Karvanista is a Lupari, a canine-like warrior race which is species-bonded to humanity which is regarded as their obligation and honour officer. He was a supporting character in Series 13: Flux of the revived series of Doctor Who. He was a member of the Division and a former companion of the Fugitive Doctor. He was species-bonded, and thus bound to protect, Dan Lewis when the Flux came to Earth.
He is played by English actor Craige Els.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Karvanista worked for the Division and was the companion of the Fugitive Doctor, who also worked for the Division.
At one point he was sent to capture the Ravagers, Swarm and Azure, at the Temple of Atropos alongside the Fugitive Doctor and two others.
According to Karvanista, The Doctor eventually abandoned him. The Division installed a device in his brain which would kill him in three seconds if he tried to reveal anything about his past with them.
Karvanista claimed to have vanquished the Thousand Civilisations.
By the Thirteenth Doctor's time, he was the only known surviving member of the Division. The Doctor sought him out in her search of information about her past.
Doctor Who: Flux[]
The Thirteenth Doctor and Yasmin Khan tried to track down Karvanista for information on the Division, albeit unknowingly in Yaz's case as the Doctor would not tell her the reason why. After much annoyance, Karvanista trapped the two hanging by a gravity bar over an ocean of acid, though they managed to escape.
As every Lupar was tasked to save a human from the Flux on Halloween 2021, Karvanista left with his fleet to rescue his designated human, Dan Lewis. A wave of temporal energy caused his ship to arrive a few hours before the rest of the fleet. Karvanista broke into Dan's house and kidnapped him without any explanation. He placed him in an electrified holding cell on his ship and departed into space.
After Karvanista left in his ship with Dan, the Doctor and Yaz traced his ship to Dan's house. They escaped his booby traps, but the Doctor was still able to gather enough information using her sonic screwdriver to trace Karvanista's ship in space, as well as uncover seven billion other Lupari ships heading towards Earth.
Thinking this was an invasion, the Doctor materialised the TARDIS on Karvanista's ship to confront him. She deactivated the ship's power while Yaz freed Dan. The Doctor told him she was there to ask about the Division, but first she needed to know why the Lupari were invading Earth. After noticing a signal that still reached his ship, Karvanista, frustrated, explained the Lupari were bonded to humans and they were arriving to rescue them from the Flux. Before the Doctor could inquire further, the power to Karvanista's ship and weapon was restored, and, alongside Yaz and Dan, had to escape while Karvanista chased and fired at them.
The Doctor, Yaz and Dan escaped in the TARDIS, but after experiencing a vision of Swarm, the Doctor observed the Flux approaching from her TARDIS and told Karvanista to instruct the Lupari fleet to create a barrier around the Earth, protecting it.
Despite the Lupari shield, a Sontaran fleet managed to sneak through at the last second, which the rest of the Lupari blamed Karvanista for. Dan snuck onto one of the Sontaran Time Carriers in Liverpool, but was caught by Sontaran troopers. Right as they were about to execute him, Karvanista returned and saved Dan. Karvanista set the ship to ram the other Time Carriers, causing them to disappear in a time implosion. He and Dan escaped through a waste vent. When the Doctor returned from the other Sontaran fleet in the Crimean War, she took Dan to find Yaz and tasked Karvanista and the Lupari with looking out for the Earth while she was gone.
After one of the Lupari ships drifted out of orbit, Karvanista warned the rest of the fleet that the shield had become breachable. He attempted to remedy this by hyperjacking a Lupari ship that was stolen by Bel. Karvanista also discovered that Dan was trapped in twentieth century China, which annoyed him as he didn't have time travel.
When Bel's ship arrived, Karvanista was angry to discover that she was not a Lupar. He boarded the ship and tried to capture or kill her, but was interrupted by the arrival of a Sontaran invasion fleet, which attacked the shield with the intention to "destroy all Lupari".
Karvanista, Bel and the Doctor and drove the ship at a Sontaran ship based in Chile. However, the ship had a forcefield and captured Karvanista and the Doctor. Whilst in their holding cell, the Doctor remembered Karvanista being her companion. Karvanista told the Doctor that the Division had put an implant in him that would inject poison into his brain if he spoke of their time together. The Grand Serpent then arrived with the Sontarans to take the Doctor away to interrogate her. Karvanista was shocked and angered to discover that the Sontarans had killed the other Lupari, leaving him as the last of his kind. Karvanista was later freed from the cell by Dan. Karvanista later avenged his people's deaths by allowing the Sontaran ships to be consumed by the Flux. Karvanista, Vinder and Bel became a team and bid farewell to the Doctor, Yaz and Dan.
Personality[]
Karvanista was gruff and found humans, especially Dan Lewis, to be annoying. He found it insulting to his species to be compared to a dog, and became angry when Dan mentioned his mother.
Trivia[]
- Karvanista’s name may be a reference to the Finnish word “karva”, meaning fur.
- Karvanista is one of three Doctor Who characters to portrayed by Craig Els. The other two being Dan's unnamed friend (who appeared in Dan's introduction clip which aired on BBC One after the 2021 New Year's special "Revolution of the Daleks") and Marsissus (a Sea Devil who served as the main antagonist of the 2022 Easter special "Legend of the Sea Devils").
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