Omega (Doctor Who)

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This article is about the character. For the Big Finish audio of the same name, see Omega (Doctor Who audio).

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Doctor Who character
Omega
Affiliated with	None
Race	Time Lord
Home planet	Gallifrey
Home era	Rassilon Era
First appearance	The Three Doctors
Last appearance	Arc of Infinity
Portrayed by	Stephen Thorne Ian Collier Peter Davison

Omega is a fictional character from the long-running British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. In the context of the series, Omega is known as one of the founding fathers of the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey, and is a revered figure in Time Lord history together with the equally legendary Rassilon; the Third Doctor refers to him as the Time Lords' "greatest hero". He first appeared in the 10th anniversary story, The Three Doctors.

[edit] Character history

Omega was a stellar engineer and High Council member on Gallifrey who developed the Hand of Omega, a remote stellar manipulator which could be used to control the reactions within a star. Using the Hand, Omega performed adjustments on a star near Gallifrey's in an attempt to provide a power source for the time travel experiments he conducted with Rassilon. However, Omega was thought killed in the resulting supernova, which then collapsed into a black hole.

Rassilon subsequently captured the nucleus of the black hole and used its power to perfect time travel technology, turning his people into Time Lords. Rassilon then took control of Gallifrey as Lord President. The nucleus eventually became known as the Eye of Harmony, and Omega's name passed into heroic legend.

Millennia later, during the events of the Doctor Who serial The Three Doctors, it was revealed that Omega had not died, but had rather been sent through the event horizon into an antimatter universe and had been trapped there since then. His exile and solitude turned him quite insane, and he sought revenge on the Time Lords for "abandoning" him. Despite the Third Doctor's assurances that he was revered among the Time Lords and still remembered fondly, Omega still sought retribution. He made two attempts in the television series to re-enter the positive matter universe, in The Three Doctors and in the serial Arc of Infinity. Both attempts were thwarted by the Doctor. Both times Omega was presumed destroyed, but since it was not known if he was totally destroyed by the events at the end of Arc of Infinity it seems possible he could return at some point in the future (though he has not been mentioned as part of any future series plans so far).

Omega was portrayed in The Three Doctors by actor Stephen Thorne and in Arc of Infinity by both Ian Collier and Peter Davison. Collier reprised the role in Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who audio play Omega.

[edit] Other appearances

The audio play Omega revealed that Omega's real name was Peylix, "Omega" being the grade he received at the Time Lord Academy — the lowest possible grade — which stuck to him as a cruel nickname. However, aside from issues about the canonicity of the spin-off media, as the story is largely told from the point of view of an insane Omega with confused memories, this makes the accuracy of this information uncertain.

In the spin-off novels, the partnership of Rassilon and Omega in Time Lord history is rounded off by the shadowy figure of the Other. Some accounts suggest that Rassilon misled Omega into believing that he would survive the stellar experiment. The Doctor Who Monthly comic strip Star Death by Alan Moore (DWM #47) attributed the supernova to an attack by the Order of the Black Sun, an enemy of the Time Lords from 30,000 years in their future, the first strike (from the Time Lords' point of view) of a time war. The same story also identified the star as Qqaba.

Omega also appears in the 1998 BBC Books Doctor Who novel The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin (which also mentioned Qqaba), although as it is never quite specified if the novel takes place in the actual Doctor Who universe or an alternate reality, whether this was the "real" Omega or an alternative version is unclear. The novel reprises various events from both television appearances, although it creates an original story from them.

Omega appears as a nemesis to the Sixth Doctor in the Make your own adventure with Doctor Who (Find Your Fate in the United States ) book Search for the Doctor by Dave Martin. In this book, the reader must make the right choices in order to rescue the Sixth Doctor from Omega.

The original Valeyard story concept of Chris McKeon (the co-author of the late Craig Hinton's final novel Time's Champion ) , which was an audio script rejected by Big Finish Productions in 2000, would have revealed that the Valeyard was in fact a delusional Omega, driven mad and believing himself to be the Doctor , ironically not unlike the development featured in the 2003 audio Omega.