish the Intelligence, and the
natural laws of the present universe, the Intelligence and Saraquazel
were merged into a single entity, reality around London being altered
into a semi-mystical Kingdom obeying the laws of all three universes,
the three resulting ‘kingdoms’ being ruled by the altered
versions of Anne, Chapel, and The Doctor’s current companion
Mel.
Although The Doctor was briefly mutated
into The
Valeyard - his dark possible future self ("The
Trial of a Time Lord") by the unstable nature of reality
in this realm, the TARDIS helped him resist The
Valeyard’s influence long enough for him to convince Anne
and Mel’s new selves to remember their pasts. Using Mel’s
experience in deciphering the original mnemonics, they were able
to
prepare a ‘spell’ that disrupted reality and restored
the Intelligence and Saraquazel to normal by linking the three key
structures of the Kingdom, although the effort resulted in Anne sacrificing
herself to atone for her mistake in causing this crisis. Restored
to normal, Saraquazel - really a benevolent entity that just wanted
to go home -, undid the worst of the damage done by the ‘spells’ so
that only a few people remained dead, leaving the Intelligence trapped
in its prison once again while Saraquazel departed for its home universe
("Millennial
Rites").
The Intelligence returned again in 2013, using its agent
Miss Kizmet - implied to have fallen under its control when she
was a child - to hack the Wi-Fi of the world from a business based
in the Shard building in London ("The Bells of Saint John").
Having introduced a new Wi-Fi network, the Intelligence was able
to 'hack' anyone who accessed this Wi-Fi network, altering their
personality and skills as it saw fit, keeping a select few as its
agents while downloading the souls and minds of the rest into the
datacloud via its artificial agents - nicknamed 'spoonheads', they
assumed a humanoid appearance based on the subconscious of those
who witnessed them, with open empty heads that looked like spoons
- so that they could serve as 'sustenance' for the Intelligence
as it 'fed' on their intellect (Some of the downloads involved its
minions providing the subjects with enhanced computer skills, suggesting
that certain kinds of knowledge 'tasted' better than others). The
Doctor was alerted to the Intelligence's presence when the modern
Clara Oswald called for help with her Wi-Fi and ended up reaching
the TARDIS phone, The Doctor tracking the call back just as Clara
was attacked by a spoonhead. Although the spoonhead managed to start
'downloading' Clara while providing her with enhanced computer skills,
The Doctor interrupted the download before it could be completed,
leaving Clara free but retaining the enhanced computer skills provided
by the download. Using Clara's enhanced skills, The Doctor was able
to track down the source of the Wi-Fi's agents, just as they made
contact with him, Miss Kizmet mockingly informing The Doctor that
her 'employer' was only the shepherd to the cattle that the human
race had become. Although they managed to download Clara using a
spoonhead in the shape of The Doctor, The Doctor was able to hack
the spoonhead and use it to attack the Shard, downloading Miss Kizmet
into the datacloud so that she would be forced to release all of
her captured minds to release herself. As UNIT entered the Shard
to capture the Intelligence's minions, the Intelligence briefly
appeared to inform Miss Kizmet that it would now move on, having
absorbed enough from its victims, before it departed, leaving Miss
Kizmet and her various employees reverted to 'factory settings'
and the personalities and skills they'd possessed before they fell
under its control.
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| The Name of The Doctor |
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The Intelligence attacked once again with the aid of the mysterious ‘Whispermen’ - ghost-like figures that couldn’t be hurt and spoke in whispers -, tracking The Doctor’s old friends by having the Whispermen tell them that The Doctor’s greatest secret would be revealed at Trenzalore ("The Name of The Doctor"). By this point, the Intelligence claimed that it had learned virtually everything about The Doctor over the centuries, ranging from his victories over his enemies to his secret, darker names such as The Valeyard ("The Trial of a Time Lord"), regarding The Doctor as the slaughterer of billions across the universe, the Intelligence itself now a mere mind without a body that ‘disguised’ himself in clothes and a mask resembling Simeon’s appearance. Having trapped Vastra, Jenny and Strax at Trenzalore after allowing them to make telepathic contact with Clara to pass on the warning to her, The Doctor travelled to Trenzalore, revealing that it was the location of his grave, manifested as an enormous TARDIS grown to giant size after his demise as the dimensional rift separating the interior from the exterior broke down, amid the scattered graves of the other soldiers who died in the battle. After gaining access to The Doctor’s grave by forcing The Doctor to reveal the password - The Doctor’s name, spoken by the virtual ‘ghost’ of River Song while everyone else was distracted - to enter the tomb, The Doctor, his companions and the Intelligence witnessed The Doctor’s true grave; an energy spiral located where the control console had once been, representing the scar tissue The Doctor had created in the timeline on his trips backwards and forwards through time, from the moment he left Gallifrey to his death on Trenzalore. With access to The Doctor’s grave, the Great Intelligence could enter The Doctor’s timeline through the scar and destroy it, undoing all of The Doctor's victories and poisoning his friendships. Although they were unable to stop the Intelligence entering the scar - starting the collapse of the universe as stars began to die without The Doctor to save them, along with Jenny dying and Strax reverting to a typical Sontaran mindset -, Clara realised that she could still save The Doctor by entering the scar herself, fracturing her existence across all of time and space, ‘copies’ of her from across the universe acting to counter the Intelligence’s influence on The Doctor’s life, ranging from helping him survive the Dalek Asylum ("Asylum of the Daleks") to recommending a particular TARDIS to the First Doctor. Although this action resulted in the Intelligence being dispersed throughout history and eradicated, Clara was rescued when The Doctor entered the scar tissue himself, tracking Clara to the heart of his timestream where she was surrounded by his past selves and drawing her back to him in the present. |
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