Tom Dering

Tom Dering
Species:	Human
Job:	President of the United States
Place of origin:	Earth
First appearance:	Option Lock
Appearances:	PROSE: Millennium Shock

Tom Dering was elected President of the United States before 1998 (PROSE: Option Lock) and served to at least the end of 1999 (PROSE: Millennium Shock). Dering's Vice President was Jack Michaels. He was in office when Station Nine, a top secret US space station created to destroy threatening nuclear missiles from orbit, was first used. Station Nine was used to destroy missiles headed for the USA which had been launched by Colonel Anatoli Roskov, the commander of the Nevchenka nuclear base in Krejikistan. Prior to the meeting in which he gave permission to use it, Dering did not actually know that the space station was any more than a myth.

The use of Station Nine made it visible to everyone on earth with the proper equipment. President Dering decided, with the help of his Staff Heads, to share the space station with the United Nations, stressing that it would only ever have been used in America's hands to stop a nuclear war and preserve peace. When the US and the UN received information that China was launching nuclear missiles, President Dering again authorised the use of Station Nine's own nuclear missiles. However, the information regarding China's attack was fake, and it and the previous missile launch were actually part of a plan of the Khameirians to use a nuclear missiles power to create new bodies for themselves. Though they never interacted, the Eighth Doctor and Samantha Jones saved Earth by defeating the Khameirians, and they destroying Station Nine in the process. (PROSE: Option Lock)

According to the Eighth Doctor, he served between Bill Clinton and Bruce Springsteen. (PROSE: Interference - Book One) One account, however, put that Bill Clinton was still President as late as 1999, when he gave a Congressional Medal to Rosa Parks. (TV: Rosa)

In a parallel universe created by the Quantum Archangel, Dering was the president of the US in 2010. He once had an encounter with the Quarks and Giant Wasps in Central Park. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

Behind the scenes

Option Lock indicated that Tom Dering was elected to his first term in 1996 and was looking towards a second election in the coming years.

Dering's appearances in the "present day" of the early BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures — most of which were set during Bill Clinton's real-life second term — indicate that in the DWU, Clinton lost or didn't contest his 1996 re-election bid. This indication is ignored by the 2018 Chris Chibnall era episode Rosa, which explicitly refers to the president in 1999 as Clinton.