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| The Talons of Weng-Chiang |
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 Name: Magnus Greel (AKA Weng-Chiang)
Format:
Television show
Time of Origin: Originally from the
year 5000 before he travelled back in time to China in 1872; confronted
The Doctor in London in 1889; was almost diverted to 1937; temporarily reconstituted in a new body in 1968.
Appearances: "The
Talons of Weng-Chiang" and "The
Butcher of Brisbane" and "Jago & Litefoot: The Final Act"
Doctors: Fourth
Doctor and Fifth
Doctor
Companions: Leela, Nyssa, Tegan
Jovanka and Turlough; Professor George Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago
History: Magnus Greel is, in some ways, one of
The Doctor’s most interesting adversaries, representing an
intriguing blend of a scientific genius and a total idiot - described
by his colleagues as a scientific ruffian with authority over those
superior to him in skill -; although he had access to a great deal
of advanced technology that he had designed himself, most of it operated
on flawed scientific principles, only capable of achieving what Greel
had designed it for on a short-term basis while causing significant
long-term damage.
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| The Doctor and Magnus Greel |
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As
the ironically named Minister of Justice of the Supreme Alliance
of Eastern States in the year 5,000 - one of many such Alliances
that ruled Earth at this time, Earth currently gripped by a new ice
age and gutted of its resources as most humans fled to the colonies
in the face of the environmental collapse, leaving only a few survivors
to serve as a factory processing resources from elsewhere - and a
prominent member of the Star Chamber, Greel’s atrocities at
this time earned him the title of the "Butcher of Brisbane",
with over a hundred thousand deaths being attributed to him as he
sought to perfect his ‘catalytic extraction chamber’,
an attempt to cannibalise the life energies of others to sustain
his own existence. Not only did Greel maintain a tight control of
the press to limit their opportunities to investigate him - resulting
in a public appearance of a charismatic but well-intentioned leader
-, but he sent various prisoners to his alien associate, Professor
Findecker, while claiming that he was ‘mercifully’ sending
them to work camps instead of executing them, and was rumoured to
have shady links to various offworld scientific organisations, as
well as those who opposed him often mysteriously disappearing. Greel
also considered himself a driving force in the project in which his
nation pioneered time travel, although this transference process
was dependent on a zygma beam, created based on Findecker’s
discovery of the double-nexus particle (A particle where half of
it existed outside of the conventional universe in the Time Vortex,
resulting in it being assumed to be a vital component of time travel
technology, although this revelation known as ‘Findecker’s
Folly’ as it sent human science up a technological cul-de-sac
due to the dangerous discoveries that were inspired by the particle).
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The Butcher of Brisbane
(Marc Platt) |
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Greel
and The Doctor first encountered each other - from Greel’s
perspective, anyway - when the TARDIS accidentally struck a zygma
beam while the Fifth
Doctor was attempting to take Tegan
Jovanka home for
a visit, the resulting collision causing a reality breach that pulled
Nyssa and Turlough out of the ship, depositing them in a barren wasteland
where Greel sent the bodies of those killed in Findecker’s
experiments in the future. While waiting for The Doctor and Tegan
to find them, acting on the advice of the future version of Earth
Free Media reporter Ragan Creezen, Nyssa and Turlough infiltrated
Greel’s inner circle, Nyssa eventually managing to become engaged
to Greel - noting that he had certain admirable qualities even if
she could never genuinely love him - while Turlough worked as her
personal secretary. As they slipped information to various contacts,
the Earth Free Media worked on re-tracing the zygma beam used to
dispose of the prisoners back to its source, although it took almost
three years for Nyss and Turlough to find anything genuinely incriminating.
When The Doctor and Tegan finally arrived - The Doctor having traced
the zygma beam by analysing the particle half in the vortex and following
it back to its other half -, they arrived at the source of the beam
rather than its destination, where Tegan was rescued by Ragan’s
younger self while The Doctor was captured by Findecker.
