The General

The General was the Time Lord military commander.

The first ten of the General's incarnations were female. The General's eleventh incarnation was male. (TV: Hell Bent) He led the War Council and its efforts to defend Gallifrey from the Dalek onslaught in the final days of the Last Great Time War. He had a testy relationship with the Doctor, thinking him a "mad fool".

In the aftermath of the Fall of Arcadia, he was informed of the War Doctor's appearance there. He was then alerted to a security breach in the Time Vaults, discovering that the Doctor had taken the Moment, the last weapon in the Omega Arsenal and that only he would dare use it.

He was later contacted by three incarnations of the Doctor, much to his displeasure, the War Doctor with the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor, who revealed to him their plan to save Gallifrey by freezing it before its destruction and shifting it to a pocket universe. The General was sceptical, shocked by the thought of being lost and forgotten in another universe and that the calculations would take centuries. The Doctors informed that they have recruited all their incarnations to help. With the Dalek fleet closing in, he soon gave the order and "all thirteen" Doctors performed the process together. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

When the Twelfth Doctor returned to Gallifrey, the General discussed the event with Rassilon and the High Council. He told Rassilon that the Doctor had the respect of his men as he was the one who won the Time War and had served with many of them. When Rassilon ordered the firing squad to kill the Doctor, the General protested, but made no move to stop them. The squad purposefully missed and sided with the Doctor. When military ships arrived to provide the Doctor with backup, the General stopped Rassilon from killing the Doctor, telling him "Lord President, with respect, get off his planet." The General then dropped his gun and stood at the Doctor's side against Rassilon. Rassilon was exiled from Gallifrey and the General informed the Doctor that Gallifrey was at "the end of the universe, give or take a few star systems" and as such, Rassilon may have nowhere to go. When the General continued to call Rassilon the President, the Doctor corrected him that he was the President now. The Doctor agreed to assist the High Council in learning the true identity of the Hybrid. To do this, he claimed that Clara Oswald had vital information and insisted she be extracted from the point of her death and brought to him on Gallifrey. The General facilitated this, but quickly discovered that the Doctor had merely lied in an extraordinary attempt to save Clara.

The General insisted that any attempt to prevent Clara’s death as an established historical event would have grave consequences for the timeline. Unperturbed, the Doctor shot the General after asking the incarnation he was in, causing his eleventh regeneration. The General quickly recovered after regenerating, returning to the form of a woman and partly relieved she no longer had to deal with the ego of a male incarnation. She continued to pursue the Doctor, but his escape through the Cloisters and theft of a TARDIS meant that he and Clara ultimately eluded her. (TV: Hell Bent)

Behind the scenes
In his first-seen incarnation, the General was played by Ken Bones, who also provided the Time Lord "Voice" asking the Question, "Doctor who?", in The Time of the Doctor. Although not explicitly confirmed, it can be inferred that the voice asking the Question was that of the General. Indeed, the subtitles on the Blu-Ray and DVD identify the voice as that of the General.

The General's eleventh regeneration in TV: Hell Bent marked the first time a gender swapped regeneration was shown on television. Michelle Gomez's was the first gender swapped Time Lord depicted on television, but her actual regeneration occurred off-screen.

Le Général