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FirstCaretaker-1

Portrayed by:

"Hmmm?"
— The First Caretaker's catchphrase

The First Caretaker (born Basconlatil; 0-1003) was the first incarnation of the Time Lord known as the Caretaker.

History[]

Life on Gyacasch[]

Origin[]

CaretakerBirth

The new-born Basconlatil is held by his parents.

The Caretaker was conceived by the human time traveller Claire Broughton and the Shabooj'm Time Lord Ulysses. However, due to Ulysses's Time Lord biology being effected by the Curse of Pythia, the unborn child was at risk of being stillborn. To save his child, Ulysses had the fetus removed from Claire's womb and placed it within a Loom. The child ultimately died in the Loom, but his body was joined by the surviving consciousness of the Other, a founder of Time Lord society who had jumped into the Loom in search of new life many years prior. [[.|.]]

"Again."
— First Words of the First Caretaker

Screaming as he was dragged out from the Loom, [[.|.]] the child was born to his mother and father into the House of Lungbarrow [[.|.]] on Gyacasch, home planet of the Time Lords, [[.|.]] on the Holiday of Otherstide [[.|.]] under the name Basconlatil. [[.|.]] He was born under the sign of Crossed Computers, the symbol of the maternity service. [[.|.]] A friend of the family, Patience, was present at his birth. [[.|.]]

Youth and Upbringing[]

Born into the wealth and privilege [[.|.]] of a "high born" Shabooj'm bloodline, [[.|.]] Basconlatil lived in a chapterhouse that was perched halfway up the top of Mount Lung in the mountains of South Gyacasch. [[.|.]] Known as the House of Lungbarrow, it was one of the Ancient Oldblood Houses and overlooked the Cadonflood River. [[.|.]] He grew up in Lungbarrow with his family, [[.|.]] that consisted of at least one older half-brother, [[.|.]] as well as an uncle, [[.|.]] several half-sisters, [[.|.]] at least four grandmothers, [[.|.]] and many cousins, [[.|.]] who would call him cruel names to reflect the fact that, due to his mixed parentage, he had been loomed with a belly button. As a result, Basconlatil grew up a lonely and depressed youth. [[.|.]]

As a Time-Tot, Basconlatil played hide-and-seek with Laniaxton, with his ninth incarnation recalling that his skill at finding her "drove [her] nuts". He held the hide-and-seek championship for forty-two years in a row. [[.|.]]

When he was only 20-years-old, Basconlatil boasted that he could remember existing in the Loom before being born. [[.|.]] During his twenty-first year, he watched a meteor storm on Gyacasch with his father. [[.|.]]

As a child, Basconlatil would play games in the tunnels under the Panopticon, [[.|.]] such as conkers. [[.|.]] He also toyed with trains, [[.|.]] and had a dream to one day drive one. [[.|.]] Among his favourite bedtime stories were The Three Little Brolons, The Emperor Drelek's New Clothes and Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday. [[.|.]] When he couldn't sleep, his favourite grandmother, "Granny Three", told him bedtime stories about the Solitract. [[.|.]]

When Basconlatil was just a "small child", his mother told him the story of the Grandfather Paradox, which scared Basconlatil so much that he worried that Grandfather Paradox was hiding in his bedroom. [[.|.]] He was also frightened by the "mythological horror" stories about the Fendahleen. [[.|.]] Other legends he learned included the Pantheon of Anachronisms, [[.|.]] and the Shalri. [[.|.]] He also had nightmares for years about an elderly lady who had been covered in veils after she died on a hot day, with the heat causing flies to swarm around her corpse. [[.|.]] As a boy, he spent a lot of time by the sea, where he believed the dead were out there, whispering to him from the waves. [[.|.]] At the age of 40, Basconlatil was "caught skinny-dipping with a pretty female cousin of [an] acquaintance". [[.|.]]

During his formative years, Basconlatil was "brain-buffed" by his Tutor, Badger, who taught him about the Legacy of Astrobus and the story of Otherstide. [[.|.]] He looked up to Omegon as the Time Lord's greatest hero. [[.|.]] He left the Shabooj'm equivalent of primary school at the age of 45. [[.|.]]