While Tegan learned what had happened to Nyssa
and Turlough on Earth Free Media’s cloaked satellite, The Doctor
was tortured by Findecker until he convinced Findecker to show him his
research, Findecker deciding to enjoy the opportunity to talk to someone
who could understand his work even if he dismissed The Doctor’s
claims that the double-nexus particle was useless despite his own weakening
condition from zygma energy exposure. Revealing his origin as a time
traveller, The Doctor claimed that he was a time agent to prevent Findecker
killing him, leaving him to be held prisoner by Chops - a mutated dingo
used as a guard -, but The Doctor managed to reprogram Chops’s
cybernetic components to make him loyal to The Doctor just in time for
The Doctor to rescue Tegan from Findecker. Meanwhile, Nyssa and Turlough
learned that Greel intended to sabotage the upcoming peace accords between
the Supreme and Icelandic Alliances so that he could assume a position
of single authority rather than the planned republic, Greel presenting
the commissioner of the Icelandic Alliance with a gift in the form of
the doll-like but homicidal cyborg known as the Peking Homunculus - an
artificial construct with the brain of a pig, the swinish instincts leaving
it with a deep-rooted hatred of humanity and an obsession with carnage
while also being more ruthless than a simple machine would have been
-, claiming that it was a toy for her children while intending for it
to assassinate her and trigger further conflict. Although Greel’s
planned coup was sabotaged, he still attempted to trigger war as the
Homunculus attacked the Commissioner, but The Doctor was able to prevent
this plan by transmitting a message to a younger version of himself who
was currently travelling with the Icelandic army (Which Doctor and why
he was with the army was unknown, but it was one of the first four Doctors),
allowing the younger Doctor to tell the army what was happening and prevent
the resulting conflict degenerating into World War Six while the Fifth
Doctor dealt with Greel. Unable to provide either side with time travel
due to his inability to access the TARDIS, and driven over the brink
by the failure of his plans, Greel attempted to jump to his death, but
his suicide attempt was interrupted as Findecker’s cabinet was
redirected to Reykjavik by a temporal beacon activated by The Doctor
when Findecker was attempting to escape after disposing of Ragan, Greel
killing Findecker and taking the cabinet for himself. As Greel departed,
travelling back through time along the zygma beam, The Doctor and his
companions departed, The Doctor certain that the war would end peacefully
while noting that Greel would meet his well-deserved fate.
Arriving in China in 1872, Greel was discovered by a
local peasant, Li H'sen Chang, who mistook him for the legendary Chinese
God Weng-Chiang due to the manner of his arrival. However, the passage
through time had caused great damage to Greel's DNA, disrupting his
metabolism and causing his cells to decay - comparable to a water-bag
with a hole in it, his cellular stability ‘leaking’ and
becoming increasingly unstable - leaving him hideously deformed. Although
Chang was able to keep Greel hidden from the soldiers of the Tung Chui,
the Time Cabinet was taken by members of the Chinese Imperial Court
while he was hidden, leaving Greel trapped in this time.
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| Li H'sen Chang with Mr Sin |
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In order to find the Cabinet, Greel continued to support
the illusion of himself as Weng-Chiang to win the allegiance of the
Tong of the Black Scorpion, also using unspecified scientific research
to grant Chang mysterious hypnotic and telepathic powers that would
help him enforce his will on their followers in the Tong. Forced to
wear a mask and concealing clothes to hide his true form, Greel’s
personality became increasingly twisted, the formerly charming and charismatic
- albeit dangerous - man of the year 5000 degenerating into a twisted
monster, prone to yelling and dismissing his servants as incompetents
when they failed to please him. With Chang posing as a conjurer and
the Homunculus as Mr Sin, a ventriloquist's dummy, the group eventually
found themselves in London, Greel using the Tong to search for his Time
Cabinet after tracking it to the city. While Greel lived in fear of
Time Agents from his era tracking him to the past, hiding in the sewers
beneath the theatre where Chang performed - even using his equipment
to enlarge the local rats to act as ‘guards’, his intellect
intact even as he became increasingly short-tempered - Chang abducted
young women for him so that he might use their life energy to restore
himself using the catalytic extraction chamber to stabilise his own
metabolism, a method which was inherently flawed and only accelerated
the damage to Greel’s cells.
This status quo continued until the Fourth
Doctor and Leela arrived in London - The Doctor attempting to show Leela how her
ancestors entertained themselves in the past - subsequently witnessing
members of the Tong disposing of the body of Mr Sin’s latest victim.
Aided by Professor Litefoot - the pathologist who examined the victim’s
corpse, whose father had been given the Time Cabinet in 1873 as a gift
for his military service - and Henry Gordon Jago - the manager of the
theatre where Chang performed -, The Doctor and Leela investigated the
deaths, The Doctor discovering ‘Weng-Chiang’ in the theatre
and Leela later infiltrating his base by switching places with a hypnotised
girl Chang had recently kidnapped for Greel (Chang and Greel already
interested in The Doctor due to his immunity to Chang’s mind-reading
powers). Although Leela managed to escape Greel’s underground
base, Greel subsequently abandoned the location, Chang being killed
by one of Greel’s giant rats when he tried to flee himself, only
surviving long enough to tell The Doctor and Leela how he had met Greel.
