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The Quantum
Archangel
(Craig Hinton) |
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 Name: The Chronovores; variations of them appeared
known as the Reapers.
Format:
Television Show and Book.
Time of Origin: Technically
everywhere and nowhere; they exist outside of time and space as we
know it.
Appearances: "The
Time Monster", "The
Quantum Archangel"; forcibly enlisted to play a part in "No
Future" (As well as appearing behind the scenes in "Blood
Heat", "The
Dimension Riders", "The
Left-Handed Hummingbird" and "Conundrum"); variations of them
appeared in "Father's
Day".
Doctors: Third
Doctor, Sixth
Doctor; one was used against the Seventh
Doctor; the Ninth
Doctor confronted the Reapers.
Companions: Jo
Grant, The
Brigadier, Sergeant
Benton, Melanie
Bush; Ace and Bernice
Summerfield released one;
Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith confronted the Reapers.
History: Born back in the early
days of the Universe, the Chronovores are powerful beings that exist
in the higher six dimensions of reality - the six dimensions that
didn't
become dominate when the universe was born after the Big Bang. Essentially,
they are cosmic vampires, feeding on the residue of the Lux Aeterna,
the 11- dimensional quantum foam which underlies the structure of
reality, also feeding on alternate realities when the universe is
plagued by
too many alternatives to support itself, co-existing with the Guardians
and the Eternals in the Higher Plains. Normally, the three species
have little interaction, due to an ancient Covenant, but, millennia
in the past, Prometheus the Chronovore and Elektra the Eternal defied
the covenant to bear a child, an Avatar they hoped would unite all
of the races of all of the dimensions of the Universe.
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| The
Third Doctor |
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However, at the moment of conception,
they were found by the Guardians, the Six-Fold-God of the Six-Fold-Realm
- the White, Black, Red, Crystal, Azure, and Gold Guardians of Order,
Chaos, Justice, Dreams, Equilibrium and Life. The Guardians unmade
Prometheus' timeline so that he never existed, and the Avatar was
taken from Elektra and confined at birth. The Eternals were all in
favour of letting it just exist, but the Chronovores insisted that
it was a blasphemy which had to be destroyed. However, the Guardians
will not take a life as unique as this, and foresaw that there would
come a time when it would be needed to preserve creation. However,
in deference to the wishes of the Chronovores, the Avatar was bound
in a crystal fragment of the Key to Time, to be freed only if necessary.
If it was released before its time, madness, death and chaos would
result, and shatter everything around it...
This
eventually occurred on Earth in 1973, when The Doctor's old adversary
The
Master, in the guise of the Greek Professor Thascales, had a
device known as TOMTIT - Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial
Time -
constructed at the Newton Institute in Wootton by Professor Ruth
Ingram and her assistant Stuart Hyde; TOMTIT was mainly used to
transport
matter through the gaps between time 'molecules' for lack of a better
term, but he also intended to use it to gain control over Kronos.
Kronos was summoned, but the effect proved uncontrollable, so The
Master fled, leaving the Third
Doctor to shut TOMTIT down. However, The Master later reactivated
it, using it first to ensnare Krasis, High Priest of the lost city
of Atlantis, and then to attack UNIT forces by way of a series of
timeslips. The Master took Krasis back to Atlantis in his TARDIS
in the hope of stealing the Crystal, with which he might finally
dominate the creature. The Doctor followed with Jo
Grant, but was unable to prevent his enemy from seducing Queen
Galleia and staging a coup, although Galleia turned against The
Master
when she learned that he has caused the death of her husband, King
Dalios.
The Master then unleashed Kronos, destroying
Atlantis and capturing Jo. The two Time Lords escaped in their respective
TARDISes and confronted each other in the time vortex. The Doctor
threatened to trigger a 'time ram' - a devastating collision where
two TARDISes materialised in the same location and destroyed each
other- but couldn't bring himself to do it. Jo, however, had no such
qualms, and operated the controls herself. However, rather than being
destroyed, the two TARDISes reappeared in a strange void presided
over by Kronos - who now appears as a beautiful female face. The time
ram had released Kronos, who agreed to return The Doctor and Jo to
Earth. The creature planned to subject The Master to eternal torment,
but The Doctor pleaded on his behalf and he too went free, leaving
UNIT to clean up the mess left by TOMTIT.
Eventually,
in 2003, The Master and the Sixth
Doctor again faced off against
Kronos, when The Master, apparently plagued by Chronovorse seeking
vengeance for his treatment of Kronos, went after the TITAN - Trans-Interstitial
Time Analysis Network - Array, the creation of Stuart's prodigy,
Paul Kairos; essentially, TITAN was a vast telescope that allowed
the user to access Calabi-Yau space- the six higher dimensions that
are not perceived by every other being in the Universe, based on
the basic premise of TOMTIT's matter transmission through the higher
dimensions. However, The Master, apparently being hounded by the
Chronovores seeking vengeance for his treatment of Kronos, stole
TITAN, and headed off to the Midnight Cathedral, a vast complex created
by beings called the Constructors of Destiny. Having upgraded TITAN,
The Master intended to use it to tap into the Lux Aeterna - the 11-dimensional
quantum foam which underlies the structure of reality - thus cutting
the Chronovores off from their natural food source (After all, alternate
timelines aren't all that abundant) and, having transferred the power
of the Lux Aeterna into himself, he would become a God and defeat
the Chronovores.
