 |
The Knight, the Fool and the Dead
(Steve Cole) |
|
 Name: The Kotturuh
Format: Book; peripheral influence on events in Comics and Audios
Time of Origin: The planet Mordeela; existed in the distant past.
Appearances: "The Knight, the Fool and the Dead" and "All Flesh is Grass"; peripheral involvement in events such as "The Enemy of My Enemy".
Doctors: Eighth Doctor, Ninth Doctor and Tenth Doctor
Companions: None; Rose Tyler was involved in events caused by the Kotturuh but didn't face them directly.
History:
The Doctor has fought alien races from across history, but the Kotturuh are certainly one of the oldest races he has ever confronted, originating from the Dark Times of the universe, so far in the past that death itself was a relatively unknown concept.
Physically, the Kotturuh had purple skin and tentacles instead of legs, wearing long robes to hide their appearance, with these robes possessing different symbols depending on what civilisation they were assigned to judge. The Tenth Doctor once looked under the hood of a Kotturuh and saw a face covered with deeply-etched symbols and eyes that oozed rot, the mere sight giving The Doctor a sense of primal horror. The Kotturuh themselves were basically immortal, but believed that it was their duty to bring the 'gift' of death to the universe. They believed that they had been performing this role in universes from before N-space, which spread out from a rift on the planet Mordeela. The Kotturuh came from a realm beyond the Mordeela rift and travelled among the stars imposing life spans on other races, ranging from thousands of years to instant destruction. One of the first planets they brought their 'gift' to was the planet Birinji, where they gave the native species a lifespan of only six months as they made a minimal contribution to the universe, but sometimes they would inflict total destruction on their targeted world. This 'gift' was dispersed across the universe according to the Kotturuh Design, which was a complex code sequence that only the Kotturuh themselves knew.
The Kotturuh sometimes kidnapped individuals from across the universe to turn them into revenants, undead forced to recite the date in the Design when their people should be judged. Some civilisations even sent delegates to Mordeela to try to negotiate with the Kotturuh, either asking to be spared or asking for the Kotturuh to go after their enemies, but these delegates were inevitably ignored at best and drove the Kotturuh to attack their species at worst, as well as being converted into more revenants themselves. Other species attempted various means of escaping the Kotturuh, such as the Racnoss ("The Runaway Bride") going into hibernation, the Orisan Sutekh ("Pyramids of Mars") somehow making a deal with them for the gift of death, the people of Magnox 'condemned' to a lifespan of only ninety years, Gallifrey spared for its future potential, and the Vampires allowed to maintain their immortality so long as they sustained it by feeding on the blood of others. Although most of the Kotturuh followed the Design, some of them came to believe that their species had exaggerated their own importance in the cycle of life and death, speculating that the nature of death would spread to everything on its own schedule and the Kotturuh just imposed their own order on it due to their access to the rift rather than letting nature take its course.
Exactly 'when' the Kotturuh came to The Doctor's attention is a complicated question to answer, as he only directly faced them due to actions committed in his tenth incarnation, but those actions resulted in the Eighth and Ninth Doctors facing the Kotturuh as well. To put the matter in its most linear perspective, the Kotturuh crisis 'began' when the Tenth Doctor's attempt to change a fixed point in time when he became involved in the destruction of Bowie Base One to stop the Flood ("The Waters of Mars") created a rift in time and space, The Doctor using that rift to bypass the usual temporal restrictions and travel back to the Dark Times of the Universe.
After arriving in the past, the Tenth Doctor soon witnessed the Kotturuh in action when he saw them destroy the planet Andalia, giving its population the lifespan of a single lunar orbit. He also learnt more about the history of the Kotturuh when he met Professor Hana Fallomax of Eloii and Estinee of Destran; the Eloii natives had been rendered sterile and short-lived so another race could colonise their world while Destran was consigned to death. Fallomax survived Eloii's destruction because she was wearing an armour created from crystals that apparently came from Mordeela, and Estinee was a native of Destran who was somehow immune to their touch. Fallomax had been trying to create a life-shroud armour that would permanently protect against the Kotturuh's touch, but had never been able to get it working for more than a few hours at a time using the Mordeela crystals before they burnt out, while Estinee's immunity was used to create the illusion that it actually worked. Aided by the warped assassin Brian the Ood, the Tenth Doctor helped to rescue Estinee from the Kotturuh, acquiring samples from the Kotturuh with the goal of reverse-engineering their power into a virus that would work against them. The Kotturuh attempted to stop him by taking control of Estinee and using her to kill Fallomax, but she subsequently detonated her lifeshroud suit and destroyed the lesser virus The Doctor had created to give the Kotturuh a lifespan, prompting him to unleash a stronger virus that gave them a lifespan of fifteen minutes.
