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| Omega |
|
 Name:
Omega
Format:
Television Show, Book, Audio.
Time
of Origin: Gallifrey (Distant past), spent millennia trapped in
a world of anti-matter.
Appearances:
"The
Three Doctors", "The Box of Terrors", "Arc
of Infinity", "Omega" and "The Infinity Doctors".
Doctors:
Second
Doctor, Third
Doctor, Fourth Doctor, Fifth
Doctor; the First Doctor was involved in the first clash with Omega but didn’t face him directly.
Companions:
The
Brigadier, Sergeant
Benton, Jo
Grant, Sarah Jane Smith, Nyssa and Tegan
Jovanka .
History:
Originally, Omega was one of the three Founders of Time Lord society,
along with Rassilon and the mysterious individual known only as 'the
Other'. As revealed in "The
Three Doctors" and expanded
upon in flashbacks in the audio 'Omega', Omega was responsible for
the Time Lords harnessing the colossal power needed to utilise the
secret of time travel; namely, the creation of the stellar manipulator
known as 'the Hand of Omega' (Named by Rassilon after the apparent
death of Omega), which, when launched at a sun, would create a black
hole that could be trapped and used as power for the TARDISes. Although
he put this idea forward at school (When he was known as 'Peylix'),
his teacher found it foolish and dangerous, and gave him the lowest
grade possible, earning him the nickname 'Omega', leaving the former
Peylix desperate to turn it into a positive.
However,
when his associate Vandekirian tried to prevent the launch by plunging
his hands into the stellar manipulator, since it required the handprints
of all crew members to launch. As only one hand was destroyed before
Vandekirian fainted from pain, Omega had to cut off his other hand
to make it work. Along with Rassilon and the Other, Omega than triggered
the destruction of the star - but he'd miscalculated, and his vessel
was too close to the star when it detonated. His ship was destroyed
in the supernova, and, although Rassilon and the Other survived on
the main ship, only Omega survived his ship's accident, immortal
and bound within a stasis halo, trapped behind the event horizon
when the star collapsed into a black hole...
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| The Three Doctors |
|
In
the anti-matter universe he then found himself in, Omega swiftly learned
how to harness the power of the singularity that existed there, creating
an entire world based solely on his will. Although forced to wear
a mask in order to protect himself from the corroding effects of the
singularity, he knew that such a measure would only be a temporary
means of protecting himself, and thus dedicated much of his time towards
finding a means of escape. Although he could create a means of transport
back to his own universe, he swiftly realised it was useless; as he
was the 'Atlas' of his world, it kept him locked into it so long as
he was in control, but the second he abandoned control, the whole
place fell apart around his ears and he had to rebuild from scratch.
Eventually,
however, Omega was able to extend his control beyond the anti-matter
universe, triggering a power drain on Gallifrey and sending a sentient
'time-bridge' to Earth to target the only Time Lord whose location
was a given certainty; the Third
Doctor, currently exiled to Earth and working for UNIT. However,
due to the distance it travelled, the Time Bridge fails three times
to get The Doctor, instead capturing a park ranger who discovers it,
a visiting scientist in The Doctor's lab, and Bessie, The Doctor's
yellow roadster. Forced to retreat into the TARDIS,
The Doctor sends a distress call to Gallifrey, but the Time Lords,
unable to get any more aid, dispatched the First and Second Doctors
to aid their present self (Although the First Doctor was trapped in
a time eddy and could only advise his future selves). Deducing the
bridge's nature, the First
Doctor encouraged the Third Doctor and Jo
Grant to see where the bridge took them, and the two of them were
transported to Omega's world, followed later on by the Second
Doctor, The
Brigadier and Sergeant
Benton.
In
a desperate bid to stop Omega, the Third Doctor faced the dark side
of Omega's mind in a fight, but was nearly killed, and was only saved
by the Second pointing out that Omega needed the Third Doctor in order
to escape. Omega explained his dilemma, and revealed that he wanted
The Doctors to take his place so that he could escape his world. However,
as they removed his mask, they realised that Omega actually couldn't
leave the anti-matter world; the singularity had already corroded
away his entire body. Omega existed only because his will insisted
that he did, and his will was all that remained of him. Outraged,
Omega triggered an earthquake, but The Doctors and their companions
were able to flee to the TARDIS, where they, along with their first
self, discovered the Second Doctor's recorder in the TARDIS force
field generator... and realised the advantage that gave them. Since
matter and anti-matter cannot co-exist without the mutual destruction
of both, when The Doctors and their companions had entered Omega's
world, they had been converted into anti-matter, but since the recorder
had been in the generator, it had remained in its matter state, although
shielded from the anti-matter by the force field. After sending their
companions back to Earth, The Doctors tricked Omega into throwing
the recorder out of the generator, destroying his universe... as well
as himself. The First and Second Doctors returned to their places
in time, and, as thanks for his role in saving them, the Time Lords
lifted the Third Doctor's exile to Earth.
