Sixth Doctor - Biography

Biography

The Sixth Doctor's regeneration was initially unstable, and he nearly strangled Peri before he came to his senses. Realising what he had nearly done, he initially considered going into a hermitlike existence on the planet Titan 3, only to be caught up in events on the planet Jocanda, after which he resumed his travels (The Twin Dilemma). He encountered many old foes including the Master, Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans, and even shared an adventure with his own second incarnation. He also faced a renegade female Time Lord scientist, the Rani, who was conducting experiments on humans using the Luddite Riots as a cover.

Later, the Doctor and Peri landed on the devastated planet Ravolox, which they discovered was actually Earth, moved across space with devastating consequences. Before they could discover the reason for this disaster, the TARDIS landed on Thoros Beta. What actually happened here is still unclear, but initial accounts suggest that Peri was killed after being cruelly used as a test subject in brain transplant experiments and the Doctor was pulled out of time to a Time Lord space station where he was put on trial for the second time by his own race, the Time Lords. In reality the trial was a cover-up organised by the High Council. A race from Andromeda had stolen Time Lord secrets and hidden on Earth, so in order to protect themselves the Time Lords had moved Earth through space, burning the surface in a massive fireball and leaving it as Ravolox. The prosecutor at that trial, the Valeyard, turned out to be a possible future, an evil incarnation of the Doctor himself who was out to steal his remaining lives. He had also edited the Matrix recordings of the Doctor's travels; in reality Peri had survived events on Thoros Beta. The events of the trial tangled the Doctor's timeline slightly, as he left in the company of Mel, whom he technically had not yet met. (Originally this was the then-producer's idea that in the following season this would be explained).

Events following the trial are not covered in the television series, but are covered in various spin-off media, though their canonicity is unclear. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Time of Your Life states that the Doctor went into a self-imposed exile to avoid becoming the Valeyard. He was lured back into travelling, ironically by the Time Lords, and recruited Grant Markham as a companion. Although now travelling again, he still attempted to avoid meeting Mel and recruited other companions such as history lecturer Evelyn Smythe and Charley Pollard. He eventually does encounter Mel by accident during the events of the BBC Books novel Business Unusual and accepts his fate once she stows away in the TARDIS.

When the TARDIS was attacked by his old enemy the Rani, the Sixth Doctor was somehow injured and regenerated into the Seventh Doctor; the exact cause of the regeneration, however, has never been revealed on-screen. When writers Pip and Jane Baker's novel of the story tried to explain the regeneration many were not happy with the outcome. There have subsequently been various explanations for the regeneration. The Virgin New Adventures series suggests that the Seventh Doctor somehow killed the Sixth, because he could not become the masterplanner and manipulator that his next incarnation became, due to his fear of becoming the Valeyard. The BBC Books novel Spiral Scratch offers an alternative explanation that the Sixth Doctor died as a result of his chronal energy being drained in a confrontation with a powerful pan-dimensional entity before being snared by the Rani's beam.