Father Kreiner

Father Kreiner was a title used by Fitz Kreiner during a period of his life, separate from his adventures as the Eighth Doctor's companion, where he was a member of Faction Paradox.

Separation from the Doctor
When Coldicott summoned the Eighth Doctor and Fitz to Earth in 1996, the Doctor left Fitz in Geneva while he went to investigate a lead in Saudi Arabia, and UNISYC locked Fitz in a building for his "own protection". After he spent a week in isolation, Fitz's guards were attacked by Remote clad in smooth body armour, and one of them sprayed him with the Cold. He spent centuries drifting in and out of consciousness in the Cold.

Finally, Fitz was rescued by Faction Paradox in 2593 on the planet Ordifica, (PROSE: Interference - Book One) a Remote colony bombarded by Faction Paradox propaganda. (PROSE: Interference - Book One, The Book of the War) In 2594, Fitz sceptically allowed Mother Mathara to initiate him into the lowest ranks of the Faction, and she gave him a Remote receiver. (PROSE: Interference - Book One) The Great Houses perceived Ordifica as a threat, however, and in the sixth year of the War in Heaven, (PROSE: Crimes Against History) the Second Wave destroyed it by "mothballing" the planet, encysting it with Highest Entropy Matter (PROSE: The Book of the War) in the year 2596. Fitz was among the 2000 refugees evacuated in the Justinian just beforehand. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)

The Faction took Fitz and the other survivors back in time to a new home. While Fitz hoped that they were going back to 20th century Earth so he could reunite with the Doctor, instead they were sent to Anathema in 1799. While on Anathema, his exposure to media through his Remote receiver began to transform him, changing his DNA: for instance, he became sterile. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)

As Father Kreiner
While on Anathema, Fitz Kreiner contemplated suicide. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two) However, the Faction elders were increasingly seeing the Remote colonies as a waste of good personnel, and they sought to recruit their most notable Remote troops to become full members of the Faction. As a result, in the eighth year of the War in Heaven, (PROSE: Crimes Against History) Mother Mathara promoted Kreiner from Anathema to the Eleven-Day Empire. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two, Crimes Against History)

Before Kreiner left Anathema, he placed a copy of his memories into a Remembrance Tank, which created a replica of him out of biomass. This was the first in many generations of re-rememberings over 500 years, resulting in Kode, who would later go on to resume Fitz's journey as the Eighth Doctor's companion. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)

In the Eleven-Day Empire, he quickly rose through the ranks of the Faction. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two, Crimes Against History) During one of his initiations, a one-armed shadow – or rather, a shadow with a shriveled arm – appeared among the loa. The figure showed Fitz his true destiny: "laying screaming in the dirt of a faraway planet as something huge and ancient started to eat him alive." (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)

Twenty years after leaving Anathema, Kreiner was appointed to lead a mobile Remote group with its own stolen warship. His mission was to execute terrorist and guerilla operations to damage both sides in the War. (PROSE: Crimes Against History) During his time working as an agent for the Faction, he hunted and killed many renegade Time Lords, including the Rani and the Master, though one or more of these were clones. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two) However, as the Remote were for the most part left to themselves, by the War's 41st year Kreiner was totally cut off from the rest of Faction Paradox, and his timeline slipped out of sync with the other Wartime powers. Over 1000 years passed, and Kreiner became medically dependent on his Remote bio-armour, kept alive only by machine parts and chemicals. (PROSE: Crimes Against History)

Finally, Kreiner's warship crashed on Dust, and his troops set up a colony called Anathema II. This brought them into conflict with the local human settlement on the planet, where the Third Doctor and Sarah-Jane Smith had recently arrived to witness I.M. Foreman's Travelling Show. Sensing the potential opportunity, Mathara also arrived with a Faction Paradox warship from the War's 50th year, two years (PROSE: Crimes Against History) after Qixotl's auction of the Relic, (PROSE: Alien Bodies, Crimes Against History)

Kreiner planned to use the technology from the Travelling Show to take his troops off the planet again, but he was surprised when he meets the Third Doctor. He bitterly confronted the Doctor over abandoning him in his relative future, and he offered an ultimatum: surrender the Travelling Show and his life, or the Remote would slaughter the townsfolk.

However, before the Remote could attack, I.M. Foreman unleashed Number Thirteen, a monstrous life force which devoured most of the Remote soldiers. One of its tendrils touched Father Kreiner's arm, sucking out its biodata and giving it a shrivelled, shrink-wrapped appearance. Kreiner tried to escape by grabbing onto the Doctor's TARDIS, but in reality it was the Travelling Show, which had adopted the TARDIS' form. Kreiner was flung into the Time Vortex, where his armour kept him alive and in one piece. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)

In the Vortex
Some time after losing Fitz on Earth, the Eighth Doctor returned to Foreman's World and asked Foreman what happened to the Remote warrior he remembered from his third incarnation. She explained that when she was building a bottle universe, she vacuumed the Father out of the Vortex and put him in the bottle Vortex. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)

Within one such bottle universe inhabited by Christine Summerfield, "the Horror" was a gestalt intelligence formed by all the sentient entities who had ever been cast into the Vortex. It spoke through the body of Father Kreiner.

Christine speculated that the universe of Chris Cwej, the Horror, and the Sphinxes was itself a bottle universe, created by the Great Houses of a yet higher reality, (PROSE: Dead Romance) such as I.M. Foreman. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two) According to other accounts, however, the reality of the Horror and the Sphinxes was one and the same as I.M. Foreman's. (PROSE: Vampire Science, The Book of the War, et al.)

Reunion
Father Kreiner was later retrieved from the Vortex. A Time-Space Visualiser on Gallifrey confirmed that he was at least a thousand years old. When he was summoned back into the real universe on Gallifrey, he re-encountered the Eighth Doctor and the "new" Fitz, whom he initially regarded as a mere copy of himself. After the Doctor convinced Father Kreiner that he regretted abandoning him and only did it because he was convinced he was dead, Kreiner tried to help him during the final stand-off in the Edifice. Grandfather Paradox shot and killed him for his betrayal. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)

Behind the scenes

 * Father Kreiner's plotline was one of a few elements of the first edition of Crimes Against History which was carefully excised from the second edition. As the character of Fitz Kreiner belongs to Stephen Cole and BBC Books, Father Kreiner did not appear in later stories in the Faction Paradox series.
 * Father Kreiner briefly appeared in an episode of BBV Productions' Hellscape in 2023. However, permission for the use of Kreiner was not obtained from BBC Books, so the story is outside the scope of this wiki.