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Break the Ice
(Tim Foley) |
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 Name: Jack Frost
Format:
Audio
Time of Origin: The realm of the Winter Gods; The Doctor faced Jack in orbit of Venus at an unspecified date in the future.
Appearances: "Break the Ice"
Doctors: Ninth Doctor
Companions: None
History:
Typically humanity regards Jack Frost as nothing more than a metaphor for winter, fiction portrayed Frost as either a figure of fun or the chill of the oncoming snow. However, as with many such myths, The Doctor has revealed that the entity known as Jack Frost is all too real, and is a truly terrifying opponent to face.
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Ninth Doctor |
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According to The Doctor, Frost was one of the Winter Lords, god-like beings responsible for cooling the universe in the aftermath of the Big Bang. The Doctor explained that many planets had their own name for the entity, such as the planet Ribos ("The Ribos Operation") identifying Jack Frost as the Bitter King, or Cacophony referring to him as the Cold Bringer. Frost made reference to having a father, and expressed an unfamiliarity with just the idea of fingers, but it was never specified what his natural state looked like. He was able to ‘see’ through any snowflake in his vicinity even if he wasn’t physically present, although Frost still had to consciously concentrate to understand what he was looking at. It was even stated that Frost’s kind were capable of surviving in the vacuum of space, but it was still ‘easier’ for him in an atmosphere as it was easier for him to control the environment. It would appear that most of the Winter Lords were lost in the Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks, as The Doctor made reference to seeing them die on the ‘Molten Shores’, but Jack Frost somehow escaped the fate of his species, emerging to fight The Doctor at a point when the Ninth Doctor was travelling alone ("Rose") after his regeneration following the end of the Time War ("The Day of The Doctor").
Frost emerged back into this universe on a space station orbiting Venus, when cryogenics experiments were being carried out to prepare for deep-space travel. Attempting to basically skip over months of tests by experimenting with the process right now, Pal Andrews, the Executive Officer in charge of the system, froze Kenton, one of the other crew members, to a state of absolute zero. This temperature change was so extreme that it actually changed the very rules of the universe, allowing Jack to return to this universe by essentially possessing Kenton as a host once the experiment actually killed him. Fortunately, the TARDIS had been drawn to the fold in reality caused by the experiment, allowing the Ninth Doctor to meet and befriend Doctor Lennie Fisk, one of the scientists involved in the cryogenics project. Initially posing as an executive invited to the satellite, The Doctor was able to stop the cryogenics project, but it wasn’t in time to stop Kenton being possessed.
Initially the only obvious change in Kenton was that his eyes had become a paler colour and his body temperature having lowered significantly, but it was soon clear that something else was controlling his body now. Freezing the blood and water in the body to make it more comfortable for him, Frost killed the medical team examining him and then began to make his way through the satellite towards the nearest sources of warmth. Having gained access to the satellite computer systems to confirm what was happening, The Doctor was able to convince Lennie and Pal to separate the satellite as most of the crew were in the dining area. The separation ensured that Frost wouldn’t get to the rest of the crew, but Lennie and Pal remained to help The Doctor out of a sense of responsibility. Although the majority of the crew were now safe, Frost still managed to kill a couple who had left the party for a moment together, taking the paper crown one of them had won in a cracker to acknowledge his own power.
Recognising the danger Frost posed, The Doctor ejected the TARDIS from the satellite to ensure that Frost couldn’t steal it while he prepared to confront his enemy. With Frost aware that The Doctor wasn’t human, the Time Lord helped Lennie and Pal find winter clothing for protection (assuring them that he would be fine in his usual clothes for a while) before moving to the kitchen. Turning up the heat in that room to keep Frost at bay, The Doctor determined that Frost had relocated to the hydroponics forest that helped to manage the satellite’s oxygen. Since the hydroponics area was fed by the water system, The Doctor suggested poisoning the water with sulphuric acid samples taken from Venus, but affirmed that the final goal had to be to destroy the satellite in the planet’s atmosphere, as they couldn’t allow one snowflake of Frost’s essence to survive.
While Lennie and Pal went to the ship’s water supply to add the acid, The Doctor went to confront Frost directly to distract him. Although Frost trapped him with ice manacles and affirmed that he was offended by The Doctor’s status as a Time Lord, able to sense The Doctor’s burning energy, The Doctor clarified that Frost was just as alone as he was, confirming that he had seen the last of the Winter Lords die on the Molten Shores. Frost vowed revenge on this universe, but was then struck by the acid water, distracting him long enough for The Doctor to escape. Frost still had enough strength to freeze Pal as he tried to flee the water supply, but Lennie was able to get away after Pal explicitly told her to leave him.
Although Lennie had a brief panic attack as she tried to escape through the vents, The Doctor was able to talk her through her anxiety and direct her to the satellite stabilisers. Setting the satellite into a descending orbit, The Doctor affirmed that he couldn’t allow a single snowflake of Frost to survive, but still took time to help Lennie through the vents by redirecting the station’s remaining heat reserves to her location. Frost managed to confront them both as they reunited, but Lennie used the satellite’s speakers to trigger an ultrasonic assault that shattered Frost’s icy body.
Aware that Frost could still regenerate from this assault, The Doctor finished setting the satellite into a decaying orbit and then revealed that he had deliberately arranged the TARDIS’s ‘flight path’ after it had been ejected. While it wouldn’t directly return to the satellite, it was close enough that The Doctor and Lennie could ‘jump’ from the satellite airlock into the TARDIS’s force field once it was close enough. Warming Lennie with a Terileptil blanket, The Doctor not only took her back to her wife and son in time for Christmas, but then offered an additional gift. Lennie had previously revealed that her interest in cryogenics was because her son suffered from astral fibrosis and only exposure to the radiation of a star generating zeta radiation could help him, so The Doctor offered to take the family to such a star so that Lennie’s son could sit in the TARDIS door and bathe in its radiation. It was suggested that some part of Frost might have survived by sending a few flakes into the TARDIS, but to date there has been no further indication of Frost’s continued existence.
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