Pythia of Gallifrey

Pythia is a fictional character in the extended universe of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. In the backstory of the programme, she was the dictatorial ruler of the original tribes of Gallifrey, and was overthrown by Rassilon. Rassilon led a revolution against the Pythia, eventually causing her to kill herself and send her followers to the planet Karn. However, before she died she cursed Rassilon and all future Time Lords to sterility.

Spin-off Media

Pythia is most thoroughly discussed in "The New Adventures", a series of licensed spin-off books, in particular the Virgin New Adventures and Virgin Missing Adventures novels and, to a lesser degree of consistency, their successors, the BBC Books Doctor Who novels. Due to Virgin's low print runs, their general non-availability outside of Britain, and the fact that the vision has never been translated to screen, their influence is uneven within the global Doctor Who fan community.

The Virgin novels, and by extension the BBC novels, took heavily from the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan" devised by former Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel, which was supposed to explain the Doctor's origins and his ties to Gallifrey's ancient history. Elements of the Masterplan were supposed to be revealed over the course of Cartmel's tenure on the series, but ultimately, as the programme ceased production in 1989, only hints of it surfaced in Seasons 25 and 26 and were never made explicit.