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The Crystal Bucephalus
(Craig Hinton) |
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 Name: Maximillian Arrestis, AKA Lazarus
Format:
Book
Time of Origin: Died on Sontar in the 63rd century; confronted The Doctor on New Alexander in the 108th century.
Appearances: "The Crystal Bucephalus"
Doctors:
Fifth Doctor
Companions: Tegan
Jovanka,
Turlough and
Kamelion
History: In many ways, Maximillian Arrestis is one of The Doctor's most forward-thinking individuals - a particular surprise given that he was only human, albeit a clearly intelligent one -, setting up an entire religion as a master plan simply to save himself from death and ensure his continued survival far into the future.
When his life began in the sixty-third century, Arrestis eventually became the secret leader of a vast criminal empire, while also working to establish himself as a religious figure to a religion that would go on to become a major force in the galaxy over five thousand years after his death. Arrestis apparently based his religion on fragments of the Bible, which had been virtually forgotten about by the wider galaxy at this time; even the name was chosen from the Bible, with Arrestis contemplating 'Jesus Christ' until he decided that he liked Lazarus better. As well as 'predicting' natural disasters that he then caused, Arrestis was even able to fake a few 'miracles' to improve his standing, although the precise details of these miracles were unspecified; he even attempted to structure his religion so that the reptilian races he particularly despised (Although he was apparently xenophobically hostile to anything non-human) would be rejected by his followers by claiming that his Ice Warrior and Draconian disciples betrayed him, although many followers of the Lazarus Intent still accepted them in the spirit of forgiveness. Despite his various precautions, Arrestis was eventually killed on the Sontaran Throneworld (It was believed by his followers that he died to save the Federation from annihilation, but really the Sontarans executed him for cheating them out of codes that would have allowed them access to the Rutan mainframe).
At the moment before he was killed, however, Arrestis was brought into the future by Alexhandri Lassiter, a prominent temporal engineer of the 108th century, as part of his efforts to satisfy his wife's wishes due to her being a follower of the Lazarus Intent; in preparation for the possibility of his death, one of Arrestis's decrees was that his followers would develop time travel in the future and save him from his death so that he could continue to lead them. By this point in the future, the Intent was one of the three most powerful organisations in existence - the other two being a collapsing space empire and the crime syndicate known as the Elective - based on the planet Clavidas and using an Inf as their sacred symbol. However, after Lassiter learned just what Arrestis was really like as a person, with Arrestis swiftly escaping Lassiter after he arrived in the future, Lassiter deliberately sabotaged his public research to give the impression that he was unable to create a true time machine, thus preventing anyone else from repeating his work and bringing another 'Lazarus' into the future.
Having arrived in the 108th century, Arrestis set himself up as the head of the Elective until the time came for him to take control of the Lazarus Intent when he was able to make Lassiter confess what he had done as further verification of his identity. Using his private knowledge of genetics - a field officially forbidden by the Intent - Arrestis was able to perfect a mental transference system that would allow him to send his mind to a clone of his own body if he was killed; during his time in the 108th century he apparently changed bodies five times. Meanwhile, Lassiter used his time-travel resources to create the a restaurant known as the Crystal Bucephalus, which allowed guests to travel back in time and dine in various famous restaurants on multiple planets; the restaurant's equipment could even project the visitors through Time with a reduced reality quotient to ensure that they didn't accidentally change history during their dining experience, such as by accidentally preventing two people meeting when they were destined to become parents to a historically significant child. Lassiter reasoned that the exclusive nature of the Bucephalus would ensure that Arrestis would never be able to capture him to verify Arrestis's identity as he was a public figure in a very inaccessible location, only for Arrestis's high status in the Elective to allow him to have meals at the Bucephalus, even if he continued to keep his true identity secret.