 |
Time Lord Victorious - The Enemy Of My Enemy
(Tracy Ann Baines) |
|
While the Tenth Doctor went after the Kotturuh, his actions resulted in history changing in the future as Kotturuh technology 'suddenly' became available to other races, such as the people of the planet Wrax acquiring the Devolver and using it to regress races they deemed unworthy back into primordial ooze to start evolving all over again ("The Enemy of My Enemy"), or the Daleks forced to ally themselves with an earlier version of the Tenth Doctor to stop the Hond, an ancient race who were basically the personification of pain who shouldn't have existed past the Dark Times. The Eighth Doctor realised that something was going on when he found himself unable to visit any of the seven hundred wonders of the universe, arriving on what should have been a beautiful water planet only to find a barren desert with nearby worlds he'd never even heard of ("He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not"). He was subsequently abducted by a Dalek Time Squad (part of the group of Daleks that had 'just' worked with the Tenth Doctor against the Hond) who sought his insight into the threat posed by the Wrax, as the Dalek Prime Strategist had calculated that The Doctor's insight would be required to better understand the threat they were facing. While the Daleks visited Wrax to allegedly negotiate an alliance with them, The Doctor discovered the Devolver and was able to convince the Wrax to destroy it by pointing out the hypocrisy of claiming that they had the right to judge other races' right to exist, subsequently linking the TARDIS to the Dalek time ship to go back to the Dark Times and learn what had caused this change in history. At another point in history, the Ninth Doctor and Rose were drawn through a rift into the dark times, where they discovered a coffin ship populated by vampires at war with the early Gallifreyans, The Doctor helping these vampires find a safe new planet to live on before he took another coffin ship to investigate the source of the rift.
 |
All Flesh is Grass
(Una McCormack) |
|
When the Tenth Doctor reached Mordeela to confront the Kotturuh who had sealed themselves behind a barrier to try and escape his virus, now leading a mercenary fleet on Brian's encouragement, he was naturally shocked to find himself faced by the Eighth Doctor in the company of a Dalek time squad and the Ninth Doctor with a bowship crewed by vampires. Consumed by his current obsession with stopping death, the Tenth Doctor initially assumed that he was facing a pair of fakes attempting to stop his current campaign, but after he destroyed Mordeela, the younger Doctors initiated telepathic contact and explained the situation to their future self. With most of the Tenth Doctor's mercenary fleet destroyed, the remaining Kotturuh rededicated themselves to carrying out more judgements before they succumbed to The Doctor's virus, while the three Doctors fled to the Tenth's remaining ship after the Dalek Time Squad captured the Ninth's coffin ship.
As The Doctors tried to plan their next move, the Daleks were able to retrieve samples from the Great Vampire in their stolen coffin ship, using that DNA to create a new form of Dalek drones possessing the vampires' immortality. Fortunately, The Doctors were able to find Inyit, the last of the Kotturuh, living in solace on Birinji, and convince her to judge the Daleks and destroy the Dalek/vampire hybrids as they attempted to attack Gallifrey itself. With the hybrids destroyed by Inyit's attack, the Eighth Doctor was able to get back on board the Dalek ship and force them into the Vortex so that he could destroy the Time Squad before they could do any more damage in the past ("Mutually Assured Destruction"). Inyit died of the strain of destroying the hybrids, but she was able to transfer the last of her energy to Illka, a vampire leader who had been working with the Ninth Doctor, allowing Illka to use that energy to help her people find a new, peaceful life on a new planet. After the Ninth and Tenth Doctors had helped the vampires establish their new lives, the Tenth Doctor affirmed that he had made the right choice to oppose the Kotturuh, but also acknowledged that the Eighth and Ninth Doctors had been correct that he had gone too far in the scale of his opposition to them. Satisfied that the Ninth's vampire allies would be safe, the two Doctors departed the Dark Times, allowing mortality to enter the universe at its own pace without anyone controlling it.
|
|
