Sutekh

Sutekh, also known as Sutekh the Destroyer, was an Osiran who planned to destroy all life in the universe. He feared all forms of life which might one day challenge his hegemony, and so became the destroyer of all living things.

History
Like in the Egyptian myths on Earth, Sutekh was son of Geb, (AUDIO: Ozymandias) brother to Horus, (TV: Pyramids of Mars) and husband to their sister, Nephthys. (PROSE: The Sands of Time)

Sutekh was "head of security" for the Osirian Court. (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh) As recalled by the Fourth Doctor, Sutekh destroyed his home planet Phaester Osiris and subsequently left a "trail of havoc across half the galaxy". During this time, he was called many names, including the Typhonian Beast, Set, Sadok, and Satan. (TV: Pyramids of Mars) When the Great Houses threatened the Court after the destruction of the Eleven-Day Empire, Sutekh brought unconquerable armies of Mal'akh to the areas around the Mediterranean in the 15th century. This simultaneously distracted House agents and severely threatened a major historical focal point, forcing the Houses to recognise the Osirians' independence. In the treaty, he was granted the Faction Paradox shrine at Civita. However, Sutekh became jealous that Osiris' accomplishments civilising 660 worlds were being celebrated more than his own, (AUDIO: Coming to Dust) so he killed him. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years)

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) Among the planets where Sutekh and the Osirans fought was Youkali. (PROSE: Return of the Living Dad) The two armies fought a great battle in Egypt; at the end, Sutekh found his traitorous wife Nephthys and a heavily-wounded Horus in the Temple of Geb. Horus (in reality, just Eliza pretending to be Horus) begged Sutekh to finish the battle, complaining about being tired of fighting and Sutekh's boringness. Angered, Sutekh ripped out Horus' heart.

Elated at killing his opponent and winning the contest, Sutekh told Nephthys that he planned to erase Horus' name from the universe. However, 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.

On 16 October, 1764, Sutekh forced John Pennerton to direct the Society of Sigismondo di Rimini to declare war on Faction Paradox and seek out its members. Though the society had found no trace of Justine by 8 November, Sutekh felt an "intrusion" in Volanto. There 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; Finton died shortly thereafter.

Going to the Mediterranean, Sutekh found not Justine's timeship but the barge of Geb, who was investigating Corwyn Marne's claim that Sutekh had left for Earth. When confronted, Geb said that he'd found Sutekh's body on Mars, barely alive, and buried him in a pyramid while a proper prison was built. Angry and outraged, Sutekh attacked Geb and dumped him in the Temple of Geb, just in time to watch an earlier version of Sutekh 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. This 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. She then severed 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. This version of events was repeated in the official records and legends of Earth and throughout the galaxy. (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh)

The Fourth Doctor repeated this claim to Sarah Jane Smith, saying that 740 Osirans led by Horus had cornered and defeated Sutekh on Earth. Sarah recognised the name from the 740 gods recorded in the tomb of Thutmose III.

As both the Doctor and Professor Marcus Scarman would later discover, Sutekh was entombed but alive in a pyramid in Saqqara in Egypt. The Doctor claimed that Horus left Sutekh in the tomb for seven thousand years by 1911. The Eye of Horus on Mars beamed a signal to suppress Sutekh's powers and hold him prisoner. The tales of the Osirans were remembered in Egyptian mythology. Sutekh still retained a cult of followers, such as Ibrahim Namin. (TV: Pyramids of Mars)

In 1903, after receiving a wealth of information from the future, Grigori Rasputin foresaw, among other things, the coming of this Egyptian god. (AUDIO: The Wanderer)

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. 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 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 the Doctor's 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, thus effectively ageing him to death. The Doctor said he lived about seven thousand years. (TV: Pyramids of Mars)

Only the body of Sutekh was defeated by the Doctor. Years later, his consciousness found a way into a new body created for him using an Osirian flesh loom. (AUDIO: The Pyramid of Sutekh) He 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) He 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. In fact the Seventh Doctor tricked him and showed 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)

Sutekh later encountered the Fourth Doctor and Leela on the planet Drummond. Sutekh was using the Rene.net to control the populace to 'Kill the Doctor!' and to transform Drummond into the new home of the Osirans. (AUDIO: Kill the Doctor!, The Age of Sutekh)

Other references
When the Skith Leader scanned the Tenth Doctor's mind, Sutekh was among the alien creatures shown to him. (COMIC: The First)

Powers and abilities
Sutekh possessed immense power: he could change the course of history and destroy entire star systems. Even when he was trapped and his powers limited, he was able to contain the explosive force of gelignite from miles away, although this was difficult and could be easily disrupted by a simple distraction. He had telekinesis, enabling him to levitate the TARDIS key. The Fourth Doctor took Sarah Jane Smith to an alternate 1980, where the Earth had become a ruined and abandoned wasteland orbiting a dead star due to Sutekh's destruction. According to the Doctor, not even the Time Lords could stop Sutekh had he been released from his prison. (TV: Pyramids of Mars) Lolita 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)

He was incredibly powerful and easily able to defeat even a Time Lord. His powers became apparent when his eyes glowed green, and boasted that he could keep his victims alive for centuries in excruciating pain. Furthermore, 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 defences, (TV: Pyramids of Mars, AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh) and he could monitor progress several thousand miles away with the aid of Osiran computer technology. This included reanimating corpses for servants, as he did with Marcus Scarman. He 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. Sutekh was somewhat paranoid, fearing that all lifeforms might potentially rise up against him and therefore he destroyed all life wherever he found it. Despite this, he was extremely intelligent and patient. (TV: Pyramids of Mars)

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) He was also able to stop and reverse the materialisation of Mortega's timeship. (AUDIO: Body Politic) He threatened to hold Justine in torment, conscious, for centuries, peeling her nerves from her carcass and repeatedly burning and resurrecting all of her cells. (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh)

Behind the scenes

 * In ancient Egyptian mythology, Sutekh is one of the many names for Set, the god of the deserts.
 * When Pyramids of Mars came out on DVD, included in it was a pseudo documentary called "Oh Mummy!", which told the fictional account of how Sutekh landed the role in the story and his life afterwards.