Death's Head

Death's Head was a metallic life-form who worked as a "freelance peacekeeping agent" (effectively, a mercenary, bounty hunter and assassin, though he hated being called any of those things) in a number of dimensions and time zones. Death's Head described himself as a mechanoid, a designation not related to the Mechonoids, an enemy of the Daleks.

Death's Head did not take pleasure in killing, merely in being professional and financially astute, and possessed a rather pedantic personality. He was a habitual traveller between alternate realities, spending most of his career in universes other than the main one. At the time that he first encountered the Seventh Doctor, Death's Head had been enlarged to nine metres in height.

Biography
Death's Head was created as a cyborg body in a realm called Styrakos by Lupex and Pyra. An unknown party stole the body, programmed it with a “killer instinct” and dumped it on Scarvix, (COMIC: The Incomplete Death's Head) where Death's Head made a living as a bounty hunter. (COMIC: Death's Head!)

After some months, the Doctor transplanted Death's Head through a warp gate to a parallel universe of massive warring robots, where he was subjected to major restructuring surgery and replacement of living metal components, resulting in him being greatly enlarged. During the final battles of the war, he was caught in the gravitational well of a collapsing planet and flung into the Time Vortex. (COMIC: The Incomplete Death's Head)

While travelling through the Time Vortex, Death's Head collided with the Doctor's TARDIS, forcing both to materialise. At first, Death's Head intended to kill the Seventh Doctor, but was shot with a Tissue Compression Eliminator and returned to his original size apparently uninjured. Wishing to return to his own time, Death's Head let the Doctor lure himself into the TARDIS, from where the Doctor sent the mechanoid through time and space to the planet Earth in the year 8162. (COMIC: The Crossroads of Time)

After an encounter with Dragon's Claws (COMIC: Watch Out – Dragon's Claws Here's Death's Head!), Death's Head returned to Scarvix where he once again set up his bounty hunting business. (COMIC: Death's Head Revisited)

He later had an adventure with met up with Keepsake, a salvage dealer that had once crossed the Seventh Doctor's path, and Bahlia. (COMIC: Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling!)

Death's Head later attempted to claim the price put on the Doctor's head by Josiah W. Dogbolter, using a prototype time machine to track him down. However, Dogbolter meant to double-cross the mechanoid, hiding a nuclear device in the time travel unit to kill both him and the Doctor. The Doctor saved Death's Head from the bomb and in return the mechanoid decided not to complete the contract on the Time Lord, this time. (COMIC: Time Bomb!) On a different occasion, Death's Head, while counting money, raised his glass in acknowledgement to the Doctor at Bonjaxx's party. When a drunk Beep the Meep started a fight, Death's Head happily joined in. (COMIC: Party Animals) On the way out of the party, Death's Head was attacked by Dogbolter's old servant Hob but was saved by teaming up with his own future self. He attempted to kill his future self, but the Doctor stopped him with a modified TCE. The Doctor erased the memory of this encounter from Death's Head and returned him to the party. (COMIC: The End... Yes?)

Death's Head II
At some point, a cyborg from the year 2020 programmed with 105 "personalities" by Doctor Necker killed Death's Head and assimilated his memories, rather than just his personality. This allowed the cyborg, now known as Death's Head II, to break free from Necker's control and continue on his adventures, where he met Tuck.

Eventually the two suddenly materialised on Maruthea, where they came across the Death's Head Interactive Archive. Death's Head II was implanted into the archive, forced to re-experience his past adventures and interact with a virtual representation of the original Death's Head. Tuck was captured by Hob and forced to watch the archive. However Death's Head II was able to return to his body from cyberspace, rescue Tuck, and stop Hob from killing the original Death's Head. When the original tried to kill his future self, the Doctor incapacitated him with a modified TCE. He revealed he was the one who took Death's Head to the "robot universe", and that he had transported Death's Head II and Tuck to Maruthea. As Death's Head II and Tuck left, he wiped the original's memory of the encounter with his future self and returned him to the party. (COMIC: The Incomplete Death's Head)

Behind the scenes

 * Death's Head was the lead character of a comic book published by Marvel UK which had a couple of crossovers with Marvel UK's Doctor Who comic strip. He also appeared in the pages of DWM. The practical upshot is that the Doctor is a part of the wider Marvel Universe. It's mostly a matte of logical inference — and therefore tangential — but there is one fairly direct scene.  In the Doctor's only appearance in Death's Head (1988), he drops Death's Head off on top of the .  In the next issue, Death's Head is involved in an adventure with the .  Thus there is a direct and unmistakable link between the Doctor and . Some Marvel scholars have therefore assigned the Doctor to, but other Marvel Universe alternatives are possible.
 * The Doctor’s universe is officially numbered . Also related is, which takes place in the year 8162. The Doctor sent and stranded Death’s Head here in COMIC: The Crossroads of Time. Keepsake is presumably from this universe as he met Death’s Head in 8162; Josiah W. Dogbolter and Hob may also be from this universe as not only do they live in 8162 but they were able to meet with Death’s Head while he was not in possession of interdimensional/time travel technology.
 * Strangely enough, Death’s Head also encountered the group known as Dragon's Claws in Earth-5555, from (again set in 8162). However, Dragon’s Claws never interacted with the Doctor or anyone related to him.


 * One of the crossovers between the DWU and Death's Head doesn't involve the Doctor at all, but rather a character named Keepsake who had originated in Doctor Who Magazine.
 * The character of Death's Head has had three major iterations. — that is, the star of Death's Head (1988) — is the one that's had the greatest interaction with the Doctor. That said, there is a very tenuous connection between the Doctor and the second version of the character implied in the pages of The Incomplete Death's Head, a series that mostly just reprinted Death's Head (1988). Death’s Head II and his partner Tuck were led to Maruthea by a transformed Hob, in an attempt to find his old master, Josiah W. Dogbolter. However, Death's Head 3.0 — seen in mainstream Marvel US comics — has nothing to do with the DWU.