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Warmonger
(Terrance Dicks) |
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 Name: Morbius
Format:
Television show, Book and Audio
Time of Origin: Gallifrey,
far future, but a bit earlier then The Doctor.
Appearances: "The
Brain of Morbius","Warmonger", "Sisters
of the Flame" and "The Vengeance of Morbius"
Doctors: Fourth
Doctor, Fifth
Doctor and Eighth
Doctor.
Companions: Sarah
Jane Smith, Peri and Lucie Miller
History: Originally, Morbius was
the President of the High Council of the Time Lords, one of the most
distinguished of them all. However, that all changed when he developed
an obsession with leading the Time Lords on a path of conquest and
glory of the whole universe. He was deposed as President and would
have been executed, but because of his past services, the sentence
was restricted to exile from Gallifrey, never to return. However,
he was bitter about the sentence, vowing that he would return and
claim his title as ruler of the universe. Forced to start again from
scratch with his army, Morbius gathered together an army of Gazteks,
basically little more then thugs, and arranged for a peace conference
on the Hospice of the planet Karn, claiming that his intentions were
to band the outer planets together to protect themselves from the
powerful empires in the sector, although he was really more interested
in starting a military campaign, using the conference as cover to
start his plans.
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| The Fourth
Doctor |
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Also,
he had another, far deadlier reason than that; Karn was also the location
of the Sisterhood of the Flame, a group that held the secret of the
Elixier of Life, a drink that could extend life indefinitely, and
Morbius wanted it for himself. However, he bit off more then he could
chew when he selected the Hospice, as it had two very particular patients
in it at the time; the Fifth
Doctor and Peri, The Doctor having gone there when Peri was nearly
fatally wounded in one arm by a pterodactyl-like creature on a planet
they'd visited. Morbius made arrangements for a dinner date with Peri,
but when his attempts to destroy the Sisterhood and steal the Elixier
were thwarted, he decided to abduct her instead and fled the city,
only pausing long enough to send The Doctor a telepathic message that
revealed his true name to the other Time Lord.
Fortunately, Peri managed to
escape Morbius by playing on his vanity and claiming that she had
contracted a fatal skin disease, causing Morbius to eject her into
space, where she drifted aimlessly until she crash-landed on the planet
Sylvana, and eventually began to lead a small rebellion against Morbius.
The Doctor, meanwhile, made contact with the Time Lords of this era,
and eventually decided that there was only one way to stop Morbius;
to stop him becoming a martyr, he must be defeated in a military campaign;
thus, the great empires of the galaxy would have to unite in one alliance
to take him down. Convincing them to work together would require an
ambassador with great imagination and experience of alien cultures,
who is unafraid to take risks... and only The Doctor was qualified.
Despite his natural reluctance, he eventually took the job up, gathering
together an army of humans, Draconians, Sontarans, Ice
Warriors, and
even Cybermen.
He also had thirty Orgons to serve as his personal bodyguard, and
it was from them that this new version of The Doctor gained his name;
being unable to pronounce his full title of 'Supreme Coordinator',
they took to calling him 'Supremo', and the name stuck.
The
Doctor was also responsible for creating their strategy to stop Morbius
single-handedly, earning the respect of both the experienced Sontaran
and Draconian commanders at once. Since they lacked the forces at
the time to attack Morbius directly, or stage a series of divirsionary
attacks to divide his resources, The Doctor decided to follow in Morbius’
footsteps, liberating the planets he'd conquered one by one. Every
time Morbius conquered another world he had to leave troops behind
to occupy and subdue it; thus, every victory weakened him, while every
time The Doctor's forces liberated a planet they would become stronger
and thus be well-practiced when the time came for the final battle.
Eventually, The Doctor reached Sylvana, where he was finally reunited
with Peri, and then tracked Morbius back to Karn for the final battle,
where Morbius was going to make another attempt to claim the Elixier
for himself.
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| The Fifth
Doctor |
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Fortunately, the Sisterhood managed to
fight off Morbius's first attempt at attack, and then The Doctor's
forces managed to gather on the planet and launched their attack on
Morbius's forces, aided by the Sisterhood and the psychological advantage
of having aliens on their side while Morbius only had humanoid life-forms.
