The Doctor (Doctor Who)
Character biography
The Doctor's subsequent childhood on Gallifrey has been little described. In "Hell Bent" it is revealed that he was a high-born Gallifreyan. In The Time Monster, the Doctor says he grew up in a house on a mountainside, and talks about a hermit who lived under a tree behind the house and inspired the Doctor when he was depressed. He is later reunited with this former mentor, now on Earth posing as the abbot K'anpo Rimpoche, in Planet of the Spiders. In "The Girl In The Fireplace", Madame de Pompadour, who psychically linked with his memories, claimed that the Doctor experienced a very lonely childhood. An elderly woman on Gallifrey died and was shrouded in veils and surrounded by flies, giving the Doctor recurring nightmares which the confession dial in "Heaven Sent" would later visualise to torment him. In "Listen", it is revealed the Doctor as a child often slept alone in a barn in The Drylands (a desert region outside the city capital), was withdrawn from other children, and was cared for by guardian figures who privately doubted the child's ability as an eventual Time Lord. Through the dialogue, it is suggested that several Gallifreyan children were pressured into joining the army, a path which did not sit right with the Doctor's pacifist beliefs, and as a result he wished to enroll into the Time Lord Academy instead.
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