When the Doctor starts to experience visions of the Valeyard, his long-presumed-dead dark future self ("The Ultimate Foe"), he returns to Gallifrey for information, and learns that his other self has been restored to existence and is now fighting for the Time Lords in the War, but his latest mission has had unexpected consequences…
Tropes
- Applied Phlebotinum: The Doctor holding a genetic disruptor while using a transmat was essentially all that was required for the Valeyard to be reborn.
- The Bus Came Back: After being absent since the Sixth Doctor’s era (or the Seventh’s, when taking Matrix into account), the Valeyard has returned.
- Combat Pragmatist: The Time Lords argue that they were basically being this by recruiting the Valeyard for the Time War; they need weapons to win the Time War, and regardless of the Valeyard's past actions, his skills were too useful for them to just kill him.
- Evil Counterpart: The Valeyard serves as this as always, being a version of the Doctor who is less concerned about collateral damage while still being as skilled and intelligent as his counterpart.
- Fate Worse than Death: Being stuck in a time loop doomed to constantly fail to save anyone would be this to most people, but the Valeyard actually prefers this over the alternative of leaving the loop and becoming the Valeyard once again.
- I Hate Past Me: Actually applies to the Valeyard of all people, as he essentially loses his memory of his 'true' identity and becomes fixated on the idea that he is the Doctor, refusing to escape his current fate if it will transform him back into his true self.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Valeyard uses a Dalek weapon intended to erase the Time Lords from history to instead erase the Daleks from history (barring the Dalek Time Controller, who escaped through the same rift that powered the weapon).
- Morton's Fork: Faced with a choice of being trapped in a time loop where he believes he is the Doctor trying to save a doomed world or escaping the loop only to regress back to his true self, the Valeyard chooses to stay in the loop so that he can at least believe he's the hero rather than become a villain again.
- Sequel Hook: The audio ends with the Doctor and Bliss travelling through a dimensional rift to try and stop the Dalek Time Controller while the Valeyard is left trapped on Grahv.
- Teleporter Accident: It is confirmed that one of these basically recreated the Valeyard in the first place.
