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Cloning (Unnatural Born Killers)

Thousands of cloned Sontarans. (COMIC: Unnatural Born Killers)

A clone was, usually, a genetic copy of another biological entity. Clones could be produced to be exact replicas with short lifespans, as the Fourth Doctor did for himself and that of Leela at the Bi-Al Foundation, (TV: The Invisible Enemy) or they could be clones of individual cells which were grown into a usable organism, as Cassandra O'Brien did for herself following the destruction of the skin taken from the front of her body, on Platform One. (TV: New Earth)

Uses of cloning[]

Military use[]

The Sontarans were a clone race, making each Sontaran almost identical to the other. (TV: The Invasion of Time, The Sontaran Stratagem)

Clones of Gallifrey were created during the War in Heaven against the Enemy and came to be known as Nine Gallifreys. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, The Book of the War)

The Dalek race propagated itself and its eternal war against reality through cloning. (AUDIO: The Mutant Phase) When new Dalek mutants were born, body parts that were deemed superfluous were removed, with the genetic material being used to breed new Dalek embryos. (PROSE: Dalek) In 2021, Leo Rugazzi imperfectly cloned the Reconnaissance Dalek. Retaining the memories of its past life, the Dalek seized control of Leo and had him clone a force of Daleks. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks) On Moldox, during the Last Great Time War, the Daleks cloned Dalek mutants for their paradigm of Temporal Weapon Daleks armed with Temporal Cannons. (PROSE: Engines of War) Following the war, Davros raised the New Dalek Empire, cloning its populace from the cells of his own body. (TV: The Stolen Earth)

As part of an attempt to convert Earth in the 26th century, the Cybermen of the "Early" CyberFaction harvested genetic material from captured humans in their conversion bases and began growing human clones that could be converted to effectively double the Cybermen’s numbers. (AUDIO: Machines) In an alternate timeline, an army of Cybermen, identical to the Cybusmen, launched a full-scale invasion of 24th century Sontar to acquire the Sontarans' cloning technology, with the intention of cloning and converting an endless number of Mondasians. The Tenth Doctor speculated that the Cybermen would then install void drives into Sontar to mobilise the planet and fill the universe with an infinite legion of Cybermen. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)

Espionage[]

Clone

Martha Jones with her clone. TV: The Poison Sky)

A clone of Martha Jones was made by the Sontarans to infiltrate the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce during the Sontaran invasion of Earth in the 2000s.[nb 1] The clone had a mental link with the real Martha and could access her memories. If the link was broken, the clone would most likely not survive. The Sontarans used many clones to try to stop the Tenth Doctor from interfering with the conversion of the Earth's atmosphere and the subsequent invasion. The Doctor broke the link between Martha and the clone, killing it, but before it died, Martha used the fact that it still had some of her memories to convince it to help them. The clone explained that the ATMOS gas was clone feed. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky)

Using blood samples taken from the Sixth Doctor in 2004, the Forge operative known as Nimrod created a multitude of clones in the form of the Sixth Doctor in order to discover the means of Time Lord regeneration. None of the clones could regenerate. They only had a one-in-ten chance of surviving birth and would not live very long afterwards. Nimrod had abandoned this project by the time of the Seventh Doctor's visit to the Forge's base in Dartmoor in 2008. (AUDIO: Project: Lazarus)

The Daleks had the technology to create duplicates of humanoids, employed in undercover work. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)

Labour force[]

Santa Claus used clones of himself to deliver presents on Christmas Eve. (PROSE: The Man Who (Nearly) Killed Christmas)

When the Wraiths abducted the Tenth Doctor and his companions, they created clones of their abductees. While straightforward for the humans, the process created a clone for each of the Doctor's preceding incarnations. When their base collapsed, the Wraiths managed to capture Cindy Wu. (COMIC: Breakfast at Tyranny's) The Red TARDIS brought her to ancient China and created 500 clones of her that served as a labour force for the Red Jade General. (COMIC: Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth) After the General had been defeated, Cindy let her clones loose in what she called the Wu Diaspora. She suspected that one of them would eventually become an ancestor of hers. (COMIC: Vortex Butterflies)

In the 22nd century, humans cloned Gangers from the Flesh as a workforce in industrial facilities. Most of these Gangers were just remotely controlled rather than independent entities, but some of these Gangers gained free will. Ganger technology continued in one form or another into the 52nd century. (TV: The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People)

Main article: Ganger

In the far future, clones of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart became hugely popular, not just for their musical talent but also used to perform menial duties. They were abandoned or thrown away after they became unfashionable. One clone time travelled to 1791 Vienna to save Mozart's life and give him immortality, creating an alternate timeline in which Mozart lived long enough to become a hack. However, the clones were still mistreated in this timeline since enough people remembered the good music Mozart had written. The Sixth Doctor negated this timeline by persuading Mozart to refuse the clone's offer and destroying some of the pages of Mozart's final symphony, thus limiting the scale of Mozart's reputation so that the only clones that would be created were those that were genuinely wanted rather than to be part of the fad. (AUDIO: My Own Private Wolfgang)

When Missy's "Master TARDIS" was swallowed by a planetoid-sized space borne entity, the leaking energies of the damaged ship turning the creature to stone. To retrieve her craft, Missy used a cloned labour force to dig through the ground. (AUDIO: The Belly of the Beast)

Other instances[]

After landing on the planet Ashtallah, the First Doctor attempted to clone Brenna to allow the Ashtallan race to reproduce but a direct clone proved non-viable, a new lifeform only being born when he mixed Brenna's genetic material with Sharlan's. (AUDIO: The Invention of Death)