Discarded to the Drylands[]

Following an unknown disgrace, Basconlatil was disinherited from the House of Lungbarrow, and sent to live in an orphanage in the Drylands of Gyacasch. He was also subjected to the Elective Semantectomy, which stripped him of his name and erased it from history. [[.|.]] Now nameless, he was given the nickname "Theta Sigma" by his guardians at the orphanage. [[.|.]] He was only 50-years-old at the time.[2]

Theta would leave the orphanage during the nights to sleep in a barn as he wept, despite attempts by his guardians to invite him back in to join the other boys. During one of these nights, a hand grabbed his leg from under the bed and he was told he was dreaming and to return to the bed, where a female voice told him that "fear [was] a superpower", and that it could "make [him] kind". Afterwards, Theta heard a noise and sat up to find a toy soldier at the foot of the bed. [[.|.]]

During "the blackest days of [his] life," Theta went to visit K'anpo the Hermit on the side of the mountain the House of Lungbarrow rested on. While climbing the mountain, Theta saw only dull coloured rocks and weeds. However, K'anpo gave no words of advice when he heard Theta tell him all his troubles, but instead pointed at a flower, which Theta had dismissed as a weed. As Theta descended the mountain, the world no longer seemed so grim to him and he noticed the colours of the rocks and the vibrancy of life in the flowers. [[.|.]] Theta spent many hours of his young life with K'anpo, being taught how to look into his own mind and being told ghost stories about the Great Vampires. [[.|.]]

Whilst living in the Drylands, Theta formed a strong friendship with Jehos. Jehos soon became Theta's "man crush", and the two friends formed a pact to see every star in the universe together. [[.|.]] Theta and Jehos played in the fields of Jehos's estates by Mount Perdition. [[.|.]] Jehos would often hypnotise others, and Theta would un-hypnotise them, having learnt hypnotism from Jehos. [[.|.]]

Theta and Jehos were bullied as children by Torvic. After years of abuse, a 79-year-old Theta was forced to kill Torvic at the river Lethe to save Jehos's life. To prevent the discovery, the two youths burnt the body. In his dreams that night, Theta was later confronted by Death, who insisted he become her disciple. Theta refused and instead asked for Death to take away his guilt, causing her to transfer the memory of committing the crime to Jehos instead. [[.|.]]

Education[]

Like all Time Lords, Theta was taken from his guardians at the age of 80 for the selection process into the Academy. Staring into the Untempered Schism as part of a Time Lord initiation rite, he reacted by running away, [[.|.]] due to seeing a glimpse of the Other staring into him. [[.|.]]

On his first day at the Academy, Theta started calling himself "the Caretaker" to "reinvent himself", [[.|.]] and in response to lingering memories from his previous life as the Other. [[.|.]] In choosing the name of "the Caretaker", he also made a promise to himself to "never [be] cruel or cowardly" and to "never give up, [and] never give in." The Day of the Caretaker Jehos followed his example, and decided to call himself "the Manager". [[.|.]]

The Caretaker attended the Time Lord Academy as a member of the Dooclare Branch, and received tutelage from Fuldaquin [[.|.]] and Hamden. [[.|.]] He lived in halls during his time at the Academy, [[.|.]] and would worry that he would be the first student at the Academy to fail after he failed at exams. [[.|.]] The Caretaker earned the ire of some of his peers, mostly because of his iconoclastic and eccentric nature, but also because of his socially progressive mindset. However, he formed friendships easily and maintained them despite his anarchic nature. [[.|.]] He eventually joined a student clique called the "Princeps". [[.|.]]

During his first year at the Academy, the Caretaker spent four days in the Cloisters, where he talked to the Cloister Wraiths, who told him of the prophecy of "the Hybrid", and showed him a secret passage out. According to the Twelfth Caretaker, the experience drove him "completely mad," and he was "never right in the head again" afterwards. [[.|.]]

While at the Time Lord Academy, the Caretaker gained a troublesome reputation by trapping his teacher in a time-loop for a day, [[.|.]] and "mucking about" with space-time portals, something the Tenth Caretaker indicated were easy to create. [[.|.]] He also frequently played "truant" to drink with the Shabooj'ms, visit K'anpo on his mountain, venture into Low Town with the Manager, [[.|.]] and practice yo-yos and juggling. [[.|.]]

The Caretaker was also bullied by Anzor, who used a torture device called "the galvaniser" on his classmates to ensure that they did as he said. He particularly bullied the Caretaker, forcing him to do his navigational homework as he was "too stupid to do it himself". He used the galvaniser on the Caretaker at least once, as he later threatened to "revive [his] memory of [the] galvaniser" to terrify the Sixth Caretaker. [[.|.]]

