Special Executive

The Special Executive (conversationally contracted to Special Exec) was a mercenary group of parahumans who operated across time, as well as the multiverse, and were often contracted by the High Council.

In Gallifrey's distant past, the group assisted the Time Lords agaist the Order of the Black Sun. (COMIC: 4-D War) Although their involvement retroactively caused the future conflict. (COMIC: Black Sun Rising)

At some point they had an encounter with Captain Britain when they were hired to capture him by Opal Luna Saturnyne. (COMIC: Executive Action) The team later assisted Captain Britain against The Fury but decided to leave after several of their members were killed in the conflict. (COMIC: But They Never Really Die)

Over the years the group shared many of its members with the Technet team, and it was revealed that the Special Executive had travelled back in time to recruit members of Technet. (COMIC: Alarms and Excursions) More members of Technet joined at a later date after turning against their leader Gatecrasher. (COMIC: Come One and All to the Ugly Bug-Eyed Monster Ball)

Early years
Prior to the Special Executive being formed, Captain Britain was imprisoned by members of Gatecrasher's Technet, including Fascination and Thug, and mistakenly identified them as the Special Executive team - led by Wardog - who he had previously encountered. However, the group informed him that for them the encounter was in their future, and that Wardog wouldn't be whelped for another hundred years and Cobweb was elsewhere in the galaxy. (COMIC: Sid's Story)



An early version of the team consisted of an elderly Leader, as well as Zeitgeist, Cobweb, Legion, Numbers, Havanner and Oxo. The Leader plotted to turn Gatecrasher's Technet against her and to have Fascination join the team three centuries early. However, while Paradok, Ferro, Thug, Ringtoss and Pandora left Technet to join the Special Executive, Fascination and Gatecrasher's pet lizard Yap remained loyal to her. The Leader disguised himself as the Despot of Kandahar and poisoned Gatecrasher with ten thousand parasitic eggs in the hope that Fascination would be the one to retrieve the mystic herb to cure her, where he would attempt to recruit her, however Gatecrasher sought the help of Captain Britain instead. Cobweb informed the Leader that his plan had failed as he couldn't alter history. (COMIC: Alarms and Excursions)

Exploits on Gallifrey
In the early days of the Time Lords, the Special Executive was hired by Gallifrey to retrieve the assassin Fenris. Wardog, alongside Time Lady Rema-Du, did the retrieval, and Viridian the Brainfeeler scanned Fenris' mind to identify his employers as the Order of the Black Sun. At that moment, agents of the Order attacked; Viridian was killed and Wardog had his left arm blown off. (COMIC: 4-D War)

Ten years later, the Executive — Wardog, Zeitgeist, Cobweb and Millenium — escorted Rema-Du to a trade negotiation that involved the Sontarans and a third party. The third party turned out to be the Order from before they declared war on Gallifrey. The Sontaran ambassador Brilox wiped Millenium's mind with a psy-snare and brainwashed her into murder the Black Sun Elder. Wardog killed her in a failed attempt to stop the murder — and because the Executive were employed by the Time Lords, the Order of the Black Sun believed this to be a deliberate assault and declared war. (COMIC: Black Sun Rising)

Later, Captain Britain recalled an encounter with the Special Executive during a conversation with his wife. (COMIC: Myth, Memory and Legend)

Behind the scenes

 * Alan Moore, their creator, did not write any further Doctor Who strips, preventing him from using most of the material he had planned for the Executive. He went on to use them in the Captain Britain strip of Marvel UK's The Daredevils — one of multiple crossovers between Marvel Comics and Doctor Who by the UK branch. They made two subsequent cameos after Alan Moore finished writing Captain Britain, one in Captain Britain Monthly, and one in Marvel's Excalibur, the former showing that Wardog was not the first leader of the Executive.
 * Moore discussed the Executive's creative history in the article about: the special executive!.
 * Lance Parkin's short story Executive Action, originally published the charity anthology Walking in Eternity, explained that the parahumans of the Special Executive were the result of Rassilon's first experiments with Looms, and Rassilon formed the Special Executive to do the Time Lords' "dirty jobs". Later, when Rassilon ordered a purge of the Womb-born (as seen in Cold Fusion), the Special Executive fled Gallifrey and became an independent team.
 * This backstory has been accepted by some Marvel fans and was referenced in the Faction Paradox short story Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, where "the first parahuman brigades" are listed among other elements from Rassilon's early reign.
 * Marvel has also acknowledged the information in their official handbooks, with the entry for the character Saturnyne in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #10 (2009) mentioning that she "hired Gallifreyan parahuman interdimensional mercenaries, the Special Executive"
 * The entry for the Technet (a rival team to the Special Executive which included some of their members) in X-Men: Phoenix Force Handbook #1 (2010) explicitly identifying said members as "loom-born Gallifreyans."
 * Daniel O'Mahony's A Rag and a Bone, published in the 2003 fanzine Myth Makers Presents: Essentials, mentions "Dawn Brigades of parahumans" fighting "cat people" in Gallifrey's past. The story features a dog-faced parahuman in "Gallifreyan scarlet" as a veteran of Gallifrey's First Time War and an assistant of Sabbath.