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| Gordon Jago and Professor
Litefoot |
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Having discovered the Cabinet in Litefoot’s house,
The Doctor swiftly realised that he was dealing with the Peking Homunculus,
although he eventually had to allow himself to be captured - having
stolen the Time Cabinet’s key from Greel’s old base to prevent
Greel from escaping as the re-ignition of the Zygma beam could vaporise
London - in order to specifically identify the individual who had brought
Sin to the past. In the subsequent confrontation, Greel - who naturally
didn’t recognise the Fourth Doctor as he and the Fifth were so
different - concluded that The Doctor was a Time Agent due to The Doctor’s
knowledge of the events that led to his ‘exile’ to the past.
Although angered at The Doctor’s description of him as a war criminal,
Greel proudly proclaimed that The Doctor’s presence proved that
the zygma experiments had succeeded, but The Doctor openly derided Greel’s
technology, dismissing the extraction chamber as simply cannibalism
that saved Greel from having ‘to chew the grisly bits’ and
bluntly informing him that the zygma experiments were a disaster. Denying
The Doctor’s claims, Greel had The Doctor, Jago and Litefoot locked
up in a cell, intending to use the key to take the time cabinet back
to his own time and receive proper treatment after interrogating The
Doctor for further information about the experiments.
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| Magnus Greel |
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However, Greel’s plan went wrong when The Doctor and
his allies escaped their cell, Greel then finding himself unable to
properly control Sin - currently sitting in a dragon statue with lasers
in its eyes that Greel had designed as a weapon - as the android’s
psychotic tendencies had become too powerful. Driven solely by its own
bloodlust, Sin turned against Greel’s followers while The Doctor,
Leela, Litefoot and Jago hid behind a table, leaving Greel distracted
long enough for Leela to destroy the laser weapon Sin was using. As
Greel attempted to shoot Leela, The Doctor tackled him and disposed
of the gun, the fight ending as The Doctor shoved Greel into his own
extraction chamber, resulting in fatal cellular collapse as the proteins
he required were extracted from his body all at once, his entire body
falling apart. Having disabled Sin by removing the android’s control
circuit, subsequently smashing the key to the Time Cabinet, The Doctor
and Leela departed, certain that Greel’s zygma experiments had
been ended once and for all.
The Doctor later dealt with the remnants of Greel’s
legacy when he found himself pitted against Li H’sen Chang’s
daughter Hsien-Ko ("The
Shadow of Weng-Chiang - rendered
immortal but sterile due to her father’s exposure to zygma energy
before her conception - who sought to draw Greel’s time cabinet
to the present to punish him for what he had done to her father by disrupting
the zygma beam in 1937, unaware of the implications of the temporal
paradox that would result if she succeeded in preventing Greel from
reaching 1872 as he had in the original history. Although her plan nearly
succeeded at the last minute, The Doctor was able to prevent the Time
Cabinet from being diverted from its original course by materialising
the TARDIS in the location where the cabinet was to arrive, essentially ‘shoving’ the
cabinet back into the Time Vortex to continue on its path to 1872, allowing
history to unfold as it should.
On a later occasion, Professor Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago found themselves dealing with a more personal legacy of Greel's when they were temporarily trapped in 1968 after a brief trip with the Sixth Doctor resulted in them being dropped off in the wrong time period ("Voyage to the New World"). During their time in the future, Jago and Litefoot encountered Guinevere Godiva, the descendant of one of Greel's followers, whose family had managed to partially reconstruct the trionic lattice, with the goal of reactivating the cabinet so that she could retrieve the copy of Greel's mind imprinted on the cabinet's control systems by the zygma energy and thus bring him back to life. Using a Venusian crystal Jago had acquired during his time with The Doctor ("Voyage to Venus") to finish refining the lattice, Godiva was able to reconstitute Greel's mind in the body of Jago and Litefoot's ally Detective Inspector Dave Sacker by using the extraction chamber to power the time cabinet and channel Greel's mental imprint into Sacker's body, at the cost of aging Guinevere while she served as the power source for the cabinet. However, when Greel resolved to use the cabinet to go back in time and destroy Jago and Litefoot's world, this prompted Godiva to attack him for using her family in such a manner, allowing Jago and Litefoot's associate Ellie Higson - who had become immortal as a side effect of an incident where she was nearly turned into a vampire in the 1890s - was able to overload the cabinet by using herself as a power source, her current immortality allowing her to survive the experience while apparently leaving her mortal. With Greel dead, Jago and Litefoot used the cabinet to travel back to 1893, previously confirmed to be secure and safe to use now that the crystal had been perfected, confident that the danger posed by Greel was now over for good.
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