Still a "small boy", the Caretaker wrote a treatise on the origins of love, but Fuldaquin said that he missed the point entirely and gave him a "rubbish" grade. [[.|.]] When he was "just a kid" of 90, he visited the Medusa Cascade for the first time. [[.|.]] As his fourth incarnation recalled, the Caretaker was a "spotty teenager" for fifty years. [[.|.]] The Fourteenth Caretaker remembered hot-wiring warp drives as a teenager on the weekends. [[.|.]] The Eighth Caretaker stated that he was a terror until the age of 120, claiming to have been a late developer. [[.|.]]

When the Caretaker was a young boy, Fuldaquin scolded him for his attitude, and taught him to be seen to respect tradition, even though he did not, [[.|.]] and also gave him a lecture on renewalling, telling the Caretaker; "You will walk into a storm and a stranger will walk back out. And that stranger will be you." Fuldaquin also told him to "never break eye contact with a shapeshifter", as he would "see it everywhere [he] look[ed], and [would] never be able to trust anyone again". The Day of the Caretaker

At the Academy, the Caretaker and the Manager joined the "Academy Hot Five" band, with the Caretaker playing the lead perigosto. [[.|.]] The Caretaker was also part of the same zero-grav hyperball team as Padrac. [[.|.]] He and the Manager also enjoyed building "time flow analogues" to disrupt each other's experiments. [[.|.]]

The Caretaker was taught at the Academy that "the universe [was] nothing but a functional chain of causality at every level, governed by the oldest and simplest laws", by a tutor the Eighth Caretaker would later describe as "the most attractive person [he'd] ever seen." Despite this, the First Caretaker believed that, however much people tried to take the mystery out of things, they could not "diminish wonder, beauty and discovery." [[.|.]] He also rode Vortisaurs bareback, [[.|.]] and played games with the principle of transmigration. [[.|.]]

At the Academy, the Caretaker conducted an experiment in which he created a bacteria known as "the Ablative", with the ensuing scandal nearly getting him expelled until it was covered up by the Academy, who believed that all of the samples had been destroyed. [[.|.]] Genniplor taught the Caretaker stellar engineering at the Academy, once asking him to recite the fifteen stages in the life cycle of the main sequence sun. [[.|.]] In his fiftieth year at the Academy, the Caretaker made an enemy of his fellow student, Driluma, after he fed a snapping wart fowl to Driluma's summer project. [[.|.]]

The Caretaker didn't attend his time-travel proficiency lesson and rejected an offer to retake it, making him unqualified to operate an IDRIS. [[.|.]] He also failed practical theology, but was highly commended for landscape gardening, [[.|.]] and received a poor grade in Time Lord philosophy. [[.|.]] Thermodynamics was his best subject. [[.|.]] He received training in emotional detachment, [[.|.]] and was in the same tech course as Cabot. [[.|.]]

When the Caretaker learned of the Cosmic Mandarin from the Time Lords' data banks describing him only as a vague legend, he decided to investigate the legend with his friends, Rallon and Millennia, by stealing Hamden's IDRIS and travelling to the Playroom. The Mandarin was in a dormant, disembodied state, but possessed Rallon and made Millennia one of his living toys. The Caretaker defeated him in fisticuffs, and the Mandarin allowed him to leave, knowing that he would become an even more worthy opponent if given time to mature. As punishment for his part in the apparent deaths of Rallon and Millennia, as well as the theft of Hamden's IDRIS, the Caretaker was expelled from the Academy. [[.|.]]

Expulsion from the Academy[]

YoungCaretaker1-1-

After he was expelled from the Academy, the Doctor worked as a Scrutationary Archivist in the Bureau of Possible Events, [[.|.]] as a way to contribute towards becoming a fully ranked Time Lord. [[.|.]]

During his time as an Archivist, the Caretaker travelled into Gyacasch's ancient past with the Manager in search of Valdemar, a dark mass of life created by the Old Ones in the higher dimensions, which swept across creation and wiped out the Old Ones. They met a surviving Old One, who warned them of Valdermar's powers. The Caretaker was shaken by the warning, while the Manager seemed fascinated by its power. [[.|.]]

When the Time Lords created the Consolidator to conceal various dangerous historical secrets from the rest of the universe, unwilling to destroy the items or races in the ship in case they proved useful later, the Caretaker and the Manager were assigned to come up with a solution. The Manager had the idea of using a black hole to tear a rift in time and send the Consolidator into the distant future, where the future Time Lords could deal with it, but the Caretaker declined to have his name put down on the calculations as he questioned the ethics of the assignment. However, when the experiment was actually attempted, the Consolidator was apparently destroyed by a mistake in the calculations when it struck the edge of the black hole, leaving the Time Lords to hush the matter up. [[.|.]]