Arrestis eventually decided that it was time to make his return pubic by forcing Lassiter to admit the truth about his achievement. Arranging a meal at the Bucephalus, Arrestis created the illusion of his death by having a clone of himself poisoned while dining there while also arranging for the Bucephalus's Benefactor - the owner of the restaurant whose investments had provided it with the necessary funds to start - to be framed for the murder by locating him in time and space and giving the impression that the Benefactor had been dining in the Benefactor's Booth and sent the poisoned wine to Arrestis. However, this plan was complicated from the beginning as the Benefactor was actually The Doctor - The Doctor had invested in the Bucephalus in the belief that it would prove a failure as he needed a means of disposing of the accumulated compound interest in his bank accounts - resulting in the Fifth Doctor, Tegan
Jovanka and Turlough being taken to the restaurant while they were having a meal in 18th-century France. While The Doctor attempted to learn what had happened and determine how the Bucephalus worked, Tegan ran off after their arrival while Turlough was left to talk with the reputation-fixated Maitre-D' of the Bucephalus, resulting in him being accidentally abducted along with Tornqvist, the current leader of the Lazarus Intent, by Tornqvist's former lover Ladygay Matisse, who had managed to 'hack' the Bucephalus.
The Doctor was eventually able to determine that the murdered Arrestis was a clone, while the real Arrestis was discovered in the 1980s as he pursued his former mistress (Really Lassiter's ex-wife, Hellenica Monroe, a member of the Intent seeking time travel, who had ended up stuck in the past with Tegan when they wanted into a different venue). When Arrestis was recovered from the past while Turlough returned to the TARDIS to take it to the Bucephalus, Matisse attempted to get The Doctor out of the way by using the Bucephalus to trap him on a random planet in the past, but The Doctor was able to return to the Bucephalus by opening a restaurant and working on it for five years so that it would attract the attention of the Bucephalus computers, subsequently using his recall rod to return to the restaurant once it selected the Tempus Fugit. Returned to action, The Doctor learned that Lassiter had been forced to use the Bucephalus as a true time machine when Matisse's actions threatened to trap the guests in the past, leaving Arrestis with the perfect opportunity to take control of the system now that Lassiter had exposed his full potential.
Returning to the Bucephalus, Arrestis gained an additional ally when he discovered the TARDIS just as The Doctor's companion Kamelion was leaving it, Kamelion's programmed limitation to be loyal to the strongest mind in his vicinity ("The King's Demons") causing him to automatically serve Arrestis. While Tegan and Tornqvist discovered Arrestis's quarters, Tornqvist was left disturbed at their contents - which included artwork depicting aliens being tortured, cloned body-parts, and a distinctive Inf - Matisse travelled to the Bucephalus to try and steal the TARDIS, as Turlough and Monroe arrived in the Bucephalus control room to confront Lassiter just as Arrestis arrived, forcing Lassiter to admit that Arrestis was Lazarus, Arrestis admitting that he now sought to claim his role in the Intent while explaining his motivations to Turlough regarding his reasons for such a long-term stratagem.
Unaware that her actions had caused the Bucephalus power source to feed back on itself and was already creating a singularity, Matisse attempted to claim the TARDIS, but her efforts to pilot the ship in the already temporally-unstable region of the Bucephalus caused the ship's interior dimensions to start collapsing in on themselves when the ship stalled in the vortex, Martisse dying inside the TARDIS library when she stayed behind to try and steal various Time Lord secrets. Fortunately, The Doctor and his companions were able to gain access to the ship via the Bucephalus time-gates, allowing The Doctor to confront and disarm Arrestis; although Kamelion had obeyed Arrestis's order to turn into something dangerous by turning into a Sculti, a jellyfish-like creature capable of overloading human brainwaves with a single touch, he had also tricked Arrestis as the energy generated by the Sculti shut down the energy weapons that Arrestis was using.
Unfortunately, with the restaurant coming apart around them and the TARDIS still trapped in the vortex, The Doctor was forced to send Kamelion to destroy the Bucephalus power source and force the TARDIS back into the real world, leaving Arrestis to threaten The Doctor to help Monroe program a time-gate that would allow him to escape to the Intent homeworld. As Arrestis left, however, Monroe revealed to The Doctor that she had recognised the difference between the religion and its founder, reprogramming the gate to send Arrestis back to Sontar at the moment of his original death. Arrestis arrived back on the Sontaran Throneworld just as his past self was removed, cut off from the various security measures he had developed in the future to ensure his survival, leaving him to be killed by the Sontarans while his false religion continued to develop in the future to fulfil its fake mission. With the TARDIS safe and Tornqvist having already acknowledged that Lazarus should never be brought to the future as he would have never lived up to his image even if he hadn't been Arrestis, The Doctor offered some advice for how he might guide the Intent in the future to cope with the imminent collapse of galactic society, The Doctor leaving the galaxy to develop without the 'dream' of bringing Lazarus back to begin a new golden age.
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