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The Box of Terrors
(Lizzie Hopley) |
|
It was soon revealed that Omega had managed to survive the destruction of his world, although his power was diminished from its previous levels, likely because he had to rebuild his world from scratch and even restore some kind of body for himself. Somehow managing to manifest in the real universe through an anti-matter rupture, Omega learned about The Collective, a Time Lord who suffered from regenerative dissonance where all of his past incarnations remained active in his mind after his regenerations ("Dark Universe"). Omega was particularly intrigued to learn that the essence of ‘the One’ - the Collective’s first incarnation - had been extracted from the main body by the Time Lords and imprisoned in a mental prison known as the Sand Box. Deciding to form an alliance with the One, Omega was able to manifest a ship that he could use to explore the matter universe, this ship appearing to be a comet to casual observers. Having acquired a sample of The Doctor’s biodata during their last encounter, Omega was able to trick The Doctor’s old friend-turned-foe The Master into coming to the ship by creating the impression that The Doctor was already his prisoner, allowing Omega to use powerful utre stones to force The Master to obey his orders. Omega was able to track the Sand Box by confronting The Doctor’s old tutor Borusa, one of the group responsible for creating the Sand Box, trapping Borusa’s mind in a mental cube while taking Borusa’s student Edovane as a host. The Third Doctor and the Fourth Doctor were alerted to Omega’s return in time to come together and oppose him, but they were unable to stop Omega opening the Sand Box.
However, Omega’s plans went wrong when he discovered that the Time Lords had trapped the Six rather than the One. While the One was fundamentally an intellectual who might have been reasoned with, the Six was a psychopath who just wanted to kill everyone, forcing Omega to adapt his plans. As Omega took the Fourth Doctor into his own dimension to torture him, the Third Doctor was left to face the escaped prisoners, made even worse when The Master was forced to act as their host while the Six tried to manifest his own body. The Fourth Doctor learned that Omega had manifested in this dimension using utre crystals to stabilise the anti-matter that powered his ship, but also realised that his use of Edovane as a host was damaging her body even as she held back her regeneration in case this gave Omega more power over her. When The Doctor was briefly submerged in the liquid utre/anti-matter mix Omega used as a power source, he was able to use that when he and Omega returned to the Sand Box to confront the Six, Omega manifesting in one of his gel guards for greater power. As Omega used his gel guards to generate a force field so that he could act in the matter universe for a short time, The Doctor took advantage of the presence of two versions of Sarah Jane Smith to trigger a Blinovitch Limitation Effect overload, the liquid helping The Doctor serve as a conductor for the effect while protecting him and his companions. The Master was able to escape as the other prisoners were forced back into the Sand Box, including the weakened Omega. For a time Omega was left locked in constant struggle with the Six, but the Eleven (the Collective’s current incarnation) eventually came to retrieve his other self.
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| Arc of Infinity |
|
Under unspecified circumstances, Omega was able to escape the Sand Box, although he lost most of his old power over anti-matter while still being unable to properly exist in the real world. Eventually Omega managed to make contact with Gallifrey, forming an alliance with a Time Lord known
as Hedin, who believed that, since Time Lords the universe over owed
their status to Omega, his return was all that mattered. With this
in mind, Hedin stole a sample of The Doctor's biodata while Omega
hid in a collapsed Q-star, which generated a radiation that would
allow anti-matter to exist in our universe for a time, at the same
time using a fusion booster element on Earth to provide the power
for the transfer to succeed.
However,
since the element would only work with a certain amount of water
pressure, Omega was forced to station himself in Amsterdam; since
it was under sea level, it was the only place where Omega could work
the generator properly. The Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan
Jovanka, with the
aid of a technician called Damon, managed to identify the traitor
as Hedin and isolate Omega'slocation on Earth, but although they arrived in time to disrupt Omega's attempt to take control of the Matrix, they were unable to prevent him grafting The Doctor's biodata extract onto himself, turning Omega into The Doctor's physical double. Although Omega escaped to explore his new world, The Doctor quickly realised that the transference was unstable, forcing him to pursue Omega armed with a matter convertor gun that was the only means of stopping him. Eventually,
they cornered Omega at the end of a pier as he began to decompose,
but Omega, not wishing to return to the living death of the anti-matter
universe, accelerated the decay of his shielding, determined to take
the Earth with him, and The Doctor had no choice but to shoot Omega
with the matter converter gun, destroying Omega before he fully reverted
to anti-matter.