They were nearly defeated when Morbius summoned reinforcements, but
The Doctor called in some backup of his own, and managed to stop Morbius's
soldiers and capture Morbius. However, one of Morbius's followers,
a doctor called Solon, managed to 'save' Morbius by extracting his
brain before his body was disintegrated- all the time observed by
The Doctor. However, as The Doctor later told Peri, he wasn't concerned
about it; he'd already attended to that little problem in his past...
After
The Doctor and Peri departed, the separate members of the Alliance
returned to their empires, and the Hospice was abandoned, as nobody
had the heart to rebuild it after the battle. Karn itself was abandoned,
apart from the Sisterhood, who sheltered in their Temple, growing
ever more fearful as their sacred Flame began to die and their stocks
of Elixir dwindled. Solon hid in the ruins of the Hospice, continuing
his work, vowing to restore Morbius to life. And then, one dark and
stormy night, a curly-haired stranger and his young friend arrived
on Karn... The Fourth
Doctor and Sarah
Jane Smith.
When
he met The Doctor and Sarah (Not recognising The Doctor, obviously),
Solon decided that The Doctor's head was just what he needed to finish
off Morbius's new body; he'd already created a body from victims of
various assorted crashes on the planet, but lacked a head of the right
size for Morbius's brain. He contemplated using The Doctor's head,
but eventually decided to use The Doctor to acquire a sample of the
elixier by convincing him that Sarah had been permanently blinded
and the elixier would be needed to cure her, while he placed Morbius's
brain in an artificial 'tank' he'd developed in cases he'd been unable
to get an alternative.
However, this gave The Doctor the chance he needed to stop Morbius.
Taking Solon out by adding cyanide gas to the air vents, The Doctor
then challenged Morbius to a mind-bending contest, where two Time
Lords faced each
other in mental combat. The Doctor was knocked out by the mental
strain required, but he managed to overheat Morbius's brain enough
to let
the Sisterhood throw him off a cliff. The Doctor was badly injured
by the contest, but the Sisterhood sacrificed the last current sample
of their elixier to heal him. The Doctor departed, leaving the Sisterhood
with a box of matches to restart the Flame if the need arose.
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The Vengeance of Morbius
(Nicholas Briggs)
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Some
time after this, the spirit of Morbius returned to plague The Doctor
again in his eighth incarnation, beginning with the TARDIS being
drawn to Karn ("Sisters of the Flame" and "The Vengeance
of Morbius"), now owned by the wealthy Mr Zarodnix, a man so
wealthy he regularly bought and sold planets. Although Zarodnix attempted
to capture The Doctor, The Doctor and current companion Lucie Miller
were recovered by the Sisterhood, who revealed that Zarodnix was
the leader of the Cult of Morbius, a group dedicated to recovering
everything related to Morbius… and was now seeking a Time Lord
as part of a plan to revive Morbius. Although the Sisterhood attempted
to execute The Doctor and Lucie in a matter dispersal chamber to
prevent Zarodnix using them in his plan, Zarodnix instead captured
Straxus - the Time Lord sent to find out what happened to The Doctor
- subsequently using him to restore Morbius by fusing a piece of
Morbius’s brain to Straxus’s DNA using genetic fusion,
creating a new body for Morbius.
As
Morbius launched an attack on Gallifrey using the salvaged Stellar
Manipulator ("Remembrance
of the Daleks") to take control
of the Eye of Harmony, The Doctor was forced to flee Gallifrey in
the TARDIS with the last of its power, unintentionally travelling
a decade forward in time to a universe where Morbius had resumed
his campaign of conquest (Although his unstable genetic structure
meant that he was still dependent on ‘donations’ from
Straxus to stay alive). With only one chance left to stop Morbius,
The Doctor used the last of the TARDIS’s power to send a message
to the remnants of the Sisterhood, subsequently confronting Morbius
and taking the Stellar Manipulator control from him. With power restored
to Gallifrey, the Time Lords were able to roll back time and undo
Morbius’s new empire, Morbius once again falling into the canyon
where he had died before (Although The Doctor was believed to have
perished with Morbius, it was later revealed that he had been teleported
away by the Sisterhood to the distant planet Orbis, Lucie later recovering
The Doctor with the ‘aid’ of their old foe the Headhunter). |
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