| Sutekh | Non-valid sources | Appearances | Talk |
Sutekh was a powerful Osiran who desired to destroy all life in the universe so that no form of life could ever challenge his hegemony, believing his acts of destruction freed those he killed from the tyranny of hope and choice, instead delivering them with the certainty of death. He began his campaign by destroying his homeworld, Phaester Osiris, but he was imprisoned by his people and trapped inside a forcefield that paralysed him in place inside a pyramid in Egypt until he was freed by a cult of his followers in 1911, though he was quickly banished to a time corridor by the Fourth Doctor.
After being mistaken for a god by the humans of Earth, Sutekh was worshipped by the Egyptian culture, being named the "Typhonian Beast". Sutekh also held leadership of the Pantheon of Discord, specifically acting as the "God of Death" in his role of "god of all gods" and "father and mother and other" to the various deities in the Pantheon, with accounts claiming he evolved into his godhood after he managed to attach himself to the Doctor's TARDIS after being banished to the Time Vortex, though the same energies that empowered would prove to be his undoing when the Fifteenth Doctor separated him from the TARDIS's protection.
Titles
While his "one true name was" Sutekh, he was also known by a myriad of names and titles, (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).) including "the Destroyer", the "High One", "Set", "Satan", "Sadok", the "Tythonian Beast", (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).) "Setekh", (PROSE: Set Piece [+]Kate Orman, Virgin New Adventures (Virgin Books, 1995).) "Seth", (PROSE: The Sands of Time [+]Justin Richards, Virgin Missing Adventures (Virgin Books, 1996).) "Ssethiis", (PROSE: GodEngine [+]Craig Hinton, Virgin New Adventures (Virgin Books, 1996).) "the Jackal", (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice [+]Jayce Black, The Book of the Peace (Faction Paradox, 2018).) "the One Who Waits", (TV: The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).) "the Oldest One", (TV: The Devil's Chord [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).) and "Sithifer". (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
While Marcus Scarman referred to him as the "Lord of Death", (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).) Sutekh himself would later refer to himself as the "God of Death". (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).) He also described himself as "the snake coiling around the throat of the universe." (AUDIO: The Age of Sutekh [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.)
The remembrance tanks of Faction Paradox that Sutekh corrupted into the Tree of Filth gained a devout personality and reverence for him, calling him the "Great Destroyer", the "Pale Abomination", "He who turns all to dust in his wake", the "Great Lord", the "knife-hand of the highest court", the "poisoner of all waters", the "God of Corruption", the "bringer of the devouring winds", the "Warrior of Ra", the "defender of the sun that burns the desert dry", the "one who leaves ashes in his wake", "He who consumes serpents", and the "Lord of all that blights." (AUDIO: Coming to Dust [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2005).)
History
Early life
Sutekh was the son of Geb, (AUDIO: Ozymandias [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2009).) having been bred alongside Osiris to channel the power of Ra. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2006).) He was the husband of Nephthys, who was also his and Horus's sister. (PROSE: The Sands of Time [+]Justin Richards, Virgin Missing Adventures (Virgin Books, 1996).)
Sutekh became "head of security" for the Osirian Court, being its most fearsome and powerful warrior, (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2009).) the second and greatest of the "Three Divine Shields" who protected the sentient sun Ra (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2006).) from such threats as the serpents created by the Great Houses, (AUDIO: Coming to Dust [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2005).) such as Apep. (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice [+]Jayce Black, The Book of the Peace (Faction Paradox, 2018).) He eventually intimidated the Great Houses into making peace with the Osirians by releasing a vampiric army of Mal'akhs on the medieval Mediterranean basin, making a credible claim to the ability to upset the Structure of History in a major way. After they had served their purpose, he left his Mal'akh army behind. (AUDIO: Coming to Dust [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2005).)
