Doctor Omega (series)

Doctor Omega is an ad hoc franchise of prose and audio stories created by various publishers based on the titular character, created in 1906 by the French writer in the novel of the same name. Although the original novel predated Doctor Who by decade, the character came to be viewed in the modern age as a venue for Doctor Who pastiches.

Premise
The original Doctor Omega novel focused on the titular Doctor Omega, a mysterious inventor who took his neighbour Denis Borel and his handyman Fred on a trip to Mars in a ship he had constructed, the Cosmos or Excelsior depending on the edition, whose outer walls were constructed with a special material allowing it to repel Space and Time and thereby travel through the aether.

Later works featuring Doctor Omega altered the status quo in various way, often introducing new companions for the Doctor, such as the aeroplane pilot Amelia Midnite. In The Doctor Omega Chronicles, the Doctor no longer flies the spaceship Cosmos but a timeship of his own design called the Galopin (an allusion to the character's creator). In Doctor Omega's Parallel Adventures, meanwhile, Doctor Omega and Denis travel to parallel universes aboard a new ship, The Tuner, shaped on the outside to resemble a large boulder because "it is the one thing which would fit anywhere".

Origins
Galopin's Le Docteur Oméga was initially standalone, spawning as its only related work of fiction a serialised reworking of the original story, published in 1908-1909 under the alternative title of Seekers of the Unknown. However, in 2003, it was unearthed by Doctor Who historian and writer Jean-Marc Lofficier, who noticed that the character of Doctor Omega as depicted in the illustrations bore an uncanny resemblance to William Hartnell's First Doctor — with the plot itself also bearing some resemblance to the plot of a typical Doctor Who story. Lofficier consequently created an English version of Doctor Omega, half-translation and half-retelling, with a new cover designed by to evoke the classic 1973 cover of Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks. The book was released in 2003, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who, by Black Coat Publishing, with a foreword from Terrance Dicks. A more faithful, unabridged English translation would later be released by the similarly-named but distinct American publisher, Black Cat Publishing.

The primary intent behind the changes was to allow for the possibility that Doctor Omega was no human scientist, but rather an alias taken on by the actual First Doctor some time before the events of An Unearthly Child; Omega now mentioned offhand that he had a granddaughter, and noted that he was not the only one to have created a space-time vessel out of stellite, mentioning that "his people, from another… country", had created ships whose exteriors were made of stellite. The descriptions of two of the species of Martians encountered by Doctor Omega and Denis were also altered to suggest that one evolved into the Ice Warriors and the other into H. G. Wells' Martians; a suggestion was added in the text that Doctor Omega and Denis had travelled back several billion years as well as in space, thus retconning away Mars's depiction in the original text as still being full of life in 1905.

Later appearances
The character has since appeared regularly, from 2006 onwards, in the series of shared-universe short stories, edited by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier and which featured a variety of public-domain literary characters; one, The Dynamics of an Asteroid, was the work of notorious Doctor Who writer John Peel. A selection of these short stories were compiled in a standalone Doctor-Omega-focused anthology also published by Black Coat Press, Doctor Omega and the Shadowmen, in 2011. This book again sported a Target-esque cover.

In 2014, a four-disc audiobook of Doctor Omega and the Fantastic Adventure to Mars, based on the faithful American translation of Galopin's novel, was released by Explore Multimedia; it saw John Guilor, who had voiced the actual First Doctor the year prior in TV: The Day of the Doctor, take on the part of Doctor Omega.

Having written for Doctor Omega twice for Tales of the Shadowmen, veteran DWU writer John Peel wrote a full-cast audio drama starring the character titled The Silent Planet which was released by Who Dares Publishing in 2017 alongside a brief prequel comic, Galapagos Planet. Its premise saw Doctor Omega travelling sideways into other universes in an effort to escape "his own people", which was intentionally written to mimic the Doctor fleeing Gallifrey and the Time Lords. The story was advertised as being the first in a series called Doctor Omega's Parallel Adventures. However, further releases never materialised and instead Who Dares Publishing began releasing The Doctor Omega Chronicles, a series of novels featuring Doctor Omega, published by Who Dares Publishing from 2018. This series sought to distance itself from previous Doctor Omega projects that Peel had worked on, including his attempt at creating the audio series Doctor Omega's Parralel Adventures, by using a different Doctor Omega logo, and purging any implications that Doctor Omega was anything but human from marketing. As of two novels have been released in the series: The Strike of Midnite and The Tomb of Undying Khalyr.

Jean-Marc Lofficier's version of Doctor Omega returned in his Guardian of the Republic series for Hexacon Comics.

In 2021, Cole Hrusovsky planned to develop a full-cast Doctor Omega audio series for BBV Productions that would have introduced several further parallels with Doctor Who, such as a race of subterranean Earth Reptiles and the transformation of Professor Helvetius from the original novel into a Master- or Monk-like rival of Doctor Omega, as well as a new companion named Edmond. However, the plans were discontinued when Hrusovsky left BBV.

In 2022, Charles EP Murphy released the parody novel Sexy Steampunk Girls in an Exciting Adventure with Doctor Omega, Book 4 in his Sexy Steampunk Girls series. The title transparently homaged Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks. and the official summary began with the phrase "An adventure in time and space!". Murphy himself joked on Twitter about how releasing this book and a Faction Paradox short story within a few months of each other constituted him "planting [his] flag on the spitting-distance-of-Doctor-Who hill".

Acknowledgement in the DWU
Despite its plentiful behind-the-scenes connections to licensed Doctor Who media and in-story implications of being itself set in the DWU, references from Doctor Who to Doctor Omega have been scarce, barring the theory put forward by Lofficier and later by Who Dares Publishing's official website that the Galopin novel may indeed have been an influence on An Unearthly Child. However, an imaginary Doctor Omega TV series, serving as a counterpart to the place occupied in the 20th century TV landscape by Doctor Who itself, was mentioned in several Lethbridge-Stewart releases.

Doctor Omega's ship, the Cosmos, was included on the cover for Wild Thymes on the 22.

In 2021, Micah K. Spurling's novelisation of BBV's Republica has the Professor refer to getting back to "the Cosmos". Implicitly, this links the character (himself originally meant by BBV as a Seventh Doctor copy) to Doctor Omega.

In 2022, Helvetius first appeared within a licensed Doctor Who in Robert Shepherd's Faction Paradox story Marticide, along with a character that was implicitly Doctor Omega. In the story, a French scientist renamed "Godfather Cocoyte" has memories of scientifically implausible adventures on Mars with Fred and Denis. The story goes on to explain why Mars does not resemble the version seen in Doctor Omega.