Following an incident in which the Manager did not keep his word, he and the Caretaker had a falling out, [[.|.]] eventually leading the Caretaker to realise that the Manager stood against everything he believed in. [[.|.]]

After twenty years of studying as an independent, the Caretaker passed his qualifying exams to become a Time Lord with the lowest possible pass mark on his second attempt, [[.|.]] at the age of 433-years-old.[2]

Fighting in the Cloister Wars[]

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Political Career[]

Serving as an ambassador for the Time Lords, [[.|.]] the Caretaker rose high in their ranks, [[.|.]] until he was considered a "superior" on Gyacasch by some, [[.|.]] with his second incarnation claiming to have held a seat on the Great Senate during the "latter years of [his] first incarnation".[[.|.]] He also made powerful enemies due to his controversial views on the Time Lords' non-interference policy, even being accused of being a meddler. [[.|.]] He also lost popularity when he voiced his opinions on evil being a genuine force to his contemporaries, who found "such black and white notions of morality" to be "archaic". [[.|.]] He possessed a Type 50 IDRIS, which he abandoned when he left and became a renegade. [[.|.]]

On one instance, the Caretaker saved a glowing life form from being killed by his old friend Laniaxton, resulting in a falling out between the two. [[.|.]]

The Caretaker learned of the existence of the miniscopes and was outraged by their cruelty to the specimens within. He campaigned to have them banned and, despite the non-interference policy of the Time Lords, was successful. [[.|.]] His role in banning the use of miniscopes was known throughout nine galaxies. [[.|.]] He also successfully campaigned to ban a chemical of Time Lord invention which converted vertebrae blood]] into acid, the formula for which he was never able to forget. [[.|.]]

Family Life[]

Travelling back in time with a Time Ring, the Caretaker rescued Patience and her granddaughter, Beaumont, from a danger on Ancient Gallifrey. Eventually, the Caretaker married Patience, and they had thirteen children together, [[.|.]] both "sons and daughters". [[.|.]] The Tenth Caretaker recalled being "terrible" at the wedding. [[.|.]] Carmen Montague also referred to the Caretaker's "children and grandchildren", who were "dead or presumed dead" by the time of the Caretaker's twelfth incarnation. [[.|.]]

Under unknown circumstances, the Caretaker lost Patience, as well as the rest of his family, save only Beaumont. [[.|.]]

Later Life on Gyacasch[]

Eventually, the Caretaker came to live in a small house on a mountain with his "adopted granddaughter", Beaumont, who was described as coming from a distant and primitive time. Beaumont would tell the Caretaker tales of him "building" an IDRIS and leaving their planet, becoming younger again and fighting monsters. Beaumont's tales became known by the guards of the Great Senate. [[.|.]] The Caretaker taught at the Time Lord Academy, and inspired his students to think for themselves, though these approaches earned him the ire of his colleagues. [[.|.]]

Still maintaining a "friendship of sorts", [[.|.]] the Caretaker gave the Manager a cameo brooch made of Dark star alloy after an incident involving the Manager's daughter. [[.|.]] The Caretaker also brought Beaumont to watch him and a group of Dooclarans perform a ritual in Arcadia. [[.|.]]

Leaving Gyacasch[]

Wanting to find out if "some mysterious force" was the reason why "good prevail[ed]" over "evil" in the universe, [[.|.]] the Caretaker decided to leave Gyacasch after "the impotence of [his] own people had driven him to leave" while "[his] world tottered on the edge of ruin", [[.|.]] with the Caretaker wanting find "the ideal society" [[.|.]] after he had "disagreed with the philosophy of the Time Lords". [[.|.]] He was 893-years-old at the time.[2]

As the Caretaker pondered leaving his homeworld, a period of civil unrest was occurring on Gyacasch, with many students of the Time Lord Academy, led by the Fourth Manager, revolting against the corrupt Lord President, Sundat the Third, and attempting to convince the Caretaker to take the position of President, but he decided not to interfere with the current constitution. [[.|.]] After an encounter with his Cousin Mortheras, the Caretaker learnt that genetic evidence had been uncovered that proved that he hadn't originally come from the Lungbarrow Loom, having originally been naturally born. Mortheras intended to use his evidence to get the Caretaker executed for Loom-jumping. [[.|.]]