Sutekh had a son named Anubis, and planted a fragment of his own mind inside his son's biodata for future use. (COMIC: Old Girl [+]Nick Abadzis, Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2016).) He also joined the Pantheon of Discord, eventually rising through the ranks to lead the group of gods. (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
At war with the universe
Sutekh ultimately killed Osiris (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years) when he grew jealous that his accomplishments civilising six-hundred-and-sixty worlds were being celebrated more than his own. (AUDIO: Coming to Dust [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2005).) Believing that he deserved to take over the throne of the Osirian Court, since it owed its survival to him, Sutekh made himself even more powerful than his fellow Osirians, taming the forces of the Outer Desert, of which even Ra was afraid, (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2006).) and making a bargain with the Kotturuh, who allowed him to carry their "Gift of Death" himself. (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times [+]Paul Lang, Doctor Who annual (Penguin Group, 2020).)
After Osiris was resurrected as Horus in the body of Cousin Eliza, Sutekh declared a time war against Horus for the Osirian throne, (AUDIO: Ozymandias [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2009).) destroying his home planet Phaester Osiris and subsequently leaving a "trail of havoc across half the galaxy", (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).) including on Youkali. (PROSE: Return of the Living Dad [+]Kate Orman, Virgin New Adventures (Virgin Books, 1996).)
Imprisonment
Pursued by the Osiran court, Sutekh took refuge on Zuliter, a planet that employed a sentient singularity named the Sivin as a defence mechanism. In a bid to buy time to escape, Sutekh charged the Sivin to give the Osirans a riddle that would lead them to him if they managed to solve it as he prepared to flee to Egypt on Earth, only for the plan to backfire when the Osirans broke through and chased him to Egypt. (PROSE: The Enigma of Sisterhood [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.)
Sutekh found himself leading his army against Horus in a great battle in Egypt, where he found Nephthys and a heavily-wounded Horus in the Temple of Geb, with Horus begging Sutekh to finish the battle, complaining about being tired of fighting and Sutekh's boringness. Angered, Sutekh ripped out Horus' heart, not knowing that Eliza had been pretending to be Horus.
Elated at killing his opponent and winning the contest, Sutekh told Nephthys that he planned to erase Horus' name from the universe, but she claimed that Faction Paradox would always remember and resist Sutekh's claim to the throne. Though Cousin Justine had gone into hiding, Sutekh read from Nephthys' mind that the Faction had allies in the 18th century, so he forced John Pennerton to direct the Society of Sigismondo di Rimini to declare war on Faction Paradox and seek out its members on 16 October 1764. Though the society had found no trace of Justine by 8 November, Sutekh felt an "intrusion" in Volanto, where he found Abelard Finton, who he tortured ruthlessly until he divulged that the timeship was in the Mediterranean Sea and Justine had returned to the Osirian Court. Sutekh then brought Finton to Pennerton and released them both from his control, with Finton dying shortly afterwards. Going to the Mediterranean, Sutekh found the barge of Geb, who was investigating Corwyn Marne's claim that Sutekh had left for Earth. When confronted, Geb said that he had found Sutekh's barely alive body buried in a pyramid on Mars. Angry and outraged, Sutekh attacked Geb and dumped him in the Temple of Geb, just in time to watch an earlier version of himself kill Horus.
Above the Osirian Court, Sutekh confronted the simulacrum copy of Justine, accompanied by an earlier version of Finton, in the Ship of a Billion Years. However, the simulacrum had been trained to resist Sutekh's mind control, and, when he opened a direct channel between their minds during his attack, she lashed out with her shadow-weapon, revealing herself to be the real Justine, hidden behind a bio-screen built by Anubis. (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2009).) The ensuing duel saw the two "wrestling in the oxidised dirt" of Mars, knocking the very world from its temporal foundations, making it "uncertain" and causing the existence of the native species of Martians to be reduced to a state of flux forever after. (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice [+]Jayce Black, The Book of the Peace (Faction Paradox, 2018).)
