 Name: The Lamprey, AKA Monica Lamprey (Other Lampreys
were Sir Bertrand Lamprey and his half-human daughter Helen Lamprey) Format:
Book. Time of Origin: Technically Eternity;
they exist outside of Time as we know it, and can thus exist at all
times in all places simultaneously. Appearances: "Spiral
Scratch" Doctors: Sixth
Doctor (Although the
Lampreys were responsible for the Sixth Doctor's regeneration, so
they encountered the Seventh
Doctor by proxy) Companions: Melanie
Bush History: The Lampreys are rather like the Chronovores in that they exist outside of reality itself, capable of being in
multiple locations while feeding off chronon energy - the temporal
energy generated by living beings as they exist. The Lampreys literally
devour Time, liking nothing more than to find and completely extinguish
an entire multiverse of realities just to feed. However, in order
to actually enter a reality, they need to find a focus, unique mental
waves of a time-sensitive individual, in order to home in on them
and break through into their universe. Their exact origins are unclear;
based on some sources, it would appear that the Lamprets were originally
an entire species, but they apparently destroyed each other, leaving
only three Lampreys - one adult male (Or as close to one as you can
get when taking into account that we're discussing a pan-dimensional
being) and two children, a boy and a girl. The children escaped into
the thirteenth century, where they became known as Julien and Dominique,
but they were eventually driven away by fearful villagers who thought
they were children of the devil, the boy being killed as his sister
escaped... and, unfortunately, his sister was the violent one of
the two, her angry tendencies only kept calm by her brother, and
without him, she became far more vicious... Eventually
changing her name to Monica Lamprey, 'Dominique' began to search
the world for a means to return to the Time Vortex, eventually finding
this in the form of a 1950s Austrian chemist called Joseph Tungard,
who was forced to flee to Britain when the Communists began to round
up people who had helped the Nazis during the occupation (Regardless
of whether or not they had wanted to help the Nazis in the first
place). When Tungard's wife, Natjya, was confined to a wheelchair,
Monica began an affair with Tungard to get access to his research,
all the while keeping Natjya alive with her time-manipulation powers
so that Joseph would still want to continue his work. At the same
time, the adult Lamprey, now going by the alias of Sir Bertrand,
had forgotten all about his mission to find Monica after he entered
Time to find her and fell in love with a beautiful young woman called
Elspeth - they even had a daughter, Helen Lamprey. Over time, Bertrand
had put his memories of his time as a Lamprey aside, even after Elspeth
perished in a tragic fire... because he'd found love. Monica eventually attracted The Doctor's attention
when the Sixth
Doctor and Melanie
Bush visited The Doctor's old Time
Lord friend Professor Rummas on the library at Carsus - a
library where Time flowed
in a completely linear direction, thus allowing books and
information to be archived in a manner that would stop anyone
getting something they shouldn't.
Rummas had recently been rather... surprised, to put it
mildly... at the recent discoveries in his office of ghostly
images of his and The Doctor's
dead bodies; The Doctor apparently strangled to death while
Rummas had a knitting needle lodged in the front lobe of
his brain. While The Doctor
and Mel investigated recent historical distortions (Including
Helen Lamprey vanishing at her sixteenth birthday party),
alternate versions of the two
of them began their own investigations. The two most prominent
of these alternates was a darkly-garbed Doctor with a scar
over his left eye from
an Earth where Rome never fell (America was still uncivilised
and slavery was widely accepted, this timeline's Mel - known
as Melina - being one
of many such 'slaves') and an identically-dressed Doctor
from an Earth where it appears that humans and Silurians
were able to live in peace (In
that reality, Mel was a human/Silurian hybrid named Melanie
Baal). While Monica tracked down time-sensitives from alternate
timelines, The Doctor
and Melanie were able to rescue one from the planet Janus
8 - a young girl called Kala - getting her away from the
Lamprey after it appeared before
them, and allowing this Doctor to warn his alternate selves
what was going on - a rather easy task, given that Time was
becoming so unstable that
images from alternate universes were seeping into each other. Eventually,
the three Doctors (Along with their respective Mels) rendezvoused
in the library, and, linking minds, realized what was going on...
including the fact that the Lamprey had only been unleashed on the
universe when Rummas, using a device he'd acquired when he left Gallifrey,
had tapped into the time spiral where the Lamprey dwelled in an attempt
to study it, thus giving the Lamprey access to the linear universe
despite their best efforts (Rummas and his colleagues didn't recall
doing anything to try and stop Monica, but The Doctor was prepared
to bet that this was merely because, every time they came close to
succeeding, Monica had just nipped back in time and stopped them
even coming up with the plan in the first place). Monica, using the
elements discovered by Tungard, intended to completely destroy the
Spiral and subsequently take control of the library, from where she
could contain all the existing alternate timelines to provide a food
source by using the library as a lodestone to anchor herself to reality
- and, of course, if she ever began to run out of food, she could
simply go back in time and change things in some realities to create
more for her to feed on. To achieve this, she had hypnotised Tungard
and used him to kill off alternate versions of Rummas, thus draining
the library of its protective chronon energy enough for Monica to
penetrate it, and thus store realities in the library's centre. With no other way to save creation, The Doctors used
Helen Lamprey (Sir Bertrand having been lost when Monica trapped
him in a device that was meant to contain her) to lure Monica to
the library, and then destroy her by overloading her with the only
chronon energy left that there was a sufficient amount of; their
own. As Mel and Rummas watched (Mel's alternate selves having been
killed), The Doctors channelled all their chronon energy into Monica,
even as countless alternate Doctors fell as their energy was drained,
the accumulated temporal energy binding the Lamprey to that specific
point in time and space. With Doctors running out, the Prime Doctor
- The Doctor we know - reached up and grabbed the Lamprey, the reaction
to that action being described below;"How! How can you touch me! I'm intangible. I'm across all time and space. I am everywhere at once." "No", The Doctor said, pained, exhausted, and just a little angrily. "You are trapped here. By me. One solitary individual against your omnipotence. And I will beat you." "How?" "Because I am... The Doctor!" With
that, The Doctor leapt at the Lamprey, holding her down long enough
for the other Doctors to focus their attack on her, annihilating
their taint from creation with a last burst of chronon energy...
although, sadly, Helen died as well. As the other surviving Doctors
left, Mel took her Doctor back to the TARDIS, which The Doctor put
in hover mode to look at the cosmos one last time, as he told Mel
that he had been honoured to have her at his side in this final battle.
Mel watched, unable to do anything, as The Doctor collapsed to the
floor, the drain on his chronon energy having been too much for him
- and, as a tractor beam dragged them down to Lakertya, where The Rani and her diabolical plan to create a time manipulator awaited
them, Mel could only lie, disorientated and nearing unconsciousness,
as The Doctor regenerated into his seventh incarnation... |
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