Minister of Chance

The Minister of Chance was a Time Lord.

He thwarted General Tannis' plans to infect the planet Alnelan with a deadly plague, but the The Minister of Chance's female assistant "wandered off" on the planet.

Following his defeat Tannis agreed to the Treaty of Karselai and signed away any rights to alien planets. Despite this, the Canisian military, led by Tannis, brutally conquered the Santine Republic, confining the leading members of the Republic to a prison camp. The Minister, who was able to transfer a virus to a Canisian computer via speech, took the place of a version of the Doctor in seeding a rebellion on Santiny while the Doctor investigated the deaths of two Time Lords on Earth. Tannis was also working towards wiping out the last members of the Fraction and by massacring the Santine prisoners he provoked the Minister into breaking the rules about non-interference and destroy the fleet, forcing the Doctor to confront the Minister and revoke his TARDIS. (NOTVALID: Death Comes to Time)

Behind the scenes

 * In the novel The Tomorrow Windows, the Eighth Doctor saw in one of the Tomorrow Windows "a man in a cream suit strolled through Regent's Park, his long hair swept back, his nose bent, his chin held imperiously high"; a similar "tall man with a bent nose wearing a cravat and holding a hair of dice" later appeared in the novel The Gallifrey Chronicles as one of the four surviving elementals; in Lance Parkin's AHistory, he confirmed that this was a reference to the Minister of Chance. The Gallifrey Chronicles also referenced Tannis as a threat that Gallifrey must face.
 * The Minister of Chance is also the main character of an eponymous spinoff audio series, where the character had regenerated into an incarnation played by Julian Wadham; Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann have also appeared in the series, though not as their Doctor Who characters. However, this series is not covered by this wiki.