Ultimately, Horus succeeded in severing some of Sutekh's neural connections, dumped him on Mars, and called Geb to tell him to look there. At Sutekh's funeral, almost the entire Osirian Court came to pay its respects. Justine and Horus agreed to tell the Court that Sutekh had been cornered on Earth by Horus' seven-hundred-and-some fellow warriors, a claim that was repeated in the official records and legends of Earth and throughout the galaxy. (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2009).) However, in actuality, Sutekh had been entombed in a pyramid in Saqqara in Egypt, with the Eye of Horus on Mars beaming a signal to suppress Sutekh's powers and hold him prisoner. The tales of the Osirans were remembered in Egyptian mythology, and Sutekh still retained a cult of followers, such as Ibrahim Namin. (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).)
Freed by Scarman
In 1911, the archaeologist Professor Marcus Scarman excavated the inner chamber of the pyramid beneath which Sutekh was imprisoned, discovering Sutekh and thereby accidentally allowing him a chance of escape. After killing him, Sutekh controlled Scarman's corpse, using it and Osiran service robots to construct an Osiran war missile in an English priory aimed at the Eye of Horus on Mars. The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith were able to destroy the missile, but the Doctor fell under the psychic control of Sutekh's will as a result. He was made to take Scarman and the robots to Mars in his TARDIS. Despite the Doctor's attempt to stop them after surviving an attempt on his life by one of Sutekh's robots, Scarman destroyed the Eye and freed Sutekh. Hurrying back to Earth, the Doctor defeated Sutekh by delaying his trip in a time corridor to the priory by moving the corridor's threshold to the far future, with the intent that Sutekh would age to death. (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).)
Trapped in the Eternals' Void
However, Sutekh survived the time corridor by "stepping sideways" at the last moment, remaining trapped in a limbo state in the Void, alive and never ageing, but once more unable to move. However, the fragment of his mind planted in Anubis managed to take over his body and put into motion a plan to free Sutekh and remerge with him to recover his original body. While in the Void, Sutekh struck reluctant bargains with many of the other horrors banished there to have them follow him into the universe, to which, being a native of it, he was still more tethered than they.
After emerging back into the universe through the Circle of Transcendence, Sutekh spent some time hunting down two of the abominations with whom he had bargained: he destroyed the King Nocturne altogether and cast the Destroyer back into the Circle. In truth, expecting the Tenth Doctor, who was present on the Shining Horizon when Sutekh reemerged, to try and reverse the dimensional conduits to suck Sutekh back into the Void, Sutekh had deliberately "plugged" the Circle with the biomass of the Destroyer. Hence, when the Doctor tried to spring his trap, Sutekh redirected the energy towards himself, using it to rejuvenate his physical form.
Draining some of Anubis's psyche to stabilise the result, Sutekh merged back with Anubekh and returned to his full power. However, before he could destroy him, the Doctor addressed the other released gods, pointing out how Sutekh had already betrayed two of the deities he had bargained with in the Void, while also noting that so long as they existed in the physical realm, the gods counted as "life", and were thus the natural enemies of Sutekh. Sutekh then battled the released gods before focusing his attention on the Doctor. In the end, Dorothy Bell herself revealed her identity as the mortal incarnation of his own Hand of Sutekh to him. She used her abilities as the Hand to partially merge with Sutekh, trapping him in her embrace, and then pulled him back into the Void with her, giving up her own freedom for the universe and to save the Doctor from making the sacrifice in her place. (COMIC: Old Girl [+]Nick Abadzis, Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2016).) However, only the body of Sutekh was defeated. (AUDIO: The Pyramid of Sutekh [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.)
Rebuilding his body
When his consciousness found a way into a new body created for him using an Osirian flesh loom, (AUDIO: The Pyramid of Sutekh [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.) Sutekh escaped from Mars and travelled back in time to the reign of Hatshepsut, in order to coerce Tutmosis to usurp his mother's throne and start his reign of terror on the world. (AUDIO: The Eye of Horus [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.)
