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| Lady Peinforte |
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 Name: Lady Peinforte
Format:
Television Show
Time of Origin: Earth, 1638; fought
and died in 1988.
Appearances: "Silver
Nemesis"
Doctors: Seventh
Doctor; evidence suggests
the Second
Doctor
Companions: Ace
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| Lady Peinforte and Richard |
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History: Although clearly a powerful and dangerous
enemy, the exact circumstances that led to Lady Peinforte gaining
such power are unclear, although the available evidence suggests
that she was actually secretly aided by outside sources without her
knowledge. An evil woman with arcane power and knowledge verging
on witchcraft, at some point in the past, Lady Peinforte acquired
a sample of Validium - a living metal created as the ultimate defence
for Gallifrey back in the early days of Rassilon and Omega -, which
she sculpted into a statue of herself carrying a bow and arrow, describing
it as ‘immaculate beauty carved in absolute evil’. The
exact details of Lady Peinforte’s first encounter with The
Doctor are unknown, but it is known that it featured a battle between
soldiers loyal to Lady Peinforte and Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads,
culminating in The Doctor launching the Validium asteroid into space
to prevent it from reaching critical mass, Lady Peinforte retaining
the arrow while the bow was left in Windsor Castle until it vanished
in 1788.
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| Cybermen |
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While
it was not specified precisely when The Doctor first fought Lady
Peinforte, certain clues have been presented that allow it to be
speculatively dated to the Second
Doctor’s era. While Lady
Peinforte’s vow that she would be revenged upon ‘that
annoying little man’ could be taken as a reference to the Seventh
Doctor, suggesting that he previously encountered her early in his
seventh incarnation while travelling with Melanie
Bush, The Doctor’s
uncertain memory of the Validium crisis lends weight to the idea
that the original confrontation took place some lifetimes ago for
The Doctor, with the Time Lord having trouble remembering it due
to the mental confusion caused by his intervening regenerations.
This evidence is further supported by an alternate timeline experienced
by Mel in "The
Quantum Archangel", where a version of the
Third
Doctor who never escaped his exile made a reference to a trap
he arranged for a fleet of Cybermen that sounds at least superficially
like the events experienced here. Given that Validium was created
by the Time Lords, it is therefore reasonable to assume that The
Doctor originally encountered Lady Peinforte during the events of ‘Season
6B’, where the Second Doctor was forced to work as an unofficial
agent for the Time Lords after his trial ("The
War Games")
but before his exile and regeneration ("Spearhead
From Space"),
allowing them to investigate various problems in the timeline without
officially breaking their policy of non-interference.
Regardless
of the circumstances of their first meeting, The Doctor’s second
confrontation with Lady Peinforte took place when he was alerted
to the return of the Validium asteroid to Earth in 1988, knowing
that its orbit meant that it would return to Earth and come ever
closer every twenty-five years (Noting that it had previous returned
the year before the First and Second World Wars began and had also
come back the year of the Kennedy Assassination). In the past, Lady
Peinforte paid a mathematician to calculate when the Nemesis statue
would return to Earth, subsequently killing him once the date of
the asteroid’s return had been confirmed. Using the validium
arrow from the Nemesis statue, and a magic potion involving the blood
of the murdered mathematician, she was able to travel forward in
time to the date when the asteroid arrived, accompanied by her servant
Richard.
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| De Flores and The Fourth Reich |
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Although Lady Peinforte was ignorant of the
fine details of the world of the future she encountered, the fact that
she was armed with gold-tipped arrows dipped in poison suggests that
she had some advanced knowledge of the threats she would face in her
attempt to control the statue, given that the statue was also being sought
by a division of The
Fourth Reich led by the ruthless De Flores - the
Reich having somehow acquired the bow - and a fleet of Cybermen, Peinforte’s
golden arrows injuring the Cybermen while the poison was at least a potential
threat to the Nazis. Outnumbered and outgunned during the first fight
at the Nemesis comet, The Doctor and Ace were forced to retreat as the
Cybermen claimed the statue, although The Doctor managed to steal the
bow in the process.
Using
the bow to track the statue to Lady Peinforte’s former
estate - Peinforte taking sadistic pleasure in revealing
that they were standing on Richard’s grave -, The Doctor
and Ace were able to destroy the Cyber-ship with Ace’s
nitro-nine, forcing the Cybermen into an alliance with the
Nazis while Peinforte explored her tomb, being apparently
unconcerned at her body’s absence when she learned
that the Cybermen had concealed the Nemesis in her grave
as she placed the arrow in the statue’s hands. With
a fleet of Cyber-warships orbiting behind the Moon, The Doctor
was forced to return the bow to the Nemesis, although he
took it back after leaving it in the statue’s hands
long enough to wake it up.
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| The Nemesis Statue |
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Using the gold coins that Peinforte had pretended to
pay the mathematician with as ammunition for her slingshot, Ace was
able to keep the Cybermen back while The Doctor spoke with Nemesis,
only for Peinforte to arrive just as the Cyber-Leader killed De Flores.
Attempting to convince The Doctor to return the bow to her, she claimed
to have learned The Doctor’s ‘secret’ about the
Old Times and the Time of Chaos, but what this was and how she uncovered
it was never revealed (Although the subsequent revelation that The
Doctor is essentially the reincarnation of the Other, the mysterious
third founder of Gallifrey ("Lungbarrow"), suggests that
she may have acquired this information from the Nemesis statue).
Regardless of Peinforte’s knowledge, The Doctor dismissed her
by returning the bow to the Cyber-Leader, leaving Lady Peinforte,
left with nothing after The Doctor called her bluff, to throw herself
on to the Nemesis statue to try and control it directly, only to
be absorbed into the statue before it was launched at the Cyber-fleet.
With the Nemesis statue having received the freedom of death, The
Doctor subsequently took Richard back to his own time after he helped
The Doctor dispose of the Cyber-Leader, Richard content to live in
the world he knew as the heir to Peinforte's estate.
It was later revealed that Lady Peinforte’s ‘spell’ to
travel into the future was partly aided by the powerful Old One known
as Fenric ("The
Curse of Fenric"), thus accounting for
her ability to reach the appropriate date despite the change-over
from the Julian to the Georgian calendar during the intervening time. |
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