However,
things went wrong when the power was accidentally transferred into
Mel's old friend Anjeliqua Whitefriar; The Master assumed that the
power would incinerate her, but in reality she became the Quantum
Archangel, a being who wished to give everyone their perfect realities
- despite the fact that, not only would this erase all real meaning
from the universe since mistakes HAVE to be made for people to learn,
but also that all these worlds would be devoured by the Chronovores
due to the loss of the Lux Aeterna depriving them of their only other
source of food. Despite their best efforts, The Doctor, The Master,
Mel, Stuart and Arlene were all sent into alternate timelines - The
Doctor and The Master sharing the same reality, in a world where
The Doctor was the President of Gallifrey leading a war against an
army of Daleks, Mel became the Prime Minister and met an alternate
Third Doctor who never escaped his exile only to betray Earth to
the Cybermen,
Stuart was the victim of another plot by The Master,
The Rani,
The Meddling Monk and Drax to destroy the world, and Arlene was framed for
embezzlement - leaving only Paul to bring them back to
their own world...
Then, everything got worse.
Despite
her powers, the Quantum Archangel lacked the processing power to
create alternate timelines for everyone in the Universe, so it and
sought the aid of history's greatest computer; the Mad Mind of Bophemeral,
a computer that sparked off a thousand-year-long war that featured
every civilised race in the cosmos at that time and had been thought
to have been sealed away forever; the war itself was so terrible
that it had been erased from the collective memory of the Universe
(Although The Doctor's memory of it had been restored to enable him
to deal with the problem). Fortunately, Paul was able to pull everyone
back into the TARDIS before the Chronovores killed them as they devoured
the last of the alternate timelines- because, as it turned out, Paul
Kairos was actually a creation of Kronos. Seeking revenge against
the Chronovores for his imprisonment, Kronos had set up an elaborate
plan to give The Master ultimate power to destroy them (The whole
threat against The Master had been nothing but Kronos from the beginning),
but the transference of the powers to Anjeliqua had ruined everything.
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No Future
(Paul Cornell) |
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With no other way to stop the Mind and the Archangel, The
Doctor allowed himself to take on the last dregs of the Lux Aertena,
ascending to temporary Godhood in a desperate attempt to distract
the Archangel, while Kronos tackled the Mad Mind itself. In a noble
move, Kronos committed suicide, willing himself dead, destroying
the Mind and allowing the Lux Aeterna - now free of Anjeliqua thanks
to The Doctor's persuasion - to return home. Kronos's only legacy
to the Universe was Paul Kairos - who, no matter what his origins,
was still a real person, who would now live a long, healthy life
with Arlene.
In The Doctor's last encounter with the Chronovores, it was
with the Chronovore known as Artemis, who had been enslaved by his
old adversary Mortimus, the Meddling Monk, using an ancient ritual
- revealed to him by his new loyalty to the Eternal Death - that
bound her to The Monk's TARDIS, granting him even greater power.
Using this power, The Monk not only released the Vardans from the
time loop where they had been trapped by the Fourth
Doctor after
their invasion of Gallifrey ("The
Invasion of Time") so
that they could aid him in conquering Earth, but also went on to
change The Doctor's own history, recreating the Land of Fiction ("Conundrum")
and an ancient nightmare known as The Garvond ("The
Dimension Riders"), binding The Doctor to the psychically-enhanced Aztec
warrior Huitzilin ("The
Left-Handed Hummingbird"), and
creating an alternate timeline where the Third Doctor was killed
during the Silurian attack ("Doctor
Who and the Silurians")
and Earth was subsequently conquered. However, even amid her imprisonment,
Artemis exerted enough power to help The Doctor's companion Ace avoid
being hypnotised by The Monk, sensing that Ace had the potential
to play a role in her escape, Ace adjusting the equipment The Monk
was using to trap Artemis so that it would gradually lose power.
Although Artemis almost consumed Earth during her escape, The Doctor
convinced her to show mercy by noting that she had already done so
by saving him in the past - using the fact that The Monk's attempt
to shoot him had failed as there was no power in his gun -, Ace subsequently
asking Artemis to thank Ace from granting her freedom by putting
Ace in a position where she could save The Doctor's old friend The
Brigadier, who had been shot during the final confrontation with
the Vardans before The Doctor's allies managed to banish them. With
Artemis now released by renegade Vardan officer Captain Alex Pike,
Mortimus was subsequently taken away by Artemis so that she could
punish him for her imprisonment (Although he eventually escaped).
Although the Chronovores have not returned to The Doctor's
life since, during "Father's
Day", when the Ninth
Doctor's
companion Rose Tyler changed history by saving her father's life,
the immediate area was attacked by beings called Reapers, dragon-like
monsters that sought to 'sterilise' the wound that Rose had created
in time by devouring those who had been affected by the change, until
Pete Tyler sacrificed himself to undo the change to history and thus
leaving the Reapers with nothing to feed on. Given the similarities
between their methods - the Reapers apparently consuming people like
the Chronovores consume timelines -, the Reapers' smaller 'scale'
of power suggests that they may be either the Chronovores having
regressed to a more primitive state after the destruction caused
during the Time War, or mere 'relatives' of the Chronovores in the
same way that humans are 'related' to monkeys and apes. |
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