Sutekh thought he had destroyed the world by the time of the 21st century which surprised Russell Courtland who had predicted it. He went across the Earth devouring in his wake but left his worshippers till last. The Seventh Doctor tricked him by showing him the solar flare ravaged Earth in the 29th century. He went back in time to start over again, and this created an ouroboros loop. (AUDIO: The Tears of Isis [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.)
Sutekh would eventually escape the Ouroboros loop by mentally projecting himself to the colony world of Drummond, where he "aided" Rania Chundra in creating Rene.net. When the Fourth Doctor and Leela arrived, Sutekh used the Rene.net to influence the populace with a command to "kill the Doctor". (AUDIO: Kill the Doctor! [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.) Managing to take full control of the network, Sutekh used the minds linked to Rene.net to rewrite Drummond into New Phaester Osiris, but he was foiled again when Rania severed his mental connection to Drummond by taking her own life. (AUDIO: The Age of Sutekh [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.)
Working for Nephthys
Following another defeat, Sutekh found himself adrift in space without a body, though he noted that it was "not [for] the first time". However, he was quickly pulled into the realm of Neter-khertet and granted a new body by his sister-wife, Nephthys, with the assent of the other Osirians, in exchange for him acting as their agent. (WC: Sutekh the Heretic [+]Ian Winterton, Sutekh (Cutaway Comics, 2023).)
Using the Angels of Death
Banished to the Howling Void, Sutekh braved his way through the "darkness" and "pain" until he was able to contact the Doctor's TARDIS, latching onto the time machine after the Fourth Doctor tried to age him to death, and secretly followed the Doctor on their journeys throughout time and space, using his powers and the TARDIS's perception filter to spread his "Angels of Death" wherever and whenever the time machine landed, completely undetected by the Doctor, as Sutekh was pummelled with the energies of the Time Vortex and "evolved into [his] true godhood", (TV: Empire of Death [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).) becoming a Titan. (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Russell T Davies, Tales of the TARDIS (BBC iPlayer, 2024).)
Waiting patiently for the right time to strike, (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).) Sutekh became known as "the One Who Waits" to those who knew of him. (TV: The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023). , The Devil's Chord [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024)., The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).) The Toymaker found Sutekh hiding while running amok in the universe, but opted to leave him alone instead of challenging him to a game. (TV: The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).) Sutekh's hijacking of the TARDIS also began to become noticeable from a series of groans emitting from within the ship. (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023)., The Devil's Chord [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024)., Rogue [+]Kate Herron and Briony Redman, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024)., The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
As he became intrigued by the identity of Ruby Sunday's long-lost mother, (TV: Empire of Death [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).) Sutekh set a trap for the Fifteenth Doctor by implementing an Angel of Death called Susan Triad into the 21st century, basing her on information he had gleaned in the TARDIS on the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan Foreman, to tempt him into vulnerability when he and Ruby visited UNIT HQ in 2024. After briefly manifesting in their Time Window to taunt the Doctor, Sutekh manifested into physical form atop the TARDIS as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and her team watched on. (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
Completely unaffected by UNIT's attacks, Sutekh began spreading his dust of death throughout time and space, bringing death to everything in the universe. Now in full control of the TARDIS, Sutekh confronted the Doctor, Ruby and Mel Bush in the Time Window, explaining his survival and his plan and demanding answers about Ruby's mother, the one person who he could not see. However, the Doctor and his companions managed to escape in the Memory TARDIS and Sutekh began focusing his efforts on finding them and forcing the Doctor to reveal the identity of Ruby's mother. Eventually, Sutekh managed to find and take over Mel as she, the Doctor, and Ruby were using Roger ap Gwilliam's DNA database in the year 2046 to find the same answers.
