Goth

Gothaparduskerialldrapolatkh (or Goth for short) was a Time Lord politician and occasional agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency. As Lord Chancellor, he became a pawn of.

Early life
Like all Time Lords, Goth was taken from his family at the age of eight for the selection process in the Drylands. Staring into the Untempered Schism as part of a Time Lord initiation rite, Goth was driven mad by what he saw in the Schism.

Goth was a member of the Prydonian Chapter, (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) and had a brother named Rath, who went on to sit on the High Council. (PROSE: Blood Harvest)

Involvement in the Second Doctor's trial
By a number of sources, Goth was the same individual as the similar-looking Time Lord who presided over the court which put the Second Doctor on trial following the War Games affair, (PROSE: Future Imperfect, The Legacy of Gallifrey) although other accounts suggested the leader of the Court had instead been the President of the High Council. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, The Three Doctors, World Game) These miscellaneous accounts, however, differed on the details of how and why Goth purportedly came to fill this role.

As a high-ranking C.I.A. agent
By one of these accounts, Goth was a member of the Celestial Intervention Agency. While on Gallifrey, the First Doctor witnessed Goth give a C.I.A. sentencing; he was already in the incarnation the Doctor would encounter subsequently, which was his thirteenth. Later, on behalf of the CIA, Goth masqueraded as the fictional character Lemuel Gulliver in the Land of Fiction to monitor the Second Doctor and get his help in the First Omega Crisis. (PROSE: Future Imperfect)

As one of the Three
Another account indicated that as recorded in the Scrolls of Gallifrey, Goth was an ordinary Prydonian Councillor in the High Council of Pandad IV at the time of the trial. Pandad would partner Goth with fellow Councillor Adelphi and the Chancellor Socra to form a Tribunal known as "the Three". (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey) Goth continued to meet with the Three in secret at a vast desolate space station which was their base. With them, Goth was involved in the decision of sending the Third Doctor to Peladon. (PROSE: Legacy)

According to the Scrolls, at the time of the trial, the position of Chancellor actually belonged to the Third Time Lord, Socra. According to that account, Goth was named Chancellor some time after the Third Doctor defeated Omega as a consequence of the Rani's giant mice having eaten preceding Chancellor Socra, on top of inducing the President's regeneration and also eating his cat. (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey)

As High Chancellor
In contrast to the aforementioned account which suggested that Goth was not yet High Chancellor when he took part in the trial, (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey) one account, without naming him, claimed that the leader of the Doctor's trial was "the High Chancellor" by then. (PROSE: Save Yourself)

As a Tribune
One account suggested that Goth was involved in the Time Lords' deliberations on what to do with the War Lord's captured, mentally-programmed soldiers in the aftermath of the trial, holding the rank of Tribune; it did not specifically identify him as the leader of the Doctor's trial. As documented in this account, Goth argued that some of the time-displaced specimens should simply be destroyed rather than returned to their own time; however, he was overruled. This decision wound up causing the death of Coloth when he was gruesomely murdered by Ossu, one of the returned soldiers, whose head was still full of mental programming urging him to kill. (PROSE: War Crimes)

Deal with the Master
Travelling to the planet Tersurus, Chancellor Goth found, who was now at the end of his regeneration cycle and physically little more than a corpse. (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks, AUDIO: The Two Masters) According to one account, Goth had been alerted by the temporal trace of the Master's TARDIS, which Susan Foreman had briefly allowed to become detectable to Gallifrey again so that the previous owner would be found. (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks) By another account, the Chancellor picked up a signal sent to Gallifrey by a future incarnation of the Master who had deliberately attacked his younger self to an extent that the Cult of the Heretic would believe him dead. (AUDIO: The Two Masters) In any case, Goth, having been told by the Lord President that he did not intend to name him as his successor, the Chancellor instead entered into an uneasy alliance with the Master, who promised him the presidency in exchange for helping to kill the Fourth Doctor. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)

After learning the Master's plan, Goth begged him to alter it so as to make another Time Lord than the Doctor the scapegoat of the assassination, as he believed that the Doctor would find some way to derail the scheme even though it seemed foolproof in every other respect. However, the Master would not listen and the plan moved forward with the Doctor involved. (PROSE: The Secret Diary of the Master) Goth subsequently assassinated the President before he could announce his successor, setting up the Doctor as an unwitting decoy assassin. The result should have been an unopposed election for the office. However, the Doctor announced his own candidacy to buy himself time to investigate.

Inside the Matrix, Goth fought the Doctor, initially using his knowledge of the Matrix's workings to his advantage. The Doctor soon gained the upper hand, however, and the infuriated Master tried to overload the Matrix by sending a massive energy spike through Goth's brain. The Doctor escaped from the Matrix in time, but the spike had fatally damaged Goth's brain. The Doctor found Goth and the seemingly dead (but actually self-sedated) Master not long after. The dying Chancellor told the Doctor how he and the Master had come to be allies, and why he wanted to kill the previous President.

Goth died shortly afterwards, and it was decided by to cover up the actual truth of his death. He decided on telling the population that "Chancellor Goth tracked [the Master] down and killed him, unfortunately perishing himself in the exchange of fire". (TV: The Deadly Assassin)

Appearance
Goth was tall and handsome and looked especially impressive when in his ceremonial Prydonian robes. He had an impassive face that did not betray his thoughts or feelings. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin)

Behind the scenes

 * Actor Bernard Horsfall had played both Lemuel Gulliver in The Mind Robber and an unnamed Time Lord who presided over the Second Doctor's trial in The War Games. Future Imperfect stated both these individuals to have been Goth himself, in the former case wearing a disguise as part of his CIA work. The Legacy of Gallifrey concurred on the Time Lord in The War Games having been Goth, though it made no mention of his having been a CIA agent; it is instead Socra, another member of the tribunal of three, who is the CIA connection as far as 1985 Gary Russell was concerned. Other sources have given different identities for the War Games Time Lord.
 * Goth's full name of Gothaparduskerialldrapolatkh was given in the short story War Crimes.
 * According to a scene cut from The Dark Path, and later published in the charity anthology Perfect Timing, Goth was the Time Lord "politician" who sent Ailla to spy on Koschei, a betrayal which contributed to his turning renegade.