I had an idea for this one quite some time ago. I thought it might be an interesting recurring concept to look into. I wrote out the title of the essay to make sure I wouldn't forget it (something I have done so many times previously when I didn't create, at least, a headline for the entry) and then let it just sit around for the better part of a year. Since I was feeling the need to move away from heavy opinions for a bit, I finally went back and found the empty entry that only has a name to it and set about filling it up.
JUST WHAT IS A DOCTOR OFFSHOOT?!
With an essay of this nature, it's important to create some definitions before getting into the analysis.
Doctor Offshoot: An organic (or, at the very least, quasi-organic) being that stems from the Doctor but acts independently of him/her. It is created in any way except the conventional form of reproduction. A simple example of an off-shoot would be a clone. Essentially, it is a free-thinking organic being created through artificial means that uses, at least, a sample of the Doctor's biology as its base constituents.
Things That Aren't Offshoots: As usual, we will help define the concept by stating some of the things an offshoot isn't:
Android copies of the Doctor like the one we saw in The Android Invasion don't count as an offshoot. Nor does something like the hologram he creates of himself in Pirate Planet. Neither of these are organic beings.
We can also rule out someone like Susan as being an actual offshoot. Yes, the Doctor is responsible for her creation. But he did it in a natural manner by having a kid who then had a kid.
The idea of the Doctor just crossing his own timestream is not an offshoot either. Even if we are witnessing multiple versions of him (either in different incarnations like in The Five Doctors or the same like in The Big Bang), it's really just him occupying the same place and time in several iterations. There isn't a new being that's created, here.
Finally, there are doppelgangers. There are two types. Firstly, there's people like the Abbot of Amboise in The Massacre. He is a double of the First Doctor who just seemed to randomly occur in the Universe and the TARDIS just happens to take the Doctor to a time and place where the Abbot exists. And then there are creatures like Meglos who assume the Doctor's form for a time as a type of super-elaborate disguise. In both instances, these are beings that look like the Doctor but were not created from him. So they don't qualify either.
There we go. Definition set. Hopefully, it actually makes sense to you!
ATTACK OF THE CLONES
So let's start with a type of offshoot that we've already stated as an example: Clones.
Probably the best way to create a clone is the way we saw it done in the movie I referenced in the title of this section. Start them as a fetus and get them to adulthood through accelerated growth. A clone that is immediately produced as an adult seems to run into a lot of problems.
This is best displayed in the story where we see the Doctor cloning himself for the first time. In The Invisible Enemy, the Doctor comes up with a mad scheme to try to take out the Nucleus of the virus that has invaded him. He shrinks down a clone of both himself and Leela and sends them into his own body to eradicate the foreign invader. Clearly, he doesn't have time to "grow" a clone so he must use the Kilbracken Technique. Described as "no more than a parlour trick" by Professor Marius, it will provide the Doctor with an adult clone that will only last for so long. Marius even takes the time to explain that growing a clone works just fine by the 51st Century. They have the technology to achieve that. But an "instant clone" seems to eventually go through an extreme level of shock from gaining so much knowledge and experience so quickly. After about eleven minutes, they completely burn out.
Something similar seems to happen with the Argolins' attempt to use tachyonics as a form of cloning. In Part Four of The Leisure Hive, we see our first example of multiple offshoots at once. More times than others, we only see one such being in a story. But, thanks to a little trickery on the Time Lord's part, the army that Pangol is creating is the Doctor rather than the tyrannical Argolin.
This is the second time in the show that we witness the Doctor getting cloned*. Also the second time that we see an offshoot. These are very primitive forms of offshoots. Which is probably part of the reason why they have such short lifespans. Duplicating DNA in such a manner is far more complex than most forms of technology can handle. Probably only highly-advanced races can create instant clones effectively.
Whatever the case, the clones of the Doctor in Leisure Hive are even shorter-lived than the one in Invisible Enemy. This may be because this story takes place quite a bit earlier than Enemy so the technology will be less sophisticated. Therefore, the clones will not last as long. It would seem that the many clones of the Doctor start dying off only four or five minutes after they are created. Their passing, at least, seems quite peaceful. They just gently fade away.
JUST ONE LAST THING ABOUT CLONES
There is, perhaps, one more important point we should cover about clones before moving on. Invisible Enemy provides us with our first example of a "link" between the Doctor and the off-shoot. This sort of thing doesn't happen often but it has some interesting ramifications when it does.
In Enemy, the link is a simple one. What happens to the original host affects the clone. When we see the Clone Doctor doing things to the host body, he does seem to be feeling the ailments he's creating for himself. We're not sure, though, if this is really the case. The Fourth Doctor does delight in exaggerated responses and could be just be acting a bit silly.
But a bit later, he explains to Leela quite clearly how the link works. When the Host Body bumps her head badly, Clone Leela feels it. The Doctor elaborates and even reveals that if the real Leela dies, her copy gets killed, too.
In this instance, the link between Host and Off-Shoot seems a bit disadvantageous (to the clone, at least!). Why the link even occurs was never properly explained. But, for some reason, this is a feature that 51st Century Instant Clones possess.