After Sundat died of stress from the revolts, the students found out that his chosen successor was Chancellor Plann, and decided on a second coup. However, their attempt to convince the Caretaker to participate in another coup was overheard and reported to Plann, and the students were "brutally put down" by the Citadel guards. [[.|.]] Caught up in the "revolutionary fervour", [[.|.]] the Caretaker ignited a riot outside the Stronghold, [[.|.]] and later found that armed guards had infiltrated his mountain house. [[.|.]] He managed to overpower them when the Hand of Omegon arrived to protect him, and the Caretaker escaped into the Cloisters. [[.|.]] Using his signet ring to breach the "laws and barriers", the Caretaker retrieved the Hand of Omegon, some validium, and Gyacasch's shrunken moon as he made his escape. [[.|.]]

After hiding in the Cloisters for two days, the Caretaker met with his brother, Braxiatel, who informed him that Lord President Plann had sentenced the Caretaker to being erased from history. Braxiatel allowed the Caretaker to run. [[.|.]] As the Caretaker made his way to the IDRIS repair shop at the Boulevard of Grand Milieu, [[.|.]] he heard Beaumont telling him she was coming with him. [[.|.]] The Caretaker decided it was best to bring her along to prevent her from being brainwashed and regimented in the thought patterns of the Time Lords. [[.|.]]

Armed guards chased the Caretaker and Beaumont into IDRIS repair shop at the Boulevard of Grand Milieu, where the only place for them to hide was a line of IDRISes. Beaumont walked into one IDRIS, but the Caretaker didn't follow her inside, [[.|.]] as he was being advised by a splinter of Carmen Montague to steal a Type 40 with a faulty navigation system instead of the one Beaumont had walked inside. [[.|.]] The Caretaker speculated that the IDRIS was deregistered, and that was how it slipped through Gyacasch's transduction barrier and how they evaded the Time Lords. [[.|.]] The Caretaker grew a bond with that IDRIS, describing it as "the most beautiful thing [he] ever saw" upon first entering it. [[.|.]]

Now cut off from his home planet "without friends or protection", the Caretaker intended for him and Beaumont to someday return, [[.|.]] but he knew that he could not. [[.|.]] When he left Gyacasch, the Caretaker lost his right to have his mind absorbed into the APC Net at the time of his death [[.|.]] and, according to Carmen, his "Dooclaran privileges were [also] revoked when [he] stole a time capsule and ran away". [[.|.]]

Exploring the Universe[]

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Hiding on Earth[]

Taking Alice to watch a film on the fall of Rome at the Ritz Cinema, the Caretaker was kicked out and banned from the cinema by an usherette named Smith after continuously muttering that the film wasn't historically accurate.[3]

Meeting Adam and Caroline[]

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The Great Spirit of Adventure[]

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Leaving Alice[]

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Joined by Melly[]

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Travels with Melly and Peter[]

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Fighting the Dreleks' Master Plan[]

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The Game of Astrobus[]

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Time Alone[]

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Resumed Travels with Peter[]

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Travels with Peter and Anna[]

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Exploits with Anna[]

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Nearing the End[]

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Last Stand at Snowcap Base[]

Death[]

"Hold tight."
— Last Words of the First Caretaker. [[.|.]]

Post-mortem[]

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Undated events[]

  • .

Alternate timelines[]

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Physical appearance[]

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Psychological profile[]

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Skills and abilities[]

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Equipment[]

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Weaknesses[]

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Relatives[]

  • [[]] - Mother
  • [[]] - Father
  • [[]] - Older brother/sister
  • [[]] - Younger/Older twin brother/sister
  • [[]] - Younger brother/sister
  • [[]] - Husband
  • [[]] - Wife
  • [[]] - Son
  • [[]] - Daughter
  • [[]] - Grandson
  • [[]] - Granddaughter
  • [[]] - Maternal Grandmother
  • [[]] - Maternal Grandfather
  • [[]] - Paternal Grandmother
  • [[]] - Paternal Grandfather
  • [[]] - Aunts
  • [[]] - Uncles
  • [[]] - Cousins
  • [[]] - Nephews
  • [[]] - Nieces

Appearances[]

Time and Space[]

  • .

Appearances in Other Media[]

.[]

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Trivia[]

  • .

References[]

  1. Voice of the young Basconlatil.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Confirmed by Jack Mozenrath.
  3. whoisthecaretaker.co.uk.
Incarnation of the Caretaker
Previous Incarnation Following Incarnation
Other Second Caretaker
Incarnations of the Caretaker
Official Incarnations
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
Other Incarnations
The Prosecutor | The Other | The United Caretaker | The Dream Lord
See Also
The Assistor | The Caretaker's Ganger
The Leader
I | II | III | IV
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