Great Intelligence
The Great Intelligence is an entity that features in Doctor Who.
Contents |
Biography
The Great Intelligence
During the 18th century, the Great Intelligence possessed a Tibetan lama Padmasambhava whilst travelling through the astral plane and forced him to build the robotic Yeti over the next two centuries. (TV: The Abominable Snowmen)
Approximately 40 years later, the Yeti re-activated and the Intelligence manifested as webbing. It ensnared the Doctor's TARDIS in space and forced it to land in the London Underground. Reunited with Travers, the Doctor assisted British military in their battles with the Yeti. The Intelligence re-animated and possessed the corpse of Staff Sergeant Arnold, using him to track the Doctor's actions. The Intelligence captured the Doctor and tried to use a conversion headset to take over the Doctor's body. The Doctor attempted to reverse the process, allowing him to absorb the Intelligence and destroy it. When the control spheres that formed the focus of the Intelligence were smashed by Jamie McCrimmon, the Intelligence vanished. (Episode: The Web of Fear)
Manifesting as living snow, he used Walter Simeon as a tool in its scheme. Simeon's dark thoughts powered it where he poured his darkest dreams into a snowman. Simeon established the Great Intelligence Institute as the snow slowly swarmed to Earth. In 1892, its presence was sufficient enough to consume mankind. Having erased Simeon's mind and memories from after meeting the Intelligence, the Eleventh Doctor was surprised to see the Intelligence survived. He had thought that it had been created by the host Simeon, but discovered that it had learned to survive beyond physical form, becoming the the dream that outlived the dreamer. Controlling the now-mindless Simeon, the Intelligence attacked the Doctor, but was stopped in the last minutes of Christmas Eve when the snow changed to 'rain', mimicking the form of the tears of Captain Latimer's family after Clara Oswin Oswald's death. (Episode: The Snowmen)
Its operation fell apart when the Eleventh Doctor used a captured Spoonhead to trick Miss Kizlet into being trapped in the Wi-Fi after she refused to release the uploaded Clara Oswald, who was under the Doctor's protection. The workers downloaded Clara, Kizlet and others captured in the server, returning them to their bodies. When UNIT arrived at the Shard, the Great Intelligence ordered Kizlet to restore their employees to their "factory settings", effectively erasing everyone's memories to avoid detection. (Episode: The Bells of Saint John)
The Whisper Men brought the Paternoster Gang to the Doctor's tomb on Trenzalore so the Intelligence could have its ultimate revenge by turning all of the Doctor's victories into defeats. It did so by directly entering the Doctor's time stream, which appeared as an open wound in reality inside the tomb. However, this plan was foiled by Clara, who followed the Intelligence through the wound. Just as he was, she was ripped into countless versions of herself throughout history, (Episode: The Name of the Doctor)
Overview
Personality and attributes
The Great Intelligence was arrogant and thought very highly of itself, informing the Doctor that his brain was too small to grasp its purpose. (TV: The Abominable Snowmen)
Powers and abilities
The Great Intelligence had no physical form and thus relied on possession of living creatures to manipulate its environment. It existed on the astral plane and could enter the people it encountered. It allowed Padmasambhava to live over 300 years while he created the Robot Yeti and it also reanimated dead bodies like Staff Sergeant Arnold. It had considerable mental powers such as mind control and could even mentally attack the Doctor, causing him great pain, and travel through time and space.
The Great Intelligence could also manifest itself in simple forms such as a slime that glowed brightly, a dense fog that consumed anything that entered it, and a poisonous web/fungus that could trap the Doctor's TARDIS and could not be destroyed by chemicals, explosives or flamethrowers.
Among its many servants were the Whisper Men which were humanoids with white featureless faces depressions where the eyes should be and a mouth with sharp teeth. They were dressed in Victorian era garb where they moved slowly and had a number of abilities such as appearing or disappearing at will along with the capacity to phase their hands into a persons body to clutch organs inside. The Whisper Men often spoke in rhyme and they could morph into an appearance resembling Walter Simeon at will with this one being an avatar for the Great Intelligence. (Episode: The Name of the Doctor)
Notes
- The Great Intelligence was originally created by Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman where it made its first appearance in the 1967 serial episode "The Abominable Snowmen" a an enemy of the Second Doctor.
In other media
Novels
- In Doctor Who: Millennial Rites, the Great Intelligence appeared in the setting of the non-canon Virgin Missing Adventures novel. According to the book, the Great Intelligence was originally Yog-Sothoth who was a member of a race of beings called the Great Old Ones and was their military strategist. Their kind were akin to the Time Lords of the previous universe where they shunted themselves into a parallel universe allowing them to survive the end of their cosmos. Upon emerging in the current universe, they discovered that they had been transformed into god-like beings were each enacted their own schemes as well as plans for the cosmos. Over the course of millennia, the Great Intelligence had mounted millions of campaigns against inhabited worlds across space.
- In Doctor Who: All-Consuming Fire, the Great Intelligence appeared in the setting of the non-canon Virgin New Adventures novel. It was said that the Great Intelligence and his brethren survived the end of their universe by passing through a parallel universe that ended one second after theirs. Shifting again allowed them to enter the current universe shortly after it began expanding.
Appearances
- Doctor Who: "The Abominable Snowmen" (1967)
External Links
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