Pierre Bruyère

Pierre Bruyère was a French explorer, originally known for exploring the Arctic.

In 1868, at the age of six, Bruyère regularly had dreams that consisted solely of the colour white. Sometimes the colour would be broken up by a crack. His mother and father took him to a doctor to try and understand why this was, however the doctor told Bruyère that they were just dreams and that they would 'go away'.

At the age of fifteen, his parents took him to an exhibition of the Arctic in his home city of Paris. Bruyère was now aware that he wasn't dreaming of the colour white, rather of the Arctic. He decided there and then that he was going to be an explorer and travel there, despite his parents' pessimism.

In June 1890, he addressed the International Geographical Congress in London and told them of his plans to reach the Arctic by balloon rather than the previously attempted and failed attempts by boat. The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones were present during his speech. The Doctor was not only impressed by the ingenuity of Bruyère's plan, but also was concerned that he was recorded dead in April 1890, meaning that Bruyère had somehow managed to miss his own death date.

The Doctor and Martha were accepted by Bruyère to be his travelling companions aboard the balloon. During their journey, the group met numerous problems and had to jettison all rations and equipment in order to keep the balloon afloat, however Bruyère refused to throw away his journal in which he made plenty of notes about his journey.

Things got tricky when the Doctor confronted the two of them about their temporal experiences. Martha was certain that their journey had only lasted a matter of weeks whereas Bruyère was adamant that it had been four or five months. According the Doctor, it had been years.

It became clear that they had been displaced in time and that numerous versions of Bruyère and his many companions had been placed in a constant time distortion, replaying the same moments over and over. This was a method of keeping the bodies fresh for the 'mysterious force' that had trapped them and who planned on feeding on them.

Upon being handed back his journal, Bruyère noted that his journal was filled with the same day, repeated over and over again. The force fed on Bruyère's companions before sending him back to the conference to find new ones, thus explaining his belated death. During this revelation, a mutated version of Bruyère climbed down from an alternate balloon journey and threatened to consume them.

Bruyère then questioned whether him wanting to explore the Arctic was his own decision or was a decision predestined. The Doctor and Martha managed to save Bruyère by allowing the monster to feed on their experiences and visits of other worlds. The monster indeed died and the time distortion was corrected. In the rewritten timeline, Bruyère worked at his parents' bakery and occasionally made pastries covered in white sugar or cream, envisaging pure whiteness as he did so. He was unaware that these were temporal flashbacks to his alternate time as an explorer. (PROSE: The Frozen Wastes)