Transported back to 2024, Ruby seemingly offered Sutekh their findings before she and the Doctor sprang into action, having set their own trap for him after realising that Mel had been compromised. As Ruby attached intelligent rope to Sutekh's collar, the Doctor used a whistle to take back control of the TARDIS, forcing Sutekh off of the top of his ship with a blast of energy from the Heart of the TARDIS. Attaching the other end of the rope to the TARDIS control console, the Doctor and Ruby dragged Sutekh through the Time Vortex, where he began undoing his dust of death as he tried to regain control of himself. Once life had been restored to the universe by "bring[ing] death to death", the Doctor regretfully cut the rope tying Sutekh to the TARDIS, sending him falling unprotected into the Time Vortex, where Sutekh burned up in a matter of moments, seemingly destroying him once and for all. (TV: Empire of Death [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
Other references
After his imprisonment, Sutekh was given the name of "the Red God" and was recognised, though reviled, in the cults of ancient Egypt as a god of evil. The Legend of Sutekh, passed down through generations of worshippers of Horus, claimed that Sutekh's worshippers were invariably "dissolute of heart" and that they could be recognised by the reddening of the whites of their eyes. (PROSE: Background [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.)
In 1903, after receiving a wealth of information from the future, Grigori Rasputin foresaw, among other things, the coming of "an Egyptian god". (AUDIO: The Wanderer [+]Richard Dinnick, The Companion Chronicles (Big Finish Productions, 2012).)
The Ninth Doctor believed Sutekh and his fellow Osirans, alongside the Dæmons, Euterpians and Time Lords, partook in the war that led to the destruction of the Aesirians. (COMIC: Hacked [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.)
When the Skith Leader scanned the Tenth Doctor's mind, Sutekh was among the alien creatures shown to him. (COMIC: The First [+]Daniel McDaid, DWM Comics (Panini Comics, 2007).)
In the course of his astral travels, William Burroughs once found himself in "an Egyptian court torn apart by the conflict between Horus and Sutekh". (PROSE: The Ugly Spirit [+]Error: Code 2 - no data stored in variables, cache or SMW.)
When the Toymaker told the Fourteenth Doctor of his decision to flee from the "One Who Waits", the Doctor reacted with confusion towards whom he was talking about, (TV: The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).) something the Toymaker found "hilarious". (PROSE: The Giggle [+]James Goss, adapted from The Giggle (Russell T Davies), 60th Anniversary Novels (Target Books, 2023).) While he cryptically told the Doctor it was "someone else's game" to face the One Who Waits, (TV: The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).) in his novelisation of his battle with the Doctor, the Toymaker promised the Doctor's inevitable encounter with the One Who Waits would be novelised as Doctor Who and the I'm Not Going to Tell You. (PROSE: The Giggle [+]James Goss, adapted from The Giggle (Russell T Davies), 60th Anniversary Novels (Target Books, 2023).)
Psychological profile
Personality
Sutekh held on to a fear that all lifeforms could rise up against him, with the paranoia leading to his decision to destroy all life wherever he found it, (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).) believing that "every living thing [was] an abomination" that he needed to "release" them into "blessed death", which he considered a good action, (TV: Empire of Death [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).) rejecting the claims that he was evil by simply seeing good and evil as matters of perspective. (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).)
When faced with the unknown, Sutekh would panic, fearful of something he did not understand and information that was denied to him, to the point that he would let his guard down when the answers he sought were within reach. (TV: Empire of Death [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
When speaking to the Tenth Doctor on the reasons for all his actions, Sutekh justified himself by claiming that evil and cruelty were inevitable in life, and that he was just taking everything to its logical end of becoming dust and darkness. Sutekh further claimed that he was liberating all life from having the terror of choice and the tyranny of hope to give them the certainty of death instead, therefore, in his mind, Sutekh was the good guy for ending the suffering of the universe, a logic that the Doctor noted was wrong in the end. (COMIC: Old Girl [+]Nick Abadzis, Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2016).)
