The Child (Doctor Who)

"I see that you know... so tell me! Who is my father? WHO IS THE MAN WHO CREATED GOD?! "

- The Child, demanding answers from the Doctor The Child is the true main antagonist of the Doctor Who Big Finish audio drama ''The Holy Terror. ''Initially introduced as the five year-old son of Lord Childeric, half-brother to the castle's reigning Emperor, the Child has apparently been transformed into a living god following a long period of cruel religious experimentation: raised in near-total silence from the moment of his birth, his separation from human language has supposedly allowed him to develop a divine mentality free of mortal self-doubt, granting him seemingly infinite power - and a mindset entirely divorced from all notions of mercy or empathy. However, it eventually becomes clear that the Child's nature and origins are far more unusual than Childeric has been led to believe.

He is voiced by Sam Kelly, who also voices Eugene Tacitus in the same audio play.

Past Lives, Past Deaths
Unknown to all, the Child is actually the son of Eugene Tacitus and he was originally born in a relatively normal dimension far outside the castle's pocket reality. Little is known of the Child's early life, for no records exist of this time and Eugene himself has all but forgotten it: however, from the continuous pattern of fathers hating sons occurring within the castle, it can be assumed that the aging writer came to resent his son as a reminder of his own past neuroses, slowly becoming more abusive towards him as time went on. Eventually, driven by what Eugene himself could only describe as insanity, he crept into his son's room one night and brutally stabbed his sleeping child to death.

Horrified but what he had done and unable to forgive himself, Eugene fled his world in a desperate attempt to forget his crime. Eventually, his travels led him to a pocket reality devoid of all life and all matter, in which he soon found himself imprisoned. It's never been established if Eugene subconsciously trapped himself in this dimension in an act of self-loathing or if some alien intelligence chose to punish him for his transgressions by incarcerating him within the confines of this world. Whatever the case, he could not leave. However, he soon found that he was able to warp the fabric of this reality at will, creating a world where he could remain in comfort, complete with people to keep him company: in the medieval castle that he had constructed, everything was ritualized, every behavior from the lowliest peasant to the Emperor himself predetermined by Eugene and enforced through strict laws. With the help of these rituals, Eugene was able to gradually drive away the memories of his time outside the castle, until he forgot that he'd ever been a part of it, or that he'd created it in the first place. Taking on the mantle of chief scribe, he went about serving the Emperors he'd created, content in his role as a functionary.

Unfortunately for Eugene, his crime was not so easily erased: whether given life by his jailers as further punishment or conjured up by the scribe's own subconscious in yet another display of self-loathing, Eugene's son soon reappeared in the castle, reincarnated as The Child.