Black Guardian - Other Appearances

Other Appearances

The Black Guardian features in the Virgin Missing Adventures spin-off novel The Well-Mannered War, by Gareth Roberts. In that story, the Black Guardian catches up with the Fourth Doctor and Romana following the loss of the Randomiser, trapping them in a situation where they must either remain in the TARDIS and the Time Vortex for all eternity or release a powerful telepathic insect hive on 26th-century Earth, and they are forced to leave the known universe as a consequence. It is of course possible that the Doctor was later able to return to our universe.

The Black Guardian resurfaced again in Paul Cornell's short story "Time and Time Again", published in an issue of Doctor Who Magazine commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Doctor Who television programme. In the story, the Black Guardian punishes the Doctor's defiance by altering history so that the Doctor never left Gallifrey. In the revised timeline, the Doctor never visited Earth, and the planet's vulnerability has resulted in repeated alien invasions. The White Guardian commissions the Doctor, Benny, and Ace to journey across the Doctor's own timestream to once again assemble the Key to Time, the fragments of which are disguised as artifacts from the Doctor's past in the possession of each of his past incarnations.

In the BBC Books spin-off novel The Quantum Archangel by Craig Hinton, the Black Guardian appears briefly with the White Guardian and four others, who form a Council of Guardians that oversee reality. The other four Guardians were first mentioned in Divided Loyalties by Gary Russell, which states that one of them is the Celestial Toymaker.

The Black Guardian returns in the final moments of the Big Finish audio drama The Judgement of Isskar, and reappears in the proceeding two stories - The Destroyer of Delights and The Chaos Pool. Once again, The Key to Time is being sought, but this time with the Fifth Doctor. In these plays, The Black Guardian is played by David Troughton. He is portrayed as losing his powers due to the Key decaying, forcing him and the White Guardian to operate on a lower level of existence.