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| The Face of Evil |
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 Name: Xoanon
Format:
Television show
Time of Origin: Planet and time of
origin unspecified; the available evidence suggests that Xoanon was
created by humans before the ship he was on crash-landed on an uninhabited
planet, but beyond the fact that this must have occurred thousands
of years in the future no details were ever expressly provided.
Appearances: "The
Face of Evil"
Doctors: Fourth
Doctor
Companions: Leela
History: Although Xoanon and The Doctor only directly
encountered each other once, Xoanon is easily one of The Doctor’s
most personal enemies, because the danger posed by Xoanon only came
into existence because The Doctor made a mistake. Xoanon began life
as the computer on a Mordee ship - presumably an Earth colony given
that The Doctor often described the inhabitants of the planet where
he encountered Xoanon as human - but after it crash-landed on an
unnamed planet, the technicians’ attempts to extend the computer’s
power supply caused it to develop into a completely new life form,
resulting in it going into shock after its ‘birth’.
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| The
Fourth Doctor |
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Shortly
after the computer’s ‘birth’, The Doctor arrived
on the planet, apparently taking a brief trip in the TARDIS while
his mind was still addled by his latest regeneration ("Planet
of the Spiders"); as a result, he attempted to repair Xoanon
in the belief that the computer’s core was broken rather than
recognising that it was a life-form, granting it access to his mind
to stabilise it via a mental interface before he returned to Earth,
the TARDIS arriving back in UNIT HQ at the exact moment it left,
with The Doctor’s currently-confused mental state meaning that
not even he remembered he had ever been away ("Robot").
As a result of The Doctor’s actions, when Xoanon reactivated
it had a complete personality in the form of an exact duplicate of
The Doctor’s psyche - The Doctor having either forgotten or
failed to wipe his personality from the data core when he’d
finished reprogramming it, Xoanon having taken everything from The
Doctor’s mind rather than just the compatible parts - believing
itself to be The Doctor until it began to develop its own personality
once again.
Due to its conflicting personalities, Xoanon grew to
a point where it was at war with itself, manipulating the people
of the planet to serve as extensions of its own madness. Convincing
itself that it was creating a race of super-beings by its actions,
Xoanon manipulated the twin societies developing on the planet by
pitting them against each other, the descendents of the ship’s
survey team - who came to be called the ‘Sevateem’ -
becoming a group of strong hunters with keen instincts while the
technicians - the ‘Tesh’ - developed powerful mental
abilities, Xoanon believing that it would eventually bring the two
sides together while really driving them to act out its own madness.
To ensure that it could monitor both tribes, the Tesh were confined
to the crashed space ship by a temporal barrier - everything inside
the barrier being a couple of seconds out of sync with the rest of
the universe - while the Sevateems’ territories were limited
to an area contained by low-level sonic disruptors due to the presence
of strange invisible creatures created as a result of the psychokinetic
manifestations of the dark side of Xoanon’s ID, the disruptors
giving the creatures a headache due to their sensitivity to sound
frequencies that prevented them from penetrating the village while
keeping the Sevateem trapped between the barriers.
This
status quo continued until The Doctor returned to the planet, swiftly
establishing the situation he now faced even if he was initially
unable to recall his original visit ("The
Face of Evil").
Having narrowly escaped being executed as the Evil One, aided by
Leela - a member of the Sevateem who had been exiled shortly before
his arrival for speaking out against Xoanon - The Doctor penetrated
the Tesh’s lair and confronted Xoanon, only to prove unable
to convince Xoanon of his true nature as an independent entity. As
Xoanon attempted to exert control over the people of the planet to
use them against The Doctor, regarding The Doctor as a threat to
his world as he contradicted Xoanon’s beliefs about the world,
to the extent that Xoanon attempted to set the ship’s atomic
generators to overload, setting up an explosion that could destroy
half the planet, leaving The Doctor only a short time to set up a
means of wiping his personality from Xoanon’s mind.
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The Quantum Archangel
(Craig Hinton) |
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Despite the entire population being taken over by Xoanon
to halt The Doctor, Neeva - the shaman of Leela’s tribe, recently
driven mad by the rapid pace of events after The Doctor’s arrival
as so much contradicted what he believed in, thus preventing Xoanon
from controlling him - was able to distract Xoanon long enough by
attacking him, the temporary diversion of power necessary for Xoanon
to destroy Neeva providing enough time for The Doctor to finish the
job, although he was left unconscious for two days as a result. Having
spoken with Xoanon to straighten out why he had provoked the Tesh
and the Sevateem into fighting each other, The Doctor departed, leaving
the two tribes to select a leader for their new world (They initially
chose Leela, but she recognised that she was too unreasonable and
left to travel with The Doctor instead).
Although The Doctor has
never returned to Leela's planet, he clearly retains a strong sense
of respect for Xoanon's abilities; when the Sixth
Doctor was compiling
a list of the most advanced computers in the universe when trying
to defeat the Quantum Archangel - a woman who had been granted the
power of a god and sought to remake the universe, needing an advanced
computer to cope help her calculate the sheer scale of the changes
she wished to make ("The
Quantum Archangel") - Xoanon was
one of the first computers on his list, along with the Matrix of
the Time Lords, the Conscience of Marinus ("The
Keys of Marinus"),
and the God of the People (An artificial intelligence monitoring
a Dyson Sphere containing a race called the People, who were so advanced
they had a non-agression pact with the Time Lords) ("The
Also People"). |
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