Y is for Yana and Yaxley

A to Z Challenge - Y

The penultimate post - the second to last post in the A to Z challenge.

Y is for "You Are Not Alone"
Today's Doctor Who quote has two different (albeit related) meanings.  There are **spoilers** for season 3 of Doctor Who, but I'm assuming the Whovians have all already watched that.

Firstly: These were the last ever words of the Face of Boe, and come from the episode Gridlock.  According to legend (or at least the legend of New Earth). The Face of Boe would reveal his greatest secret to one like himself, a wanderer without a home, a lonely god, i.e. The Doctor.  His greatest secret was "You are not alone" which all made sense about 7 episodes later in the penultimate episode to the series finale (more on that in a bit).  The Face of Boe was a great big head in a jar, and believed to be billions of years old.  In The Last of the Time Lords (series 3) it's revealed that Jack Harkness was once known as the Face of Boe (he was a model on his home planet, or something like that) so he may be the original incarnation of the great big Face of Boe.  It's Doctor Who - these things can happen.  My favourite theory I've found  about the Jack/Boe relationship (written by fans on-line sharing ideas/stories/what-ifs)is that he was beheaded by the Headless Monks (from series 6) and that's why he's a head in a jar.  I enjoyed the Face of Boe - it was great having a character older than the Doctor in the series, and as for the link with Jack - I admit it, I squealed and screamed.  I'd love for Jack and/or the Face of Boe to reappear in a future episode so that this link can be more firmly established because it was never entirely confirmed.  Besides, more Jack is always good :)

Secondly (for the meaning of the quote) is the acronym for the quote: Yana, which is who the Face of Boe was warning the Doctor about.  Professor Yana was in the episode Utopia (series 3), trying to create a spaceship to transport the last of the humans to Utopia at the end of the world.  Only it turned out that Yana wasn't actually a mild mannered professor, he was the Master, another time lord and the Doctor's arch nemesis.  This was the Master's first appearance since the revival of the series and man was he creepy!  The Master regenerated, stole the TARDIS, travelled back in time to about 18 months before the Doctor first met Martha, set himself up as Harold Saxon (remember him from the S post?) and was elected as the British Prime Minister (all in the minute gap between the end of Utopia and the start of The Sound of Drums - time travel, remember?).  He then goes on to try and destroy the world, leading Martha to finally step up to the plate and save the day (hurray!).  It's complicated, it's time travel.  The Master is one of those characters we just can not get rid of, a bit like the Daleks.  He returned in David Tennant's last two episodes, and then again in series 8 with Peter Capaldi.  From the looks of the posters for series 9, the Master will be back again.  In New Who, the Master has (so far) been fantastically played by Derek Jacobi, John Simm and (**MAJOR SPOILER for Series 8**) Michelle Gomez.  Each one has been deliciously evil in their own way.  I only wish we could have had more of Derek Jacobi as the Master rather than just as Professor Yana.

Y is for Yaxley

The Death Eater Yaxley is today's Y - again, the only character I can find in the series who starts with a Y, and one I don't know much about.  So let's talk Death Eaters instead.  The Death Eaters are Voldermort's loyal followers, either because they enjoy the opportunity to torture and terrorise people, or because the genuinely hate "mudbloods" (muggle-born wizards) and muggles, and believe in the power of "pure blood", despite the fact that Voldermort himself had a muggle father (I don't think he shared that fact around a lot!).  It's hard to feel any empathy for the Death Eaters: like Bellatrix, most of them were two-dimensional characters who were just portrayed as the 'bad-guys'.  However, the Malfoys did wind up with some depth and redeeming qualities, in particular Draco (who I mentioned here) and his mother Narcissa who ended up betraying Voldermort in order to save her son. 

One day to go!