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The War Chief in
The War Games |
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 Name:
Magnus, AKA the War Chief, AKA Doctor Kriegsleiter
Format:
Television show and Book.
Time
of Origin: Gallifrey, around the same time as The Doctor
Appearances:
"The
War Games", "Timewyrm:
Exodus", flashback scene in "Divided
Loyalties", and a brief cameo in "The
Eight Doctors".
Doctors: Acted
against the Second
Doctor and the Seventh
Doctor; was friends with
the First
Doctor at the Academy; was in the room when the Eighth
Doctor visited the Second but was frozen in time and thus unaware
of the Eighth’s presence
Companions:
Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot and Ace
History:
Originally, the Time Lord that would become known as the War Chief
was a normal Time Lord known as Magnus, renowned in the Time Lord
Academy as a member of the Deca, the ten best students in their year,
whose members included the Time Lords that would become The Doctor, The Master,
The Rani and The
Meddling Monk. Magnus was, at first,
the Deca's unofficial leader, possessing a very commanding personality
and an insatiable curiosity about the universe that was only surpassed
by his desire to understand how to make TARDISes for himself. Eventually,
after learning all he wanted to know - although he claimed that he
was driven off Gallifrey by the jealous Borusa after his rapid advancement
prompted Borusa to plant evidence framing him for treason, his arrogance
makes this claim uncertain - Magnus left Gallifrey and contacted
a race known simply as the Aliens whom he'd learned about at the
Academy; they desired time travel to help them conquer the universe,
but all they had achieved so far was expulsion from Gallifrey and
a sentence of complete erasure from history if they continued their
attempts.
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| The War Games |
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Offering
his services, Magnus renamed himself the War Chief and began to construct
SIDRATs - primitive TARDISes with a short life span and consisting
of only long corridors operated by remote control - for the Aliens.
Realizing that humans were some of the most vicious species in the
universe, the Aliens decided to create an army based on soldiers
from all over Earth's history. With Magnus's help, they gathered
together all kinds of human soldiers, ranging from Roman soldiers
to First World War Germans, brainwashing them into thinking they
were still in their own times, and pitted them against each other
in countless contests, intending to use the survivors to form an
army that would conquer the galaxy. However, although the plan went
well at first, Magnus avoiding being killed by the Aliens by constantly
providing them with defective SIDRATs so they'd need to keep him
alive to build more, things went wrong with their plans. Firstly,
some of the stronger-minded soldiers were able to resist their conditioning
and formed a resistance movement against the Aliens, despite being
out of their depth fighting creatures from another world, and secondly,
the Second
Doctor, travelling with Jamie and Zoe, arrived on the
planet and managed to lead the resistance to victory.
Unfortunately,
although The Doctor and the resistance were able to force the War
Chief to call off the fighting and end the War Games, the SIDRATS
began to collapse, so, with no other way to get the humans home (And
with more than a little prompting from his amnesic eighth incarnation
("The
Eight Doctors")), the Second Doctor was forced to
contact the Time Lords for help, even though they would probably
be just as angry with him for leaving Gallifrey as they would be
at the War Chief. The War Chief tried to escape, but was discovered
by the War Lord who, discovering that the War Chief had intended
to abandon them after taking the soldiers home in the SIDRATS, shot
the War Chief, killing him..
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The Eight Doctors
(Terrance Dicks) |
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Or
so it seemed. In reality, the War Chief survived the multiple blasts,
being sent back to the War Lords’ planet as a medical curiosity,
but the scale of the damage and the lack of any assistance caused
the regeneration to abort before it was complete. Left deformed by
the botched regeneration, now resembling a hideous amalgamation of
two people, he was able to convince the son of the original War Lord
- the original having been sentenced to temporal dissolution and
erased from history (How his son could still exist was unclear) -
that his betrayal was a misunderstanding and, having helped them
break the force field around their world that the Time Lords had
placed there. Resolving to get his revenge on The Doctor, the War
Chief led the War Lord and his troops to Earth in the early 1920s
to infiltrate the Nazi party behind the scenes, finding the SS troops
so lacking in humanity that the conditioning needed to make them
serve the War Lord was hardly necessary. Their schemes were further
aided by Hitler's current increase in mental instability; the mysterious
being known as the Timewyrm ("Timewyrm:
Exodus") had tried
to possess him to change history, but had become trapped in Hitler's
madness, making the SS doubt his ability to lead them.
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Timewyrm: Exodus
(Terrance Dicks) |
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While
the War Chief - under the alias of Doctor Kriegslieter - kept Hitler’s
madness under control until the time was right with various telepathic
techniques - simultaneously using technology to boost Hitler’s
already-amplified powerful ability to arose a crowd’s emotions
and win further support, the Aliens, posing as a Coven of black witches,
were grooming the superstitious Himmler to replace Hitler - and,
when the Seventh
Doctor and Ace arrived on the scene, The Doctor
quickly convincing Hitler that he was an ally, Kriegslieter decided
to use Ace as their human sacrifice in a ceremony to impress Himmler
into taking control of the Nazi party, while he would then have his
brain transplanted into The Doctor’s body, thus gaining a healthy
Time Lord body with six regenerations left to it.
Unfortunately,
the plan fell apart due to one simple detail that the War Chief had
overlooked; unlike the other Nazi officials, who placed their own
glory above all else, Himmler was fiercely devoted to his Fuhrer.
Thanks to a tip-off The Doctor had given him, Herman Goering - Hitler's
head of propaganda- was able to track down the War Chief and the
Aliens and kill the SS troops under their command, who lacked initiative
due to the conditioning having completely deprived them of all free
will. As the SS departed, The Doctor set the base's nuclear reactors
to overload, wiping out the War Lord's technology and ending their
schemes for good, The Doctor then driving the Timewyrm out of Hitler
by claiming that it wasn't helping Hitler in the least. Whether or
not the War Chief survived the explosion is unknown, although the
scale of the explosion, coupled with his already-poor physical condition,
makes it extremely likely that he is now deceased. |
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