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Omega
(Nev Fountain) |
|
After this encounter, Omega appeared to become an incorporeal spirit, drifting listlessly until he latched onto a woman called Senetia - a telepath whose mind acted as a focus - on a holiday tour where tourists witness Omega's final moments being acted out. The Doctor arrived and began to investigate murders that were apparently being committed to turn the trip into a re-enactment of Omega's final journey - including cutting off the hand of the actor portraying Vandekirian - the insane Omega now attempting to return to the safety of the anti-matter universe after all the perils that he had faced in this world, even telepathically communicating with The Doctor to ask him for help. However, since Omega was an incorporeal spirit, he couldn't have been the one committing the murders... until it was revealed that Omega and The Doctor were actually the same person; Omega survived the battle in Amsterdam at the cost of his sanity, for when he copied The Doctor’s bio-print, he acquired a copy of The Doctor’s mind as well, with the dimensional anomalies of the region increasing his madness as he telepathically influenced the actors portraying himself and Vandekirian to re-enact his voyage.
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The
Gallifrey Chronicles
(Lance Parkin) |
|
Thanks to a telepathic message broadcast by The Doctor/Omega, The true Fifth Doctor was summoned for aid, fully up-to-date on the situation... but, as things began to collapse, he realised that Omega's distorted mind had linked itself to The Doctor's greatest shame. In his madness, Omega believed that the star he destroyed had been an inhabited one, and Vandekirian had tried to stop him, but this was simply linked to a terrible mistake The Doctor made once in his past. Long ago, The Doctor encountered a Lurman colony under attack by space pirates who used telepathically-controlled weapons and ships. The Doctor helped the colony to defend itself by creating a telepathic dampening field... but he didn’t realise until too late that the same asteroid belt was inhabited by the Scintillans, creatures of pure thought, and when The Doctor used the telepathic damper against the pirates, he inadvertently wiped out the entire species. In the final moments, Senetia, realising that Omega had gone over the brink of madness, sent the ship flying towards the black hole in the area - and the only other survivor, an actor called Daland who had portrayed Omega in the tour, set the TARDIS to dematerialise, realising that The Doctor was too weighed down with guilt from his past mistakes to make the decision himself; by leaving, he condemned Senetia to death, but he would have risked the lives of Daland and the tourists by staying. Visited by two Time Lords from the future as Omega fell into the black hole once again, Daland left to begin a new career portraying The Doctor on the future Gallifrey, The Doctor asking the historians of the future to remember him and Omega with their flaws as well as their good deeds, acknowledging Omega's role in creating Gallifreyian society and The Doctor's role in the death of the Scintillans, rather than focusing on Omega's madness and The Doctor's heroism.
Although Omega's precise fate after this encounter is unclear, it would appear that he returned to the anti-matter universe and his original godhood (Senetia was torn apart by the singularity as she crossed the black hole). Based on available material ("The Infinity Doctors"), it would appear that Omega discovered that an earlier attempt to rescue him by another Time Lord, Savar, had created a breach in space-time that was capable of rewriting reality when his TARDIS had been unable to escape the black hole it had used to enter Omega's realm (Savar escaped by ejecting his console room), his TARDIS elongated to almost a light-year in length while allowing Omega to focus the power of the singularity into the real world, even if Omega was still trapped. Learning how to control the Effect, Omega subtly rewrote history in the outside universe to create a Doctor who had never left Gallifrey, having remained to become a member of the High Council after the death of his long-lost love, apparently hoping that the new Doctor would be fundamentally easier to manipulate ("The Infinity Doctors"). Having lured The Doctor into his realm and reunited him with his lost love, rescued from the moment of her own death but too injured to survive in reality, Omega returned to the matter universe in a duplicate body that The Doctor had created while bypassing the Needle's defences, intending to evaporate the event horizon around the Eye of Harmony and gain the power of the singularity in the real universe while The Doctor remained in his paradise world, forever content to be reunited with his lost love. However, his lover convinced The Doctor to return to the real universe by passing through the path between the two singularities, where The Doctor's efforts to use his own will against Omega's apparently undid Omega's alterations on history, the novel ending with The Doctor reflecting on where he would go next before reality returned to normal.
Although Omega has not been seen in the 'real' universe since, in "The Gallifrey Chronicles" it is implied that The Master, following his battle with the Eighth Doctor where he fell into the Eye of Harmony, had achieved a similar power to Omega, although he naturally resented his inability to use this power in reality, suggesting that Omega either lost control of the Effect or sought to conceal that power from the Master. While the Master was later resurrected by the Time Lords to serve as a warrior in the Time War after they were restored ("The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords"), it is likely that Omega remains trapped in the realm of anti-matter, considering that Rassilon was also restored to serve as President ("The End of Time") and he remains a primary rival of Omega's. |
