| “ | This is the Doctor, President-Elect of the High Council of Time Lords, keeper of the legacy of Rassilon, defender of the laws of time, protector of Gallifrey! | „ |
| ~ The Seventh Doctor speaking to the Dalek Emperor. |
The Seventh Doctor is the seventh incarnation of the Doctor to appear in Doctor Who and the main protagonist of Seasons 24 to 26, as well as the final incarnation of the Doctor to appear in the classic Doctor Who series. He returns as the overarching protagonist in the 1996 TV movie, Doctor Who: The Movie, the first attempt to revive the series.
He regenerated from the Sixth Doctor during one of his encounters with the Rani. Though bumbling on the surface, beneath the Seventh Doctor was a skilled manipulator plotting in preparation for the return of his arch-nemesis, the primordial evil being known as "Fenric".
He is portrayed by Sylvester McCoy, who also played Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit Trilogy.
Biography[]
The Seventh Doctor regenerated from the Sixth Doctor after perished around the time he had another encounter with the renegade Time Lord known as "the Rani." In his adventures with Mel Bush, the Doctor seemed to be a carefree eccentric After his companion Melanie Bush left, the Seventh Doctor gained a new companion in the form of the teenage girl nicknamed "Ace."
The Seventh Doctor's travels would see him coming into conflict with two different factions of Daleks, the Imperial Daleks led by Davros and the Renegade Daleks led by a Supreme Dalek, who were locked in a civil war with each other over the Hand of Omega. However, the Seventh Doctor was able to outmaneuver both factions of Daleks and bring about the destruction of the Imperial Daleks, although Davros was able to escape again. The Renegade Daleks were also destroyed, leaving the Renegade Supreme Dalek as the only surviving Renegade Dalek until the Seventh Doctor talked it into killing itself.
In the Doctor and Ace's continued adventures, they assisted UNIT in stopping Morgaine from obtaining Excalibur, giving the Doctor a glimpse of a future where he became Merlin, and he later took Ace to Gabriel Chase for her to face her past. There they prevented Josiah Samuel Smith's plan to assassinate Queen Victoria, and Light from erasing evolution. The Seventh Doctor's adventures eventually led him into conflict with Fenric, a force of evil the Doctor had previously imprisoned at the dawn of time. After dealing with Fenric, the Seventh Doctor would have a final confrontation with his old nemesis, the Master.
In the Virgin New Adventures novels, following Ace's initial departure from the TARDIS, the Doctor become known as Time's Champion. Although he did many good deeds while under the title of Time's Champion, his manipulative ways and amoral decisions cost him dearly, leaving him questioning his actions and himself. Ace left him in disgust, and Bernice Summerfield took her place. Ace would eventually return, though the Doctor was unable to regain her trust until they defeated the Meddling Monk Mortimus's plot to corrupt the timeline.
In Big Finish's stories, he and Ace took on Hex, a young nurse whose past tied into his mistakes in dealing with the Forge, and led to the Doctor's war with the "Elder Gods" becoming more dangerous. Eventually, the Doctor would spend the latter part of his life on his own, tying up unfinished business, such as Klein, a Nazi from another timeline, and retired from the niche of manipulation.
After the Master was executed by the Daleks on Skaro, the Seventh Doctor was enlisted to bring his remains back to Gallifrey, only for the Master's consciousness to turn out to still be alive and escape, leading to a series of events that saw the Seventh Doctor being fatally wounded on Earth, triggering his regeneration into the Eighth Doctor.
Personality[]
The Seventh Doctor had an outwardly buffoonish and light-hearted demeanor, being prone to eccentric mannerisms and remarks. However, while he took care to cultivate the image of a bumbling goof, beneath the surface the Seventh Doctor was a highly intelligent master manipulator who frequently faced god-like beings in battles of wits and came out on top, with his buffoonery acting as a cover for his machinations. The Seventh Doctor was even willing to manipulate his own allies if necessary, though despite this he did not look at them as only being pawns and developed a close relationship with his companion, Ace.
Quotes[]
| “ | Anyone remotely interesting is mad. | „ |
| “ | We all have a universe of our own terrors to face. | „ |
| ~ The Doctor, Ghost Light. |
| “ | There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do. | „ |
| ~ The Doctor in "Survival." |
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The Seventh Doctor is the first incarnation to have a Scottish accent, which both the Twelfth and Fifteenth Doctor's would go onto share. David Tennant did not use his natural accent while playing either the Tenth or Fourteenth Doctor.
- Throughout his tenure, the Seventh Doctor made repeated references to being more than a mere Time Lord. This was intended to foreshadow a reveal that the Doctor was really "the Other", the mysterious third founder of Time Lord society alongside Rassilon and Omega. However, as Doctor Who was cancelled during the Seventh Doctor's tenure this plotline never came to fruition and was abandoned when the show was revived in 2005.
- Ironically this a different answer came to pass in 2020, where the Doctor is revealed to be an alien from another reality altogether; being the genetic template for regeneration.
- Outside of his official appearances, in the 1990s Sylvester McCoy would voice a thinly veiled version of this Doctor, called "The Professor", in BBV Production's The Time Travellers audio series, several writers of which would go onto write for official Doctor Who. To avoid copyright, he would be renamed as "the Dominie", a Scottish word for teacher, which McCoy suggested.
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 Heroes
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The Doctor The Doctor's companions UNIT Torchwood Institute Bannerman Road Gang Investigators of Infernal Incidents Paternoster Gang Coal Hill defenders Other Allies | ||
