The Face of Boe

Doctor Who - The New Series

The Face of Boe

Age: Unknown; billions of years old.

Occupation: Unknown, but apparently extremely wealthy.

Doctor: The Ninth Doctor, The Tenth Doctor.

Season One The Face of Boe is certainly one of the more unusual characters to appear in Doctor Who - and for a series that's featured screaming mutant space Nazis and egg-headed warriors that eat through the backs of their necks, that's saying something. The Face is literally a big head encased in a glass tank full of smoke, with tentacle-like hairs that end in mysterious pods. He is from The Isop Galaxy, which is where the old Who serial "The Web Planet" was based.

He was first seen in the year five billion aboard Platform One, a space station that travels the universe showing the galaxy's rich and famous various strange wonders. He was there, along with other strange creatures including Cassandra O'Brien, to watch Earth be consumed by its sun. However, while the guests mingled, tiny robotic spiders were unleashed on the station, killing the crew and turning off its sun shields. With the shields down, there was nothing to stop the station burning up in the ever-expanding star.

Luckily, the Doctor and Rose Tyler were on hand to save the day and unmask the culprit as Cassandra O'Brien. She had planned to hold the station hostage while simultaneously appearing to be one of the victims, but came a cropper when she was apparently killed by the rising temperatures in the station. The Face of Boe survived the attack and moved on...

Later in the first season, the Doctor and Rose travelled to a news satellite in the year 200,000 AD, where a younger Face of Boe was seen on a TV screen. According to the screen, "he" was pregnant with a child, Boemina. In the spin-off 'factual' book Monsters and Villains, series producer Russel T. Davies revealed that Boemina was one of six children who only lived for forty years each. Why and how the Face of Boe lived much longer is unknown.

Season Two The newly-regenerated Doctor and Rose next met the Face of Boe in the year five billion and twenty-three in New New York, a city on the planet of New Earth. The Doctor and Rose had only intended to visit, but The Face sent out a message to the Doctor's psychic paper (a blank sheet of paper on which the viewer will read whatever he is told is on it - or whatever he wants to see there) requesting a meeting in a nearby hospital.

There the Doctor met the Face's nurse, who told him that the Face was dying and, according to legend, before the Face can pass away he must deliver a message to a lonely god without a home. The Doctor recognised himself as the god in question and, after a brief but unpleasant adventure involving a revived Cassandra O'Brien, highly evolved feline nuns, diseased clones and an incredibly fat man, he managed to speak to the Face.

However, it turned out that watching the Doctor in action had given the Face of Boe a new lease of life. Speaking telepathically, he promised that he would tell the Doctor his secret the next time they met and teleported away.

Appearances First season: Appears in 1.02, "The End of the World" and 1.07, "The Long Game".

Second season: Appears in 2.01, "New Earth".

Third season: Appears in 3.03, "Gridlock".