Valeyard - Other Appearances

Other Appearances

The Valeyard has appeared in some of the spin-off media. In these stories, the Doctor is aware that he has the potential to become the Valeyard and tries to step away from any path that might lead him to that future. In the Virgin Publishing Missing Adventure Millennial Rites by Craig Hinton, the Sixth Doctor succumbed to his darker side and became the Valeyard very briefly due to reality being destabilised by three competing laws of physics being concentrated in one place, but snapped back to normal after he nearly killed an innocent child, allowing his true conscience to assert itself.

Throughout the New Adventures, the Seventh Doctor is tormented by the knowledge that he might become the Valeyard, with it being implied that his potential presence in the Doctor's mind drove the Sixth Doctor to commit 'suicide' by allowing the TARDIS to be caught in the Rani's tractor beam. With this revelation, the memory of the Sixth Doctor becomes increasingly associated with the Valeyard in the Seventh Doctor's mind, causing the past five Doctors to 'lock' the Sixth Doctor's memory away for fear of what he might become. However, in The Room With No Doors, the Doctor learns to forgive himself for his past sins, removing the guilt that would have led to the Valeyard's creation and freeing the Sixth Doctor from the room.

In the BBC Books novel The Eight Doctors, by Terrance Dicks, the Eighth Doctor returns to the trial of the Sixth Doctor and rescues him from an alternate timeline in which the Sixth Doctor is about to be executed by the Valeyard, the Eighth Doctor denouncing the charge of genocide as ludicrous due to the Vervoids having been artificially created rather than a naturally-evolving species. The Master reinforces the statement made in The Ultimate Foe novelization to the Eighth Doctor—that the Valeyard is "an amalgam of the Doctor's darker side, somewhere between his twelfth and thirteenth regenerations." This combined with the information from The Twin Dilemma reinforces the idea that the Valeyard is indeed the Doctor's thirteenth and last "normal" incarnation.

In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Mission: Impractical by David A. McIntee, the villanous Mr Zimmerman, a renegade Time Lord who had hired two assassins to kill the Doctor, refers to the Sixth Doctor as "I" before correcting himself. McIntee has confirmed that this is a subtle hint that Zimmerman was actually the Valeyard.

In Matrix by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker, the Valeyard again appears, and encounters the Seventh Doctor. After possessing the body of the Keeper, he acquires control over the Dark Matrix, the repository of all of the Time Lords' most evil impulses, and tries to use it to take revenge on the Doctor. To this end, he travels to London in 1888, taking on the identity of Jack the Ripper, and using the Ripper murders as sacrifices to power the Dark Matrix, believing that he can use and control the Matrix to grant himself a true existence independent of the Doctor. Once it has enough power, the Dark Matrix will be unleashed on the world, creating a dystopian nightmare and corrupting history forever. As an added bonus, the Valeyard has tracked down all thirteen incarnations of the Doctor, reverting them to their basic, evil natures, using their corrupted spirits to animate golems to do his work. However, the Seventh Doctor escapes the Valeyard's attack by sealing his conscious mind away from the assault in the TARDIS telepathic circuits, although this briefly leaves him as nothing more than an amnesic cardsharp who calls himself 'Johnny'. Having regained his memory, the Doctor confronts the Valeyard (now calling himself "the Ripper" on the grounds that the name is more evocative), causing his foe to lose control of the Dark Matrix. The Valeyard is eventually killed by a lightning bolt being generated by his damaged TARDIS as it collapses, and history is restored to normal.

A novel from the late Doctor Who author Craig Hinton, Time's Champion, was to have featured the Valeyard once again alongside the sixth incarnation of the Doctor. Connecting plot lines from the Virgin novels' New and Missing Adventures range, the narrative centered upon the circumstances involving the sixth Doctor's regeneration and also the purpose and origins of the Valeyard. A synopsis of the novel was rejected by BBC Books (who published another novel dealing with the Sixth Doctor's regeneration, Spiral Scratch, around the same time). According to Hinton's friend and co-writer Chris McKeon, this compelled McKeon to begin working on an unofficial publication of the book, based in part on the six chapter synopsis (and including the three pages of text) Hinton had completed. McKeon would go on to complete the novel upon Hinton's death. The novel was edited and published by David J. Howe as a benefit for the British Heart Foundation.

The Doctor Who Reprint Society are currently campaigning to have a collected edition of the Valeyard's further mentions collected in a single volume.

The Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who Unbound audio drama He Jests at Scars... documents an alternative timeline in which the Valeyard, once again voiced by Michael Jayston, has defeated the Doctor (in the aftermath of the trial) and gone on to ransack time and space. He has forged an empire by carefully eliminating time sensitives and altering his own (i.e. the Doctor's) past to his advantage, monopolising time travel and claiming the various doomsday weapons the Doctor left buried and concealed for his own use. The Doctor's companion Mel, hardened by many years of dark experience, eventually tracks him down with a view to assassinating the Valeyard after confirming that there is nothing of the Doctor left in him, but finds that he has become the victim of his own time meddling, having unintentionally twisted his own past so much- such as accidentally killing the Fourth Doctor, or planning to kill the First Doctor's companion Dodo Chaplet to stop the Doctor visiting a planet for a holiday at the same time as the Valeyard destroyed it- due to his lack of the Doctor's compassion and knowledge of when not to take certain actions, that he has trapped himself in the TARDIS, terrified even to move in case he makes things worse, the TARDIS having diverted all its power to keeping the Valeyard and Mel in stasis, only able to move enough to talk. Mel and a seemingly repentant, broken Valeyard suffer the penalty for breaking the Time Lords' first law, and become trapped in the TARDIS, perhaps forever enmeshed in the centre of the web of time.

The IDW Doctor Who comic series The Forgotten written by Tony Lee featured another individual calling himself "The Valeyard", but this was revealed to be a disguise taken by a cranial parasite while it and the Tenth Doctor were trapped in the TARDIS' matrix.