Matrix (Doctor Who)

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Template:Otheruses4 Image:Matrixwho.jpg The Matrix, in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who, is a massive computer system on the planet Gallifrey that acts as the repository of the combined knowledge of the Time Lords.

The Matrix was first introduced in the 1976 serial The Deadly Assassin, twenty-three years before the release of the film The Matrix. It is one of the locations for a battle between the Doctor and the titular assassin. Specifically, most of episode three of the serial is spent inside the virtual reality of the Matrix where the Doctor battles an agent of the Master. The serial also explains that if a person dies while linked to the Matrix, he dies in the real world as well.

Access to the Matrix is obtained through an apparatus connected to or enclosing the head of the user or, physically, via Doors into which the user walks. The Matrix functions as a simulated reality, the physical laws of which an advanced user may bend or break.

Full access to the Matrix is given only to the President of the High Council of Time Lords through the use of the Crown of Rassilon, but limited access to its contents are guaranteed to other Time Lords. The Keeper of the Matrix holds the Key of Rassilon that grants access to the Seventh Door, which was thought legendary until the Doctor used the Key to access it in The Ultimate Foe.

The Matrix is part of the Amplified Panatropic Computer Network, or APC Net, which contains the biological imprints (or bio-data extracts) of all Time Lords as well as the memories of dead Time Lords, storing them in an extradimensional framework of trillions of electrochemical cells. It also receives input from sensors contained in the TARDIS time machines piloted by Time Lords. As a result, the Matrix is not only a record of the past but can actually predict the future as well. The amount of knowledge in the Matrix, though vast, is not complete, and can be tampered with if given the right amount of access. The unauthorised extraction of a Time Lord's bio-data from the Matrix is an offence tantamount to treason.

In The Trial of a Time Lord, evidence was gathered from the Matrix to present a case against the Doctor on charges of breaking the first law of time. This was done by the Valeyard, a learned Court Prosecutor. It transpired however, that the Valeyard had been able to tamper with the events shown by the Matrix to show false evidence against the Doctor. When this was revealed by the Master, the Valeyard fled to a virtual reality world created by him within the Matrix. Within the Matrix, the Doctor was forced to fight the Valeyard, much like he had fought Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin. The Valeyard's world appeared as a Victorian factory, and he was disguised as a Mr Popplewick. The Master was also able to materialise his TARDIS inside the virtual reality world within the Matrix. Together the Master and the Doctor managed to defeat the Valeyard and discovered his plan to murder the Time Lords at the trial with a Particle Disseminator.

It was revealed in the 2005 series that both Gallifrey and the Time Lords were destroyed in the last great Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords. The fate of the Matrix is uncertain, although presumably it was destroyed as well.

Other appearances

The following section contains information taken from spin-off material, the canonicity of which is unclear.

In the Doctor Who comic strip published in Doctor Who Magazine, the Matrix is depicted as being inhabited by the minds of dead Time Lords, who have a sort of quasi-existence within its confines. They were even able to construct an agent to do their bidding in the outside world, an entity known as Shayde.

In the Big Finish Productions audio play Neverland, it is revealed that Rassilon himself continued to exist within the Matrix. In the Gallifrey audio series, an ancient Gallifreyan evil named Pandora also survived and remerged from a special partition within the Matrix.

In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Ancestor Cell by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole, Gallifrey was destroyed by the Eighth Doctor to prevent the voodoo cult Faction Paradox from starting a time war between the Time Lords and an unspecified Enemy. In The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin, it was revealed that the Time Lords had survived within the Matrix, which had then been downloaded into the Doctor's mind, although he had to sacrifice much of his memory to make space for it. Their reconstruction was possible, but would require a sufficiently advanced computer. At the novel's end, the question of whether or not the Time Lords would be restored remained unanswered. However, it can be assumed that both they and the planet were restored at some point before the start of the 2005 series if the novels are to remain consistent with the new series' continuity.

Matrix is also the name of a Doctor Who spin-off novel by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry in the BBC Past Doctor Adventures range, featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace. (ISBN 0563405961)