Using DNA from the Fourth Doctor, a clone of the Second Doctor was produced. He believed that he was the Doctor, and even contained memories taken from the Doctor. However, he was in league with the enemies of the Doctor. The Fourth Doctor saved his life and he repaid him by helping return Hexford to its original place on Earth. Like the examples noted above, it was not believed to be able to last longer than a few months. (AUDIO: The Hexford Invasion, AUDIO: Survivors in Space)

In a hospital in Holby Space City, a Professor cloned himself, Iris Wildthyme, and PAND-R, then shrunk themselves and went on a "Fantastic Journey" inside Iris to cure her of a lurgy she likely caught from a sandwich from a dodgy motorway services while travelling in the solar system in the 30th century. The lurgy turned out to be a giant prawn. (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love)

A clone of Bernice Summerfield became President of Earth. (AUDIO: The Final Amendment)

Clones of the Three Who Rule were produced. (PROSE: Blood Harvest)

In June 2027, Ace told Henry Noone that Earth would have "new pandas" by 2040, suggesting that pandas had become extinct at some point in the early 21st century and were eventually brought back to life through the use of cloning. (AUDIO: A Death in the Family)

In 2040, efforts were made to repopulate Europe with cloned wolves. (PROSE: Culture War)

Davros created a clone of his younger self named Falkus on Azimuth. (AUDIO: Daleks Among Us)

Following the evolution of the Foxkin in the 40th century, they cloned the original human crew of their colony ship to give the humans a chance at life. (COMIC: The Twist)

In 4880, Professor Oksana Kilbracken developed a process of cloning on Earth. (AUDIO: Revenge of the Swarm)

In 5000, a short-lived clone replica of the Fourth Doctor and one of Leela were produced by Professor Marius and shrunken down to fight the Swarm inside the Doctor's brain. When the Swarm took control of Marius, he made a clone of Lowe to pursue them. These clones had lifespans of less than eleven minutes. (TV: The Invisible Enemy)

Professor Patrick Trethui cloned Vilgreth from the remains of a Titanthrope he had discovered. (AUDIO: Last of the Titans)

A planet of Rory Williams clones were populated from Rory's DNA. (COMIC: Planet of the Rorys)

Madame Karabraxos of the Bank of Karabraxos used clones of herself to staff important positions at the bank. When they failed, Karabraxos had the clones "fired", incinerating them. The Twelfth Doctor came into conflict with one of these clones, Ms Delphox, while robbing the bank. (TV: Time Heist)

Madame Kovarian used Melody Pond's embryonic DNA to create clones of Melody. The first seven clones were lost after the Eleventh Doctor's raid on Demons Run. Kovarian created at least four more clones who she raised into adulthood as assassins, to complete the job of permanently killing the Doctor. (AUDIO: The Lady in the Lake, The Furies)

On Kirith, the Grand Matriarch had clones of Ace, Raphael and Miríl created to attack the Seventh Doctor; she killed them when he refused to fight them. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Apocalypse)

By the year 5,000,000,023, Lady Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17 was served by Chip, a "force grown clone" with only a "half life", who she had modelled on her favourite pattern. Cassandra claimed that Chip was "not even a proper life form", an assessment which was disputed by the Tenth Doctor. Ultimately, Cassandra used a psychograft to possess Chip's dying body; content with her fate, Cassandra died in the arms of her younger self, having been taken to her own past by the Doctor. (TV: New Earth)

During the Planetary Relocation Incident, the Tenth Doctor was shot by a Dalek and began to regenerate. (TV: The Stolen Earth) Having "vanity issues", (TV: The Time of the Doctor) he used enough regenerative energy to heal himself but redirected the rest into his severed hand. When Donna Noble touched the hand, the regeneration energy merged with Donna's DNA and created a clone of the Tenth Doctor whose genetic code was spliced with Donna's and adopted some of her traits in addition to the Doctor's. (TV: Journey's End)

Using a sample of artron energy and a Gallifreyan biodata module, the Doctor's friend Plex repopulated his functionally extinct species via mass-cloning himself. (COMIC: The Promise)

From Melody Pond's DNA, Madame Kovarian cloned the Proto-Time Lords as backups to Melody's directive to kill the Doctor. (AUDIO: The Lady in the Lake, My Dinner with Andrew, The Furies)

Other references[]

The Aja'ib contained tales involving cloning. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)

In Pete's World, Angela Price suggested that Cybus Industries had perfected the science of human cloning to explain Ricky Smith's doppelganger, actually his parallel universe counterpart from N-Space. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)

Noting the shared resemblence between individual Graske, Mr Smith suggested that they were a clone species similar to the Sontarans. (TV: SJAF 1)

The Eleventh Doctor likened the process of restoring the universe from a single atom to cloning a body using a single cell. (TV: The Big Bang)

After witnessing what appeared to be the Eleventh Doctor shot dead by an astronaut at Lake Silencio on 22 April 2011, Amy Pond suggested that the deceased Doctor was "a clone or a duplicate or something." (TV: The Impossible Astronaut) In fact, the body was the Teselecta which had assumed his form while the real Doctor waited safely inside, miniaturised in a ploy to fake his death. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)

Footnotes[]

  1. The present day of Doctor Who's fourth series is not consistently dated, with TV: The Fires of Pompeii, TV: The Waters of Mars, and AUDIO: SOS setting the present of the 13 regular episodes in 2008 (heavily implied by TV: The Star Beast and TV: The Giggle as well), and PROSE: Beautiful Chaos setting them in about April to June 2009.
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