CLONE-LIKE STUFF
From clones, we move on to off-shoots that work on a very similar principle to cloning but I wouldn't say they're quite the same. Either their process of creation is too different or the results that they produce don't really make an actual clone (assuming that we define a clone as being an exact copy of the host body).These "clone-like" offshoots all seem to occur during the New Series.
Probably the most famous example of this sort of thing would be Jenny from The Doctor's Daughter. Within seconds of arriving on the planet Messaline, the Doctor's hand is forced into a huge contraption that extracted his DNA and created a fully-mature independent being. Sounds like an Instant Clone, right? Just one big difference:
The being created by the Doctor's DNA looks nothing like him. She isn't even the same gender.
Dubbed "Jenny" by Donna, she was created in much the same way as one might make a clone. But the results are considerably different. It is more like she's the Doctor's daughter than a duplicate of him.While many jokes are made about the Doctor being her "Dad" - this is clearly not a conventional form of reproduction. The machines that perform the whole task are called "Progenitors". They, essentially, conceive offspring through a technique very similar to cloning.
In many ways, there's very little of the Doctor that we actually see in this particular offshoot. Not just in terms of physical appearance, but her psychological make-up is also quite different. The Doctor always tries to be a man of peace, but Jenny has been programmed to be a soldier. She even seems ready to kill if she needs to. It's only through the Doctor's persuasiveness that she chooses not to be the warrior she was designed to be. But, unlike her Host, she was specifically bred for violence.
There are, however, a few genetic attributes that she seems to have inherited from her "Dad". Donna shows the Doctor with his stethoscope that, like him, she possesses two hearts. Later, after getting shot near the end of the episode, Jenny dies. But she does seem to have a limited level of regeneration energy. She uses it to resurrect at her funeral (good thing it happened before they buried and/or cremated her!). Alive once more, she steals a ship and runs off to a potential spin-off series and/or return appearance that never actually happens.
Our other example of a clone-like off-shoot works in the exact reverse to Jenny. He looks just like the Doctor and has all his knowledge, experience and personality. However, the technique to create him doesn't seem like cloning. There are some similarities in the methodology, but also some distinct differences.
The Flesh is described as "a programmable mass" whose natural state is a whitish liquid. It's possible to feed all your genetic information into the substance and it will solidify into an exact copy of you. Cloning doesn't seem to quite work this way. Usually, clones are grown (sometimes, quite rapidly) rather than molded from a sort of soupy clay.
Dubbed "gangers" (short for doppelganger), these off-shoots also have a link with their hosts. The humans they are molded from sit in a special harness and mentally control their every move. In much the same way as the protagonist in the film Avatar used the Na'vi that was created for him. Of course, a solar tsunami (whatever that is!) disrupts the link and the gangers develop free will.
The Doctor's ganger, however, worked quite differently. Somehow, when he was analysing the Flesh with his sonic screwdriver, it took a reading of him at the same time. A perfect copy gets made that only seems to have a bit of trouble before it stabilises. His face does revert to that weird, pale, rough-hewn state for a short while after its creation. It also experiences a similar sort of psychic trauma that we see other instant clones go through. All that knowledge and experience being assigned to him immediately becomes a bit more than the newly-created being can take. This process is especially difficult for the Doctor's ganger as he must reconcile all his past incarnations. But he does work through it after a moment.
Aside from that initial instability, the ganger is a perfect copy of its host. So much so, that they are able to fool Amy with a "clever switcheroo" when she actually seems to be discriminating against the offshoot. Once this offshoot does "settle in", he becomes the most convincing offshoot-copy that was ever made of the Doctor.
I think we will stop this little study, for now. There are a few more types of offshoots to look at but this particular entry is getting a bit long. We'll do a Part Two shortly. In it, we'll look at some things that aren't as "cloney" as what we've been analysing, so far!
If you were watching carefully, I placed a little asterisk in a paragraph where I was discussing the Doctor Clones in Leisure Hive. I expand on the point just below:
*While I claim that the copies of the Doctor in Leisure Hive are clones, that may not actually be the case. At one point, one of the duplicates refers to himself as a "tachyon image", Which makes him more of a sophisticated hologram than anything. If this is so, then the multiple Doctors in this tale are disqualified as being proper offshoots.
It could be that the label the Doctor assigns himself is completely accurate. But there is much to contradict it. Pangol is attempting a cloning experiment - not manipulating tachyon images as he was earlier in the narrative. From what we have gathered,Tachyon images only seem capable of existing within the Generator. The army of Doctors, however, emerge and start wandering through the Leisure Hive, itself. Romana does actually touch one of the so-called tachyon images and he is legitimately solid - not a property holograms usually have.
These facts do insinuate that it's just as likely that these are just short-lived clones that we're seeing. Or, quite possibly, a hybrid of the two. Clones that are, at the same time, tachyon images of sorts.
Whatever the case, I'll let them qualify as offshoots. Offshoots that don't live for very long - but offshoots, nonetheless.
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