He looked down upon those beneath him as a means to an end in his plans, even the Mal'akh that had enslaved and broken the wills of until they loved him. (AUDIO: Coming to Dust [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2005).) However, he treated the Doctor's TARDIS like a treasured toy, protecting it with his body whenever possible and petulantly telling the Doctor, who he mockingly called his "old friend", that it would never be his again. (TV: Empire of Death [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
Powers and abilities
Sutekh possessed such immense power that the Fourth Doctor feared that not even the Time Lords could stop him if he was in possession of his full powers. (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).) Lolita likewise said that if he became king of the Osirian Court, he would become the single greatest threat to life in the universe. (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2009).) Whenever he used his powers, his eyes glowed green, (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).) and he had the ability to blast beams of green energy from his eyes and hands to kill or disintegrate his enemies into dust. (COMIC: Old Girl [+]Nick Abadzis, Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2016).)
Even when he was trapped in stasis with his powers limited, Sutekh was able to contain the explosive force of gelignite from miles away, although he could be easily disrupted by a simple distraction. He had telekinesis, enabling him to levitate the TARDIS key. He boasted that he could keep his victims alive for centuries in excruciating pain, and his mental abilities allowed him to easily dominate others, making them puppets to his will. He also appeared to be able to telepathically read other beings, even those established to have psychic defenses, and he could monitor progress several thousand miles away with the aid of Osiran computer technology. He could project a mental image of himself anywhere, easily breaking through the defensive mechanisms of the Doctor's TARDIS to do so.
He was capable of reanimating corpses to be his servants, as he did with Marcus Scarman, and could focus his power through these servants, enabling them to burn people to death with a touch, and was able to destroy the Eye of Horus on Mars from Earth when Scarman was within a few metres of it. (TV: Pyramids of Mars [+]Stephen Harris, Doctor Who season 13 (BBC1, 1975).)
After emerging back into the universe, but before his original body was completely recovered, Sutekh was still capable of obliterating a whole planet with merely a hand gesture. He was powerful enough to easily destroy King Nocturne, a conceptual being, and demonstrated his skills as a warrior by overpowering a group of other god-like abominations from the Void itself. (COMIC: Old Girl [+]Nick Abadzis, Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2016).)
Despite other Osirians needing a barge to handle the heat of the star Ra, Sutekh could safely stand next to Ra without any protection. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2006).) He was also able to stop and reverse the materialisation of Mortega's timeship. (AUDIO: Body Politic [+]Lawrence Miles, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet Productions, 2008).) Even the Toymaker, who had bested other powerful beings with his own immense powers, chose to flee from Sutekh than challenge him, recognising him as the stronger of them. (TV: The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).)
Sutekh was extremely intelligent, with an immense knowledge of Osiran technology, time-travel, and other alien sciences. He was very charismatic and manipulative when he needed to be, capable of creating a long and complex plan of recovering his original body, have revenge on the Doctor, and tricking other god-like beings to ally with him before betraying them. (COMIC: Old Girl [+]Nick Abadzis, Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2016).)
Due to spending millennia traveling through the Time Vortex, Sutekh claimed his powers had grown even greater as he had "ascended to [his] true godhood". He became in touch with all dead things in existence, including dead skin, and could manifest his gift of death into a planet-wide "dust of death". Most of all, though, Sutekh became capable of controlling the TARDIS, connecting himself with the very framework of the vessel. He could also manifest into physical form, first as a spiralling twister of sand and orange particles and also take on the appearance of a large Jackal-like being. As the God of Death, he could also grant his harbingers the ability to spread the gift of death, enabling them to turn people to dust by just touching them. (TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 14 (BBC One and Disney+, 2024).)
Behind the scenes
- In real-life ancient Egyptian mythology, Sutekh is one of the many names for Set, the god of the deserts.
- Gabor Vernon and Malcolm Rennie were considered for the role of Sutekh.
- At Jon Culshaw's suggestion, The Box of Terrors [+]Lizzie Hopley, The Audio Novels (2023). was originally to feature Sutekh, alongside Omega, as a cataclysmic villain for the Doctors to face. However, Sutekh did not make it into the story, with Culshaw citing rights issues, so the Six was used instead.
External links
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